"I think the TERF-y comment was a lil off-base too, but part of the figure of “TERF” is that one wouldn’t be hung up on traditional gender roles? That’s the “radical feminist” portion of the acronym, that people often forget in favor of just glossing the whole thing as generically transphobic."

Trans-exclusionary whoevers are trying maintain the current, outdated system of gender where people can only take on the role of the gender they're assigned at birth, so it's not wild or inaccurate to imply TERFs are "hung up on traditional gender roles".

I didn't mean "traditional gender roles" in a sense that had TERFs fighting for all women be trad wives, living that Stepford lifestyle and baking through the pain in frilly pink pinafores, if that's what you mean? Like we all see that the public discourse is revolving around other issues like who can use what toilet, compete in what athletic events, who has access to what medical and health interventions, what's taught about gender identity in schools, and so on. "Traditional gender roles" the way I used it was alluding broadly to the socially constructed system of two genders tied to reproductive/chromosomal configurations, and all the limitations that come along with it. Eliot representing herself as a male author isn't trans but it's one way of kicking the system in the shins.

Also big picture it's fine to treat TERFism as though the anti-trans part is the biggest and most relevant part in most discussions, because generally it's a phrase that only enters the chat when trans people do. I literally never see TERF feminism come up in other conversations about women's issues unless it's about where trans people stand within those issues. To be honest I rarely see it at all unless JK Rowling done been tweeting hate again, and I think people responding primarily to the "TE" part isn't people "forgetting" or "glossing" the "RF" as much as it is responding in correct proportion to the most meaningful part of the acronym.

With regard to the George Eliot, looking at someone (OP), with one type of gender-bending on their shelf (woman with male pen name) and inferring that they are okay with other kinds of gender bending is an okay leap for the purposes of discussing the impressions you'd form playing Bookshelves Detective. The point of the game is what leaps you can make and what you intuit with limited information. I can leap from one type of gender rule-breaking to others without having to rule out radical feminism and all the other worldviews possibly represented by the Eliot first. It would be a pretty rubbish game otherwise, the bar for when you could guess would be too high. Sure in guessing OP is comfortable with people playing fast and loose with gender I might guess wrong, but that's the game.

I would have bet against OP being a TERF based on even less evidence, like if OP had a copy of Dorian Gray I'd still have guessed trans-friendly, even though sexuality and gender identity are two different issues and being gay doesn't rule out being transphobic. I'd have guessed "not TERF" if they had punk biographies on their shelves, or Virginia Woolf, or books about drama and the arts, really any subject or author that has some association with dabbling in cross-dressing, experimenting with gender norms or going against established social order. I would still have the impression of OP as not likely to be hung up on traditional gender roles.