Agree, except that, in a sense, “male” and “female” are the words we’ve always used for “binary.”
In the broader sense, “binary” refers to any time there are two mutually exclusive alternatives, where you have to be one or the other (but not both): on or off, true or false, black or white (no shades of gray), 1 or 0. In the sex/gender sense, the two alternatives are male or female, and the common assumption among many people has been that everyone is unambiguously either one or the other of those two alternatives.
Someone who believes that neither one of those categories really, completely applies to them, then, might describe themselves as “non-binary.” By analogy, someone who believes that one of those categories does apply to them might describe themselves as “binary”; but more often they’d just describe themselves as “male” or “female.”
Good point. :smack:
Although a good many TERFs I’ve run into are political lesbians, something I do find baffling. However, I think we can all safely say that they’re all obnoxious kooks.
Some of those obnoxious kooks are friends and allies of mine. sigh But yeah their fucking intractability w/regards to trans women has become a dealbreaker.
I recognize the right to say “we want to organize as women, by which we mean people who have had the lifetime experience of being treated and regarded as women”, and with that qualifier to say “that doesn’t mean you, AHunter3, we don’t care how you fucking identify”, and alongside of that, “it doesn’t mean you either, transgender woman”. Problem is, they aren’t saying that; they’re saying “You ( :pointing to transgender woman: ) are not a woman, you’re a man”.
Identity is tricky and the word gender is impossible to define.
There are shades that you’ll never get to see unless you ask (tactfully)–someone might call themselves (for example) a trans woman for the sake of simplicity but identify as nonbinary transfemme. Someone might look and dress like a little girl and be AFAB but be totally man-gender and use boy pronouns.