Stupid Question

[Sarah Dreams]

Being new to this board and the TS culture, I have a question. What is cisgender and cis* in general?

[Sephirah]

Since the site wiki is temporarily down, maybe this will answer your question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender

It's not a stupid question, honey, I'd never heard the term until I came here, either.

[NicholeW.]

It's actually been used for awhile, butcha know how "we" are!! We have these brain-storms that we keep within our own little coteries!!

Nichole

[findingreason]

It's not a stupid question, honey, I'd never heard the term until I came here, either.

Ditto, I didn't either . It took a month or so till I knew all the terms used around here on the boards

[Sarah Dreams]

So, from what I read, it means that if you were born (fe)male and act (fe)male you are cisgender. Huh?

[Sephirah]

I don't think it's so much about how a person acts so much as it is the belief, for someone cisgendered, that they exist in the right body to match their mind and the way they see themselves.

If they even think about it at all, that is.

[Constance]

Since the site wiki is temporarily down, maybe this will answer your question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender

It's not a stupid question, honey, I'd never heard the term until I came here, either.

I've been to this page before, and I did not in any way understand the "answer" contained therein.

[Alyssa M.]

"Cis-" is just a prefix denoting the opposite of the "trans-" prefix, geekily borrowed from the chemistry concept of cis-trans isomerism. So it's just convenient jargon, and it's meaning will be just as slippery as the meaning of the "trans-" prefix.

I sometimes like to call cisgender people "cissies."