Semantics, Gender, and 'Cis'
posted by dglenn at 12:07pm on 02/07/2009

http://dglenn.dreamwidth.org/1588929.html

An Important Message About Vocabulary

While I do have a particular instance in mind, this little epistle is really in reaction to several comments, essays, loaded questions, and diatribes I've seen over the past three or four weeks in various places (though I hadn't seen it blow up into a shouting match anywhere until a couple of days ago). Note that if you don't know what the verb 'to other' means, or how the umbrella term 'transgender' is used, you may have some homework to do before getting into this. I expect that most of my readers already know those concepts.

Folks, 'cisgendered' (or 'cisgender'1) and 'cisssexual' really are intended to be neutral terms and will be so until/unless some sort of general stigma gets attached to the concept of living / identifying / presenting as the gender society always expected of you because it was on your birth certificate. I don't see that ever being likely. (I have a hunch that I'll be responding to a lot of criticisms of this essay by pointing back to this very pragraph, starting at that "until".)

I really like this article, Zythyra.  It gives reasoning to some of the feelings I've had about the marked terms.  I've seen a few of them even here (genetically X, born X) and caught myself using them in conversation.  Thank you.

Um...I've referred to myself here as biofemale androgyne-and by biofemale I mean that I don't have external intersex characteristics.No matter that I would like ambiguous genitals and a body to match.  So I'm not meaning that as an exclusionary term-it's a term for what I have (and don't have).

I think I could be most accurately described as "Intersexed in the head." Don't know what I'm going to be driven to do about that by dysphoria.

I'm not as gender dysphoric as a transsexual person, I don't think. I'm merely wistful for what I haven't got physically...but I've always been exquisitely uncomfortable in any social situation that required me to"act like a woman," and "behave like a lady"...yuk, yuk, yuk.

But because I'm biologically female and chances are will not do much to alter the physical state of affairs, doesn't mean I'm an Original Plumbing Snob (OPS) and want to put people in a "less-than" position.

(I'm really influenced by both Buddhism, and ID as Pagan, I believe in reincarnation...You'll be in another body next trip.)  ( I sort of hope Jesse Helms gets reincarnated as an African-American physically disabled gay transperson who has to live in public housing... because I'm kinda mean.)

There obviously *is* original plumbing snobbery (OPSery) going on for a lot of cisgendered people, but not all of them.  Just because they're happy with their original naughty bits doesn't make them superior humans, as witness all their verbal poo-flinging over the term "cisgendered."

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.