Cisgender

It's a social construct Gender

Spectra and binaries

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Cisgender (sometimes shortened to cis) is an adjective term for any person whose gender identity traditionally aligns to the sex they were designated at birth — that is, it indicates somebody who is not transgender (or more broadly, trans*). Cisgender is essentially a shorter way to say nontransgender.

It is a neologism coined as an equal counterpart (or antonym) to "transgender", and its first documented usage in English was on the Internet in 1994. Ultimately, the cis/trans dichotomy was borrowed from Latin, and has been used for centuries in English and other languages for various scientific and geographic terminology. Because of this, cis/trans prefixes were also used in reference to gender presentations at least as early as 1913–1914, in German language — long before this is known to have first occurred in English.

Cisgender is a more precise term than "gender-normative", i.e., the claim that someone has a "normal" gender for their assigned sex, as this can be confused with heteronormativity or the application of gender roles. Calling somebody cisgender makes no statement about their sexual attractions, though its equal and complementary relation to the term transgender has been compared to the relation between the words heterosexual and homosexual (or straight and gay).

Etymology

The term is derived from a Latin preposition that indicates position relative to the speaker: cis means "on this side", chosen by analogy to the existing word transgender, itself from trans which means "on the other side." In gender, this refers to whether your gender identity matches your sex designated at birth (i.e., designated female at birth, DFAB, or designated male at birth, DMAB) which helps smooth out some connotations of "male-bodied" and "female-bodied" types of phrasing. In illustration of how definitions differ, this was not always how the phrase was used in English: in the 1990s Usenet community, a trans person who underwent sex reassignment surgery was sometimes labeled "cisgender", because their morphology now "agreed with their gender identity".

The same terminology has a long history in other fields. In organic chemistry, for example, trans fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acids where the hydrogen atoms on either side of the double-bond lie across from one another, while cis fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acids where the hydrogen atoms on either side of the double-bond stand next to each other. The use of the prefix 'cis-' in various contexts dates back to the 1700s, and has most commonly used in chemistry following the discovery of molecular chirality by Louis Pasteur.

In geography, several areas use these prefixes. Thomas Jefferson used the phrase "Cis or Trans-Atlantic" in the 1780s, with cis-Atlantic meaning "on this side of the Atlantic Ocean". Most European locations, such as Transoxiania (beyond the Oxus) and Cisalpine (this side of the Alps) use Rome as a reference point for historical reasons. One exception is Transylvania (beyond the Woods), which is from the point of view of Budapest. In South Africa under apartheid there were two "bantustans" on either side of the Great Kei River - Ciskei and Transkei.

For the English language, the term cisgender is a neologism dating back to the 1990s, but similar terms were used much earlier. For example, in the 1914 German language book, Lexikon des gesamten Sexuallebens, by medical doctor and LGBTQ+ activist Ernst Burchard (who helped to found the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee with Magnus Hirschfeld), the word "cisvestitismus" (as opposed to transvestismus, which around this time was used to refer both to cross-dressers and to people with gender dysphoria, the latter of which were referred to as "total transvestites" and similar terms) refers to people who dress in accordance with the gender role that society gives them at birth. A 1913 book by Hirschfeld explains the term was coined by a patient as a self-identifier rather than proposed by a professional: "The term 'cisvestites' comes from one of my patients."

When the Oxford English Dictionary added an entry for cisgender in 2015, it had already been used for long enough in academic circles that it prompted a "Wait, Cisgender Wasn't in the Oxford English Dictionary Already?" headline from New York magazine's The Cut.

Offensive?

Some people find "cisgender" to be offensive — where have we heard that before? Although many in the transgender community maintain that it is mostly transphobes, especially TERFs, who consider it a slur, there are others who have stated that "cis" is offensive for various reasons. Firstly, there are those who believe it is incompatible with the notion of a nonbinary view of gender. This would certainly lend a greater nuance to the debate, but would not make it offensive, merely overly simplistic.

Secondly, there are those who use the term to open a wider attack on transexuality as a whole, citing it as incompatible with radical feminist discourse. These people claim that "no one" has a gender, and that all gender is socially constructed. While it can be shown that gender roles and expectations are socially constructed and inherently harmful, this does not mean that gender identity is a myth, especially given that a great deal of evidence points to it having a biological cause. It merely states that for some people, the way they were apparently born (physical sex) does not agree with how they see themselves (gender identity), and they wish to change. Everyone else is cis.

Or perhaps those who take offense with the terms are just cissies.

A thin-skinned asshole who bought Twitter and opened the floodgates for formerly-banned Nazis decided that using the term 'cis' or 'cisgender' was a "heterophobic" bannable offence.

Gallery

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  Proposed flag for cisgender allies of trans people

Related terms

• Cissexism, the belief that cisgender people are superior to transgender people. It is the equivalent of heterosexism regarding sexual orientations.
• Cisgender privilege, the transgender analogue to male privilege, white privilege, able-bodied privilege, bourgeois-oppressor privilege, etc.
• Endosex, perisex, or dyadic, terms used to refer to people who are not intersex.

See also

• Political correctness
• Transgender
• Transphobia
• Allistic — term for people who are not autistic