I’ve had some thoughts in a similar directions:
So one thing I always wonder (from the perspective of the straight white male) is how much of the LGBTQIA+ terminology implicitly reaffirms, or even depends on, just those stereotypical gender norms and social structures it seeks to question.
For instance, take the term nonbinary: in order for it to make sense, one must first stipulate that there’s something that’s picked out by ‘binary’ in order to negate that; so if gender simply isn’t binary, it makes no sense to call oneself ‘nonbinary’, since there’s nothing there that’s being negated.
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I apologize if I’m going about this in a too simplistic way. Part of the above is the issue with the neatly delineated vs. continuous spectrum rainbow posted above: in a sense, the whole problem is people judging other people by what boxes they fall into (or are sorted into by others, often those doing the judging); but the reaction seems to be to build more boxes. To me, in my naive way, that’s always seemed sort of the wrong tack: shouldn’t we rather try to question the grounds for boxing at all? To just live with the fact that human beings and their identities (gender- or otherwise) are simply big, messy, fuzzy things, and that we’re actually pretty much all the same on that accord?
But I think, in response, AHunter3 made a good point:
Me, I’m trying to steer this conversation down the excluded middle: the notion that there are generalizations which, as generalizations, do accurately apply, but that, as with most generalizations, there are exceptions to the rule, and that I speak as an example of one of those exceptions, and that we, the exceptions, exist as a minority. It’s closer to the first version but more nuanced — I’m seeking to modify the notions about the differences so as to include more social awareness of the exceptions and what our experience is like, while still granting that the generalization is valid as a generalization. That’s different from insisting on the correctness of the existing notions of difference while wanting “special snowflake” status for myself and also different from attacking the entire generalization as flat-out wrong.
So maybe one might hold that those who are ‘in tune’ with the generalizations prevalent in society simply are on different footing with respect to criticism—appearance or behavior-wise—than those who aren’t. The differences in gender—the normative aspects of what’s proper in ways of behavior and appearance for a woman or a man—are ultimately a fiction; but they are a fiction that creates a certain lived reality for those within a given social context.