From the outside, it seems to be the same thing, just with a different label.
I get it, the difference is there, if subtle. It has to be frustrating. Hopefully, as time passes and folks that are kinda caught in those kind of gaps in terminology can winkle out enough awareness for perceptions to shift.
I say that because I had to sit here and really think hard about what the difference is for a while before I figured it out (or think I did, anyway) enough to merit a comment. What I think you're running into is the perception that anyone wanting to change their body has to be transsomething. Up until this post, I had assumed it would be the case, that if someone wanted change, it made them fall under the label prefix trans, regardless of anything else. That's the obvious and default way of looking at medical intervention that is also part of transition.
At least, that's what I think you're talking about, that transitioning isn't necessarily towards one of the binary aspects for someone that's NB. That it's about finding the best balance of the inner and outer self rather than what parts of the body get changed or what the external perception of those changes might be.
If you have medical changes to the body that are in line with "female appearance", this doesn't necessarily mean that the person is transfem, just that they're changing their body while their inner self is, and has been, non binary. I just don't think there's a term for it currently.
People like to quibble over labels sometimes, but they really do help. That's what words are for. They encapsulate and simplify concepts into shorter things so that we have a shorthand for complex ideas. It's like the word "karma" takes a paragraph to explain in the simplest form, but a full exploitation of the idea can fill entire books.
In this case, we just don't have a word for trans-non-binary that works as a shorthand. At least, I've never run across it, and I try to keep up with the shifts in language and culture around the general subject matter. So there's that resort to default, where people go with the closest they have access to until they get better terminology. "Oh, you were amab, and you are seeking traditionally feminine physical attributes, so you're transfem.
M
Being real, I try, and I still don't have the ability to address non binary issues well. Some of the concepts take a bit of thinking when they're first encountered so that it's less likely to end up with unintentionally rude language. For whatever reason, it's easier to wrap one's mind around trans folk that are binary. There's an entire culture and language that's built around the binary, and if you do fit that binary, the concept of it not fitting at all is more foreign than the concept that someone doesn't fit their birth assigned gender and do fit the opposite.
It doesn't help me individually that I don't know many NB folks irl, not well enough to ask things that would be intrusive, just for my own understanding. And of the ones I do know well enough to ask things, they tend to fall into what the general view is, where their gender presentation is neutral, and say they have no desire for changing their body.
Wall of text aside, I guess what I'm saying is that it sucks that even in a place where the default should be an openness to fine delineation of needs per individual, you're still running into the same old same old.
I've been callying myself enby transfem, because I struggle to relate to gender in general, am amab, much more strongly identify with fem gender roles, especially relating to other people, and am really enjoying a more fem presentation. I'm not sure I'm a full on woman but definitely not cis. I find it a convenient labeling for getting the jist across. However, I can easily see someone amab who just wants to present androgynously, not relating with femininity, taking medical steps to present that way and not calling themselves transfem. Ofc that example isn't, like, the only valid case or anything, just what pops into my head when I think about this kind of thing because I know someone exactly like that, just afab instead of amab.
The funny thing is that I'm actually intersex, but in a way that only doctors and intimate partners can see. I'm also prone to text walls. The relevant endocrinologist is, to put it simply, behind the times. It's a long story.
I don't know what it is with endocrinologists, but they seem to be unbelievably incompetent. I've got an endocrinological issue, and over the past 5 years I've had one positive experience with endos – with the doctors generally ranging from harmless but useless, to downright dangerously incompetent. I've had to deal with everything from getting prescribed wrong doses of medications or radiotherapy, to having endocrinological issues or radiotherapy side effects attributed to "anxiety", etc. etc.
Something else that people don't get is that not all transfems fit into a binary. I'm a non-binary Demigirl and there are people who genuinely don't understand.
Did people not know transfem is an umbrella term that included binary trans women and well not binary trans feminine people?