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What started out as a short reply to this very good post about tumblr focussing too narrowly on identity.
(Also, I know some people find it annoying when I use "oppression" in this kind of context but I don't know of a better term that works neatly)
Non binary people, especially amab ones, are really badly served by the strict binary model of “you are a member of oppressed group X, who all have identical X-ism experiences, or of oppressor group not-X, who all have identical X-ism related experiences and have zero right to complain about or identify with group X about anything X-ism related”. It's bad for anyone who doesn't have a neat X/not-X identity, or whose experiences don't fit the narrow expectations for what those identities mean. But the gender dichotomy is deeply baked into people's understandings of How Gender Works, and non binary people by our nature don't fit into any binary understanding of gender.
For all that feminists and even queer people try to be inclusive of non binary people these days, for the most part they still very much hold to the old binary gender model. And in that model, women are the oppressed and men are the oppressor. The worst take on this is the TERFs, but a lot of people stop at “All women experience gender related oppression, trans women also experience transphobia. Gender conforming cis men have no gender related oppression”. Which is true in and of itself, but then they try and slot everyone into these categories, as if going from identifying as cis-with-gender-issues to identifying as probably-trans is simple switch instead of a long messy process.
As if an amab person who hasn’t quite let go of the idea of being cis but has major gender issues has zero connection to the female or trans experience until the precise moment she decides she is a trans woman (or perhaps it all becomes allowed in retrospect, but only after that moment). As if non binary people are just a simple mix of (possibly trans) Male Experience and (possibly trans) Female Experience. As if trans men either have The Full Sexism Experience and are incapable of sexism themselves, or have No Sexism Experience At All.
In my experience as an afab non binary person, we're usually treated as (a) Women Lite (b)Basically Men And Thus Gender Oppressors (c)Trans+Woman(ish)+NB= WINNER OF GENDER OPPRESSION OLYMPICS so we can speak for and talk over literally everyone else, including trans women. And in all three cases people treat it as self evident and unquestionable. Afaict amab get put into the same three categories but some people may, say, classify afab non binary people as Basically men because we CHOSE to be masculine and amab nb people as Women Lite because they're "almost" trans women. While others will decide that while trans women are women, afab non binary people are basically women and amab nb people are basically men until we pass some unstated arbitrary line of trans-enough, at which point we swap.
And then people try to fix these issues by making up more and more axes of oppression to intersect along, like some medieval astronomer adding epicycles to explain anomalies in the Sun’s rotation around the Earth instead of just admitting that the Earth goes around the Sun(*).
Helpful use of intersectionality: (though it glosses over grey areas like non binary people) Men have gender privilege over women, who experience gender related oppression. White people have racial privilege over black people, who experience race related oppression. Black women experience a specific and unique mixture of racism and sexism, and white women and black men both have privilege over them.
Unhelpful use of intersectionality: The idea that there is a simple privileged vs non-privileged dynamic between feminine and non feminine women (I have seen it suggested in both directions) Feminine women have a unique experience of sexism, and non-feminine women need to not be jerks about it. But non-feminine women have a different unique experience of sexism, and feminine women need to not be jerks about that. There is no way I can see to model this with privileged vs non-privileged binaries, no matter how many extra ones you add.
And I mean...I’m not a woman so people might argue I have no say in how different kinds of women relate to each other, but because the way people talk about gender is so broken I have no way to figure out if that’s actually true! There are situations where I feel like the differences between my experiences and those of a woman are basically negligible, and others where they really do differ a lot, and not in a way I can model easily with "they have binary privilege over me" or whatever.
This post by an Actual Woman lays it out pretty well in my not-a-woman opinion.
Anyway, I wish people would stop trying to fix the clearly broken privileged/non-privileged dichotomy by just shifting the goalposts to keep the "right people" in the non-privileged group, or adding extra intersections. Sadly, I'm no Kepler with a new and better neat model to explain everything, but "use privilege when it works but remember it is just a flawed model" still seems like a step forward from pretending the system is perfect and the only people who question it are bigots.
EDIT: in a private message someone pointed out that this also creates an adversarial situation where "I experience difficulties relating to X that you don't" is the same as "you are oppressing me relating to X", and if two sets of people have different difficulties then only one of them is The Real Problem and the other is Oppressor Whining. This makes it nigh impossible to build cross-group solidarity and understanding.
(*)In the draft of this in my head I had this extended, central metaphor about how the astronomers get defensive because most people who criticise the epicycles model are flat-earthers who think the sun is a chariot, and that this makes it hard for the astronomers with a new and better model to be heard. Also when I first came up with the metaphor it was "the sun orbits the earth"=sexism, "the earth orbits the sun in a perfect circle plus epicycles" = simple feminist dichotomy, "the earth orbits the sun in an ellipse" = how gender actually works. Which is much neater! But then I checked and I'd misremembered who used epicycles. WAY TO RUIN MY METAPHOR, HISTORY.
(Also, I know some people find it annoying when I use "oppression" in this kind of context but I don't know of a better term that works neatly)
Non binary people, especially amab ones, are really badly served by the strict binary model of “you are a member of oppressed group X, who all have identical X-ism experiences, or of oppressor group not-X, who all have identical X-ism related experiences and have zero right to complain about or identify with group X about anything X-ism related”. It's bad for anyone who doesn't have a neat X/not-X identity, or whose experiences don't fit the narrow expectations for what those identities mean. But the gender dichotomy is deeply baked into people's understandings of How Gender Works, and non binary people by our nature don't fit into any binary understanding of gender.
For all that feminists and even queer people try to be inclusive of non binary people these days, for the most part they still very much hold to the old binary gender model. And in that model, women are the oppressed and men are the oppressor. The worst take on this is the TERFs, but a lot of people stop at “All women experience gender related oppression, trans women also experience transphobia. Gender conforming cis men have no gender related oppression”. Which is true in and of itself, but then they try and slot everyone into these categories, as if going from identifying as cis-with-gender-issues to identifying as probably-trans is simple switch instead of a long messy process.
As if an amab person who hasn’t quite let go of the idea of being cis but has major gender issues has zero connection to the female or trans experience until the precise moment she decides she is a trans woman (or perhaps it all becomes allowed in retrospect, but only after that moment). As if non binary people are just a simple mix of (possibly trans) Male Experience and (possibly trans) Female Experience. As if trans men either have The Full Sexism Experience and are incapable of sexism themselves, or have No Sexism Experience At All.
In my experience as an afab non binary person, we're usually treated as (a) Women Lite (b)Basically Men And Thus Gender Oppressors (c)Trans+Woman(ish)+NB= WINNER OF GENDER OPPRESSION OLYMPICS so we can speak for and talk over literally everyone else, including trans women. And in all three cases people treat it as self evident and unquestionable. Afaict amab get put into the same three categories but some people may, say, classify afab non binary people as Basically men because we CHOSE to be masculine and amab nb people as Women Lite because they're "almost" trans women. While others will decide that while trans women are women, afab non binary people are basically women and amab nb people are basically men until we pass some unstated arbitrary line of trans-enough, at which point we swap.
And then people try to fix these issues by making up more and more axes of oppression to intersect along, like some medieval astronomer adding epicycles to explain anomalies in the Sun’s rotation around the Earth instead of just admitting that the Earth goes around the Sun(*).
Helpful use of intersectionality: (though it glosses over grey areas like non binary people) Men have gender privilege over women, who experience gender related oppression. White people have racial privilege over black people, who experience race related oppression. Black women experience a specific and unique mixture of racism and sexism, and white women and black men both have privilege over them.
Unhelpful use of intersectionality: The idea that there is a simple privileged vs non-privileged dynamic between feminine and non feminine women (I have seen it suggested in both directions) Feminine women have a unique experience of sexism, and non-feminine women need to not be jerks about it. But non-feminine women have a different unique experience of sexism, and feminine women need to not be jerks about that. There is no way I can see to model this with privileged vs non-privileged binaries, no matter how many extra ones you add.
And I mean...I’m not a woman so people might argue I have no say in how different kinds of women relate to each other, but because the way people talk about gender is so broken I have no way to figure out if that’s actually true! There are situations where I feel like the differences between my experiences and those of a woman are basically negligible, and others where they really do differ a lot, and not in a way I can model easily with "they have binary privilege over me" or whatever.
This post by an Actual Woman lays it out pretty well in my not-a-woman opinion.
Anyway, I wish people would stop trying to fix the clearly broken privileged/non-privileged dichotomy by just shifting the goalposts to keep the "right people" in the non-privileged group, or adding extra intersections. Sadly, I'm no Kepler with a new and better neat model to explain everything, but "use privilege when it works but remember it is just a flawed model" still seems like a step forward from pretending the system is perfect and the only people who question it are bigots.
EDIT: in a private message someone pointed out that this also creates an adversarial situation where "I experience difficulties relating to X that you don't" is the same as "you are oppressing me relating to X", and if two sets of people have different difficulties then only one of them is The Real Problem and the other is Oppressor Whining. This makes it nigh impossible to build cross-group solidarity and understanding.
(*)In the draft of this in my head I had this extended, central metaphor about how the astronomers get defensive because most people who criticise the epicycles model are flat-earthers who think the sun is a chariot, and that this makes it hard for the astronomers with a new and better model to be heard. Also when I first came up with the metaphor it was "the sun orbits the earth"=sexism, "the earth orbits the sun in a perfect circle plus epicycles" = simple feminist dichotomy, "the earth orbits the sun in an ellipse" = how gender actually works. Which is much neater! But then I checked and I'd misremembered who used epicycles. WAY TO RUIN MY METAPHOR, HISTORY.
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Yeah :( I mean, there are times when it is really helpful to be able to say "hey, shut up and stop (man)splaining" etc. But "shut up" can't be the only way to deal with different points of view.