Hey I think we maybe need a word for a specific type of popular rhetoric.
The essence of this rhetoric, either explicit or implicit, is that all people can be split into one of two categories – men and women.
This rhetoric looked at TERF rhetoric, went “Nah, trans men are men and trans women are women, but the rest of this is good, yes.”
This rhetoric manifests in things like:
– everyone is perceived either as male or female, so that’s the “class” they belong to.
– you can identify as whatever you want, but MATERIALLY, you’re one or the other.
– you don’t have to be a woman to identify as a lesbian/sapphic. Anyone who isn’t a man is welcome in women’s spaces. But if you have even a tiny bit of identification with maleness or masculinity ever, you can’t use that ID or be in those spaces.
– If you express that you now have nowhere to go because spaces for people hurt by patriarchy have all shut you out, you may be told to just get off Tumblr because the rest of the world will stroke your masculine ego.
– you’re either “one of us”, a non-man who comfortably occupies spaces built by women and for women, or you’re not, and then you’re a problem/dangerous/toxic/a threat/privileged.
– if you’re the former category, you should be comfortable with occupying spaces and words intended for women. Femme, feminine, sapphic, feminism, woman-aligned etc should all comfortably apply to you. If you point out that you don’t like them being used as categories for you, you’re being too difficult. “non-men” isnt good because it categorizes people by what they’re not; so “woman and femmes” or “women and women-aligned” and so on will work fine.
– all queerness is about being same (or “similar”) gender attracted. If you’re not SGA, you’re straight.
– maybe it doesn’t say “men” and “women”. Maybe it says “masc” and “fem”. Maybe it says “male-aligned” and “woman-aligned”. Maybe it says “masculinity” and “femininity”. Maybe it talks about your “presentation” or how you “move through the world” or how you’re “perceived by others” - those are all acceptable ways to class you as one of the two categories.
When put forth by an individual, this rhetoric may not incorporate ALL of these ideas, but it will still fundamentally see “us” and “them” as the most efficient gender categories.
This rhetoric MIGHT understand the existence of non-binary people, but it does believe (either explicitly or implicitly/subconsciously) that the world has two categories of gender: “privileged threat” and “oppressed victim”. “Predator” and “prey”. In order to participate in their spaces and their discourse, you must accept that you are one of the two.
I’d like to name this way of thinking in order to make it easier to point out. It is popular and mainstream on this website, and it is even practiced by many nonbinary people, but it is anti-nonbinary.
