Heteronormativity.
Cisnormativity.
Allonormativity.
Mononormativity.
Anthroponormativity.
Violating any of these puts you in the queer box, and that's not up to you. And there really is just the one box. All of it gets enforced in roughly the same ways by roughly the same people.
Sometimes I see other queer people trying to exclude those last two (or even three, still) that I listed. Trying to carve up the box from the inside, as if that's even possible for people who didn't build it and don't have any power over who's put in. And while there's no excuse for throwing anyone under the bus, I kind of understand the worry that people will exploit scarce queer resources. So I'm gonna address those doubts directly.
I'm a poly trans lesbian furry (four out of five, whee!) and I listed those in order of how recently I stopped being terrified of how people might react if they found out. You will note that poly is first: the most recent. Trans and lesbian (simultaneously) were easier.
Furry was an anomaly for me; I found that community in the 90s, before Something Awful caught wind of it (and before 4chan even existed), so I didn't have an immediate sense of danger and the cat was out of the bag before I knew better. There were still a couple of decades in there where I felt ashamed and defensive whenever it came up. Occasionally I caught the crosshairs, and it often directly overlapped with other queerphobia, to the point that it's very likely I would have figured out the gender thing 15 years sooner if not for the intersectional trauma of one specific episode of furry bashing.
(Aside: while my own experience on this axis mostly centers around furry, that's only the current most spotlighted group that runs afoul of anthropocentrism. Monsters, goblins, aliens, androids, disembodied intelligences — if you identify with anything nonhuman, you're in the box. If you're attracted to same there's apparently a specific exemption carved out for men who just want to fuck weird shit, because conquest or whatever, but if you're not a man or it's not strictly about dominant fucking then sorry, box. Anyway we really do need a more general term for this broader group; sadly "xenophilia" is taken.) (But it kinda just means "exoticizing colonialist" so maybe absconding with it is okay...)
So... poly. Selfish, slutty, homewrecking poly. (If you don't already see it, ask your bi friends.) It's only about 18 months now that I've entirely stopped hiding it, stopped saving the conversation until there's enough trust and even then being ready with "...but I'm entirely capable of monogamous relationships." I mean yeah, I was apparently capable of surviving without estrogen too, it just left me a goddam wreck and so has this, repeatedly, with nigh-identical qualia. (What's really ironic is, the first thing to slip in every one of those "monogamous relationships" was always my partner clearly eyeing someone and me compulsively cheering them on, like the selfish slutty homewrecker I am.)
One box, just one, built for our containment by white colonial patriarchy. Subdivision among ourselves is a trap. Please don't let it catch you.
