This reminds me of the "non-mixité" we have in queer-feminist-leftist spaces in France.
When I ask google how to translate "mixité", it gives me "diversity", but i don't like it in this context, so i will just call it mixity and you can view it as a concept adjacent to diversity.
Queer-feminist-leftist events and spaces often have a varying degree of non-mixity, aka clear boundaries about categories of people who are or are not allowed in. In theory it is more flexible than FLINTA, and indeed i have often seen non-mixt events happen for poc or for muslims for instance. But in the vast majority of cases, it means "no cis man". Sometimes it's called "chosen mixity" when it's more about who's left out than who's let in (a non-mixt event for black women is targeted at a very specific audience and asking that only that audience participates, whereas a "chosen mixity without cis men" is asking a specific group to not participate).

This is definitely a little better than FLINTA, but in a lot of cases the default is just "no cis men" without even thinking about why this particular chosen mixity was picked or if the event really needed to be non-mixt at all (again, i'm talking about resorting to it by default; lots of events also implement this stuff in a thoughtful way that ends up beneficial). And the same thing that you described happens: queer people who "look like" cis men are either barred from those events, or made to feel so uncomfortable that they stop going. Plenty of events that were supposed to include them happen without them, and that makes the participants even more used to a certain type of visible queerness, which makes the people outside of that aesthetic stand out even more when they try to go...

Even though I look "queer enough" to go such events (i'm an afab nb person with very little masc-passing and blue hair), i much more prefer all-inclusive events these days. For example, the local LGBTQ+ center organizes a board game night every month, and they don't specify who is or isn't allowed to enter: it just happens to be hosted in the LGBTQ+ center, and so most of the people who show up are queer, but my housemate who is very cis and kinda straight is also allowed to come, which allows him to play new board games with his nb partner

Lotta this in the US as well - mostly in "women's" spaces that have become "women and nonbinary" or "women and trans" spaces, which usually mean "people I'm comfortable deciding are women". we don't have an umbrella term for it ingrained quite the way y'all do though

I've felt this exact kind of treament. Both as a non-binary person in LGBTQ spaces and as a mixed race person in PoC spaces. I don't think this system of categorical exclusion works for anybody.

thank you so much for sharing your experience, and for trying to put some words to this. I've gotten this treatment too, in the U.S. - it sucks. I really do hope the next ten years of progression in feminism can, well, not center men and masc-looking enby folks, but at least start to sort out what to do with us in some better ways. because the current state is... existentially depressing to me, honestly

Yeah I feel like a lot of the time where I see "FLINTA only" it is really a cover over an implied "no AMABs" and/or "no mascs"

And it falls into the same pitfall that the transphobic bathroom police does as well: Assuming that a) One group and only that group poses a danger and that b) you in any way reduce that danger by saying "that group is not allowed"

Thank you. I remember getting on Lex right before my egg finished cracking, and there being a lot of discourse (from some people, not everybody) about how cis men (even gay/bi/pan/queer men) should stay off of the supposedly queer inclusive app. It did not make me feel good.

I know a lot of people have trauma around men (often also including other men I would like to point out), and people deserve to feel safe (and different groups of people can have different, contradictory requirements for what consitutes a safe space), but like, queer men (and men in general for that matter but I will try not to overgeneralize this comment) deserve community too, and like you say a lot of people that look like men, aren’t, or are figuring stuff out, and are a lot less likely to figure stuff out if they don’t feel welcome.

oh, that's bad :( we've seen people try to make no-men spaces (they often wind up including trans men, which has tended to make our trans male friends feel insulted, but neither part of that is universal)

it generally just does not seem to be a good idea. it kinda starts from exclusion as the core principle and then works on sugarcoating it. there are Irenes who have philosophical observations about this, but they seem to be asleep right now, maybe another time... anyway, we're sorry to hear this is normalized in Germany.

This resonates with my experiences around "womxn" / "women and femmes" / "women and nonbinary people" / "sapphic" (which doesn't even mean the same thing!) type language I've heard in the US. I made a post about it a few days ago, lmao.

I'm not a cis man, and so perhaps I have direct personal experience of things a cis man might not... but I am also not included if the only reason for my inclusion is the assumption that I "must" be fundamentally different from cis men. In which specific ways am I different? What assumptions do those criteria hold? Often they misgender trans people they claim to include, or perform biological essentialism.

It's entirely possible to have an event that doesn't center cis men (or perhaps uplifts a different group specifically), but which cis men are allowed to attend.

I dont know if my opinion here is helpful but... Shouldnt allies be allowed to participate? Arent allies usually necessary to make change happen by telling undecided cis-het folks "actually, these entities are valid"?

And besides that... Yes there are entities included* that look like regular ass dudes, even if this was all good how do you keep from excluding your own at these gatherings?

the two things that immediately came to mind are "typisch deutsch" und "Vereinsmeierei", I don't know how to best translate the latter into english.

It's like inside every one of us there's a 19th century Prussian civil servant, waiting to take over as soon as we get any kind of authority.