May 30, 2011
Yet another binary
Ethan

http://biyuti.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/yet-another-binary/

So, I spent this past weekend finally educating myself on some of the more contemporary facets of the social justice movement. In the process of doing so, I came across a writer I like and admire a great deal. His name is Asher Bauer and he is awesome. Seriously. However, there is a problem with how he discusses gender identity politics. First, read his version of Trans 101 and his discussion of the word 'cis.' I found this very informative and it actually took me a few days of reading about radical race politics to understand why I had a problem with it.

[...]

I do wonder how he didn't notice that he was constructing yet another binary. Things can't be as simple as cis/trans and, indeed, things aren't that simple. I suppose the problem I have with this is that I'm not cis-gendered but neither do I consider myself trans. Initially I thought that my resistance to the term was the result of internalized transphobia. To a certain extent, this is true (but I'm working on it). However, the real reason that I'm neither cis nor trans is a function of my race.