A Theory of Othering Sex and Gender Outlaws

[Shana A]

A Theory of Othering Sex and Gender Outlaws
October 11, 2009
Kate Bornstein's Blog for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws

http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2009/10/a-theory-of-othering-sex-and-gender-outlaws.html

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, to keep myself from wandering off into Mobius strips of postmodern theory. I've been paying attention to some trans activists who are using the word cisgender. According to its very own Wikipedia page:

    "The word has its origin in the Latin-derived prefix cis, meaning "on the same side" as in the cis-trans distinction in chemistry. In this case, "cis" refers to the alignment of gender identity with assigned gender."

In my pants Who knew? Not me. I'd only begun to hear the word about a year ago but according to its own Wikipedia page, cisgender has been in use on the internet since 1994. So this is me trying to play catch up.

Here's what I've got worked out so far.