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Whipping Girl FAQ on cissexual, cisgender, and cis privilege

Started by Natasha, May 17, 2009, 07:14:59 PM

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Natasha

May 17, 2009, 07:14:59 PM
Whipping Girl FAQ on cissexual, cisgender, and cis privilege

http://juliaserano.livejournal.com/14700.html
5/14/09

The origin of "cis"

I have come across people who have assumed that I invented the terms cissexual and cisgender, but this is not the case. I reference "cissexual" this way in my book:

I was inspired to begin using the term "cissexual" after reading one of Emi Koyama's Interchange entries (www.eminism.org/interchange/2002/20020607-wmstl.html). Apparently, the related term "cisgender" was first coined in 1995 by a transsexual man named Carl Buijs.

I don't know much about Carl Buijs or why he coined the term "cisgender." But as a scientist (where the prefixes "trans" and "cis" are routinely used), this terminology seems fairly obvious in retrospect. "Trans" means "across" or "on the opposite side of," whereas "cis" means "on the same side of." So if someone who was assigned one sex at birth, but comes to identify and live as a member of the other sex, is called a "transsexual" (because they have crossed from one sex to the other), then the someone who lives and identifies as the sex they were assigned at birth is called a "cissexual."
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