This made something click a bit for me. The right likes to complain “they have over 9000 genders!!!1!” entirely because they fail to realize that gender is complex and inextricably entangled with identity. Their whole worldview hinges on mapping everything to stark binary concepts (good, evil, man, woman, in-group, out-group, white, minority) so this is the scariest possible confrontation of that worldview because it means they aren’t who they need to be and the world is unavoidably more complex than they can confront.
This made something click a bit for me. The right likes to complain “they have over 9000 genders!!!1!” entirely because they fail to realize that gender is complex and inextricably entangled with identity. Their whole worldview hinges on mapping everything to stark binary concepts (good, evil, man, woman, in-group, out-group, white, minority) so this is the scariest possible confrontation of that worldview because it means they aren’t who they need to be and the world is unavoidably more complex than they can confront.