Ask Lemmy

They probably likely meant they come off as a typical man. I felt your comment was unnecessary, like stop looking for it and you’ll find it less. You know? You took what was likely poor phrasing into something else entirely.

I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding of some inclusivity in regards to non-binary identities here.

There are a lot of grey areas that use different words very specifically. Masc and Femme for instance describe a wider range of binary and non-binary identities than "Man and Woman" as many non-binary people are closer to binary trans folks but use a different set of mental mechanisms where they don't strictly align with the categories of "man and woman". Masc and Femme can be used with "presenting" to specify what people tend to read someone as based on cultural dress and behaviour or but left as is to describe gender identity.

On the other pole of talking about sex rather than gender or gender presentation some have started to move away from "assigned gender at birth" and use descriptives like " male/female phenotypic (or type for short) when needing to refer to one's physicality to describe aspects when talking strictly about lived experience regarding their body's sexual characteristics.

The trans community particularly has a lot of very specific language regarding how different aspects of our experience impacts us. For instance a male phenotypic person will have certain aspects assumed about them because of their body independent of their gender which given certain circumstances they need to talk about in a neutral way. Talking about sex can be a bit of a landmine situation in trans circles because it's both a touchy subject and it's where the most dogwhistles tend to be. As such it's a bit chaotic... As such Phenotype does not strictly mean "birth sex". It's more about what physical sex characteristics people perceive and react to... Trans language wise it's something not universally adopted or liked but it is consistent with the usage in the above post where the poster is describing people perceived as at least potentially possessing some sexually male characteristics. This covers cis/ trans men/ masc non-binary people, some trans women / femme non-binary and various flavors of non-binary people.

While I can understand feeling like this is a bit much but it's mostly that language and conventions inside the community and inclusivity forward movements changing rather rapidly to account for the way discourse changes from year to year with new dogwhistles popping up with the evolving discourse as more people become knowledgeable about the basics. Less awkward conventions of language are always being tested because universality is likely a ways away. Trying to be pedantic about it might prove to be a losing battle. Give it another decade or two and it might settle into a singular convention once there's more concensus.