I sometimes wonder if my life mission isn't to pull linear axes apart and demonstrate that they're actually more complicated. Because I agree with you on the butch/femme thing completely - if that's even anywhere near a complete description, because there's some multiple axes-pushed-into-one-thing stuff there too.

I use it to explain why, even though I test as N on the N-S axis of Myers-Briggs I often prefer hanging out with S rather than N (I'm both N and S, just more strongly N, but strong N without S drives me batty.) I also want to pull T-F apart because most of those questions feel like "embrace the power of AND" to me (and explains a lot of my problems fitting into science). I'm busy pulling apart E-I at the moment - I've always tested strongly I but I'm starting to suspect I'm at least moderate E with fairly major social anxiety.

"Intelligence" as a linear scale is of course laughable. IQ is a self-reinforcing statistical illusion. Autism spectrum, I suspect similarly, because I'm just plain tired of being counted as a fellow-traveller when I share what to me are obviously quite distinct characteristics that are just more easy to identify in people who are what I think of as on the primary Autism axis.