So. Obligatory TME + kind of new to the language of it all but I'll do my best to explain?
So within the current common gender ideology. Male and Female are considered The Binary. Because they're two "defined*" things that are adhered to. Identities outside of that, agender, demigirl, demiboy, genderflux, etc. are considered Non-Binary. Non-Binary in itself is an identity, it's an identity that gets its name from falling outside the female-male binary.
* Female and Male as a binary are considered to be Defined gender presentations but given gender is a Social Construct "defining" these things is not actually possible because you would inevitably leave people out. Consider "Defined" as "Widely agreed upon" as in you think of something specific when you think of a man or a woman regardless of cis or trans status. I'm not getting into how demi-(gender) and related identities are considered More Binary bc this post would be too damn long sorry.
TMA/TME is not considered a binary in the way that We* use it because 1. the language is designed to center a specific axis of oppression, and how people are affected by it. It's less about TMEs and more about the struggled faced by those who fall under TMA.
The Gender Binary describes and discusses both groups equally as it is designed to. TMA/TME describes transfeminized people Specifically.
*we as in transgender people.
It's not considered a binary because it's not meant to be USED as one. It's meant to describe an axis of oppression faced by a certain demographic. This "certain demographic" is not a "widely agreed upon" thing like the two sides of the Gender Binary is, it's specific in its language and use. Transmisogyny-affected is a very specific, non-debatable description of a person's interaction with transmisogyny.
Additionally, while you may be correct on a basic linguistic level to Call it a binary, you'd be wrong in the way that We* use the term. Among the trans community the term Binary has kind of become demonized and framed as something we should oppose because The Gender Binary is something made by our oppressors that we've been forced into.
*we as in transgender people.
You need to understand that within the space of trans discourse, transfeminized people are dehumanized and ignored. They finally have a Popular term to describe themselves and their oppression with and TME people feel threatened by this because it describes how We Have Hurt Them. So the solution to this is to compare transfeminized people's language to the language of our oppressors. To de-legitimize transfeminized people and make THEM sound like the villains.
That is why people are pushing against the language of "binary" to describe TMA/TME language.
Obviously anyone who knows better is free to correct me. I'm less here for a debate and more here to share my understanding of things and if that understanding is wrong I'd very much like to be corrected.
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
jacobvanloon
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart
yousharknotpass
