Cisgender/Cisgendered

[Dianna]

Admin/mods feel free to move this, the term is new to me until recently.

"Internet use

The word cisgender has been used on the internet since at least 1994, when it appeared in the alt.transgendered usenet group in a post by Dana Leland Defosse. Defosse does not define the term and seems to assume that readers are already familiar with it. It may also have been independently coined a year later. According to Donna Lynn Matthews, the charter maintainer of the alt.support.crossdressing usenet group, the word was coined in 1995 by Carl Buijs, a transsexual man from the Netherlands. In April 1996, Buijs said in a usenet posting, "As for the origin, I just made it up. I just kept running into the problem of what to call non-trans people in various discussions, and one day it just hit me: non-trans equals cis. Therefore, cisgendered."

Academic use

The term has more recently been used in scholarly publications, such as a 2006 article in the Journal of Lesbian Studies and Julia Serano's 2007 book Whipping Girl. Serano also uses the related terms cissexual, which she defines as "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned" (p. 12), and cissexism, "which is the belief that transsexuals' identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals." "

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

[EveMarie]

I would conclude from both "uses" that the "cis" would almost include Cross Dressers, am I wrong? This world has become so overwhelmed with acronyms, Politically correct "terms" and such. I'm getting a migraine.

Evie

[Janet_Girl]

There are getting to be so many different terms now, I can't keep up.



I have a migraine now too,
Janet

[Dianna]

I have to admit I don't use the term, not about to start now. 

[gqueering]

I hate the term 'cisgendered' because it assumes that there is a 'natural' order of things: female/woman, male/man. I think this is culturally popular but not more 'natural' than female/man, male/woman etc (transgendered).

[gqueering]

Here are some definitions I've pulled from the web at random:

Not transgender, that is, having a gender identity or gender role that society considers appropriate for the sex one was assigned at birth.

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.

Cisgender... is a neologism meaning "not transgender," that is, a gender identity or performance in a gender role that society considers to match or be appropriate for one's sex. The prefix cis- means "on this side of" or "not across" (cf. cisatlantic, cisalpine).

The bold bits I've added myself. Can you not see how it is a word that compounds society's ideas of 'correct' gender, ie. gender that 'matches' a certain sex?

[Dianna]

In my world you are either male or female.

Who would conduct their life using a term to differentiate themselves from male or female as is appropiate?  Not me!

[Kendall]

In my world you are either male or female.

Who would conduct their life using a term to differentiate themselves from male or female as is appropiate?  Not me!

Maybe I misunderstood? But -
I am living in a world where I feel both male and female.
I appreciate that there is a label for that - "androgyny" - that helps me feel less crazy.

I may be in transition from one world to another, but I doubt I will ever be simply one or the other ever again.

I do not like to take labels too seriously, they can limit, but they can also be helpful.

[gqueering]

If my physical sexual characteristics and what my brain expects my sexual characteristics to be were not mismatched, why would I physically transition in the first place?

You're talking about sex not gender. I don't have a problem with the word cissexual because a person's sex can be ascertained looking at genitalia, hormones etc. In other words, sex is a physical reality. My beef is with the term cisgendered - you cannot point at something on/in a person's body and say "that is gender". Gender exists as a concept in society and in a persons mind. When you make the assumption that a certain sex (physicality) equals a certain gender (identity), that is merely a cultural assumption, it is not based on fact. What I'm saying is that the word cisgendered helps to give this myth validity.

ps. Diana: people are not born either male or female, some people are born intersex.

[Dianna]

You're talking about sex not gender. I don't have a problem with the word cissexual because a person's sex can be ascertained looking at genitalia, hormones etc. In other words, sex is a physical reality. My beef is with the term cisgendered - you cannot point at something on/in a person's body and say "that is gender". Gender exists as a concept in society and in a persons mind. When you make the assumption that a certain sex (physicality) equals a certain gender (identity), that is merely a cultural assumption, it is not based on fact. What I'm saying is that the word cisgendered helps to give this myth validity.

ps. Diana: people are not born either male or female, some people are born intersex.

Yes what I said above neglects that point.  You are right Chris. 

[gqueering]

Hi Kvall,
I did read your entire post but to be honest I found it confusing. You kept referring to "bodies" which is what I responded to. My argument isn't about bodies but about gender identity (in the mind). I only quoted that sentence because you sort of lost me after that... that's probably my fault, I apologise.
Chris

[miniangel]

FWIW, I refer to myself around here as a ciswoman or as cisfemale (not cis-sexual or -gendered), and I do it simply to make my situation clear when I am making a point where my experience is relevant. The politics and the semantics do not concern me; it's merely a convenient handle, and one I would happily change if I thought I was being offensive in some way.

FWIW.

[gqueering]

Firstly let me say that this is a very interesting conversation! OK, I believe I do understand what you're trying to say, however, I still feel that you sometimes use "man" instead of "male" and vice versa which is where I disagree with you. So I'll break it down (in red):

It's okay. I'm sorry that it was confusing. Maybe I can explain a bit clearer. I'm going to use FTMs as my example, but the opposites can easily be applied to MTFs.  OK.

A lot of trans men, even if they are pre-T or pre-op, see themselves as having male bodies because they are males (as in, a body that belongs to a male person is a male's body and thus a male body). When you say that a trans man is a "female/man" combo, it erases his ability to self-define how he views his body. But if the only terms for bodies you have to operate on are "male" and "female," people are going to default to XY-typical bodies being "male," and XX-typical bodies being "female."
Ok, I understand that transexuals have body dysphoria - it's not just their assigned gender they have an issue with but also their physical body/sex. However, the scientific physical 'fact' is that the actual body (pre-T and op) is female eventhough the person (FTM in this eg.) feels like it should be male. So the fact is that an FtM was born with a female (XX) body, but will change this to a male body (or as close as possible) through hormones and/or surgery. Therefore this person is trans-sexual whereas a person like myself who is born female yet does not want a male body is cis-sexual. Get it?

Adding "cis" allows you to recognize that a trans man has a male body*, regardless of his point in transition. So to describe the body of a cis man, you can say he has a cis male body (instead of a male body). To describe the body of a trans man, you could say he has a trans male body (instead of a female body). Both are types of male bodies.

So again, here you are talking about the body: a "trans man" (come to that in a minute) is a trans-sexual male while someone who was born with a male body is a cis-sexual male. And I agree that these terms can be used to describe these 2 types of male bodies: cis or trans.

Similarly, regarding gender, we know very well that "man" (or male gender) does not just refer to the genders of male-identified people who have XY chromosomes, testes, a penis, etc., but if you just say "man" without any qualifications, that's what people assume you mean. You even will see this in trans literature: cis men are referred to as "men" while trans men are referred to as "trans men." Both are men, so if you want to differentiate, it makes far more sense to say "cis men and trans men" than to say "men and trans men" -- the latter makes it sound like trans men are not really men, or are only sort-of men.

Right, so here's where we disagree! Firstly, I would argue that a lot of (if not most) transexuals would prefer to be known as just "men" or "women" rather than "trans men" or "trans women". In the FTM section there's a whole thread on passing and how the FTM's there would like to pass as men... not as "trans men" but as "real" men. I believe that no prefix is necessary at all! If you are a man, you are a man, regardless of how you got there! After all, even those who are born male have to grow into being "men" - it's a process regardless. When the literature differentiates between a "trans man" and a "cis man" it is saying loud and clear that the 2 are not equal. It's discriminating between men that were born male and grew into men, and men that may not have been born male but are still men (regardless of whether they are post or pre anything). Because gender resides in a person's mind, if you are a man, that's it: you're a man! So whereas we can differentiate between a trans-sexual or cis-sexual male because we are talking about the body, I do not believe men can be differentiated because you either feel like a man or you don't. There does not need to be a connection between the body and a person's gender - that's where discrimination begins, when the patriarchal heterosexual world says "you must be born male to be a man". What I'm saying is that that is not the case. You decide what your gender is based on who you are inside regardless of what body you have. So if you are a man, then you are a "real man" regardless of whether your body is male/female/intersex; if you are a woman, then you are a "real woman" regardless of whether your body is male/female/intersex if you are androgyne then you are androgyne regardless of whether your body is male/female/intersex... etc. Calling one man a "trans man" and another man a "cis man" is gender discrimination (note that this is different from sex discrimination although these days people seem to use the 2 terms interchangeably which I believe is why everyone's so confused - they are different!)

*I also don't want to tread on those FTMs who do view themselves as having female bodies. That's perfectly fine. What I don't think is right is when people say that all FTMs are female-bodied, or try to describe a particular trans man as being female-bodied when he does not see it that way.
As frustrating as it must be to have a female body when you feel that your body should be male, the physical reality is that the body itself is female - this is why hormones are taken and operations had to change it. Again, this is about sex which can be quantified so the terms "trans" and "cis" are relevant here.

So:

SEX                                                                         GENDER
male/female/intersex                                  man/woman/androgyne/bigendered/'other' transgendered
resides in the body                                      resides in the mind
can be changed                                           most people would say they were born with their gender identity, although some change
(hormones and surgery)

In my case I am a female androgyne, so I can call myself a cis-sexual (happy with my female sex) trans-gender (I transcend the gender of 'woman' assigned to me).

Whereas a FTM might say he is a trans-sexual (will change his physical sex) man as opposed to a cis-sexual man.

Hopefully you can better understand where I'm coming from now?

[Asfsd4214]

I think this thread illustrates why I simply stopped caring about the terminology long ago. 

[tekla]

I'm more confused then when I started.