I am working on a blog post/response to a post on Americablog. Before posting it, I wanted to post some basic info about “cis.” If any reader has more or different information or links they feel is useful to help everyone better understand cis, please post as a comment. Thanks!
From wikipedia
Cisgender ( /?s?sd??nd?r/) (or cisgendered) is an adjective used in the context of gender issues and counselling to refer to a class of gender identities formed by a match between an individual’s gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one’s sex.[1]
Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook defined “cisgender” as a label for “individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity”, complementing “transgender”.[2] A similar adjective is “gender-normative”; Eli R. Green wrote, “The term ‘cisgendered’ is used [instead of the more popular ‘gender normative’] to refer to people who do not identify with a gender diverse experience, without enforcing existence of a ‘normative’ gender expression.”[3] There are many derivatives of the term in use including cis male, cis female, and cissexual.
From Queers United:
There appears to be little in the way of a comprehensive cisgender (non transgender) privilege list. These lists are generally written in the first person relative to having the privilege. Number #1 speaks to both heterosexual and cisgender privilege. The remainder of the list focuses on cisgender privilege.
From Genderbitch: An angry trans girl’s blog
There was some fine commentary on how asinine it is to let people dodge their privilege and continue othering trans folk on QT and a really brilliant analogy for the kind of nasty power cis people (I refuse to stop using that term. Outright. Refuse.) have over trans folk at Femmessay (which I commented on in thanks)
I won’t go too deep into the details (that’s what the links to the wonderful blogs are for, with the exception of Pam’s little coffee shop of privilege) but the basics are as follows:
A gay cis male decided that the word cis is offensive to cis folk and compared it to several common trans slurs. And then discourse on the topic (and by “discourse” I mean any attempts by trans folk and allies to address this pretty clearly privileged bullshit) was silenced. Gotta love enablers, right? Nothing makes it easier to stomp on the heads of trans folk than someone discouraging the critique of privileged behavior and encouraging the use of othering and cissexist separation of terminology like trans vs. normal.
http://www.bilerico.com/2012/01/stuff_cis_people_say_to_trans_people.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BilericoProject+%28The+Bilerico+Project%29
Here’s a problem I have with this cis/trans issue. It is a binary, and so much of what I understand about trans and queer is that gender binaries are the problem, and not the solution. If a gender binary doesn’t fit real people and real lives, why then try and apply another binary?
I thought this problem was solved long ago by people centric wording. Like: “a person is disabled”, or “a man who is gay”, or “a women who is transgendered”, or “a man who is cisgendered”.
In contrast to “I am a gay”, “I am transgender”, or “I am cisgendered” (The latter I will start using)
This is the way to make the difference between identifiers and identity clear.
Thanks for adding to the dialogue!
Stuff Cis People Say to Trans People