I believe I generally understand the concept of the (trans, not Star Trek) usage of “The Prime Directive” but as a cis person, I don’t really seem to get why. If a person you know and are close to starts to act or talk in a way like they are possibly trans, why is it… not proper, for lack of a better term, to genuinely tell them “I think you might want to seriously explore these feelings”? It feels like you should? Like you should be reassuring to someone who feels like this?
This was basically it for me. When I was very young (not quite into my teens), for one reason or another, my grandmother made several remarks about how I should have been born a girl and how they should have named me [femme version of first name]. It didn’t cause me to self-reflect or examine anything about my identity; rather, I felt an intense wave of revulsion and immediately shut down any possibility of ever exploring those aspects of myself that caused the remarks in the first place. It took damn near 30 years to break down those mental barriers. I’m left wondering if it would have made a difference if they’d never gone up in the first place.
Anyway, I doubt that it’s a very uncommon defense mechanism for people to just shut down when someone else challenges their very sense of self. And it definitely doesn’t help the impostor syndrome…