Posted on 05/22/2014 6:52:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Its time to come out of the closet: I am a cisgender woman.
I can see that you have a quizzical look on your faces. I suppose you dont know what cisgender means. It is one of the 27,956 genders one can choose for oneself on a Facebook profile. A cisgender person identifies as the gender he or she was assigned at birth. If a doctor said, Its a boy! when you were born, and you identify as a man, then you could be described as cisgender, says the website BasicRights.org.
Wait, you are saying to yourselves, then arent you just a straight person? What is the difference between straight and cisgender?
According to a Tumblr blog called What-Does-Cis-Mean:
terms like cis allow us to identify when we mean cis men/women instead of always using men/women to mean cis men/women while always distinguishing trans men/women as the other. It places cis and trans people on equal ground.
I agree, that explanation was needlessly complicated. I will dumb it down for you. A cisgender is basically a non-transgender. But wait, you cant say non-transgender. It is offensive for some reason. According to BasicRights, referring to cisgender people as non trans implies that cisgender people are the default and that being trans is abnormal.
This is the main reasoning behind the existence of the word cisgender. It was created so as not to offend the trans community. (Although this reasoning doesnt really apply elsewhere: Referring to minorities as non-whites means that the white people are the norm and the minorities are not. So, in the same vein, calling a group of people non-trans means that transgenders are the norm.)
The earliest mentions of the word cisgender in academia go back to a 1995 article by sexologist Volkmar Sigusch in which he discussed transsexual desire and cissexual defense. Most recently, even though the term in effect refers to straight people, cisgender can be found only on websites catering to the trans community. In fact, when researching the definition of the word, I came across an article called Trans 101: Cisgender. If the word is meant for non-trans people, then why is it primarily found on trans websites?
The cis term has been popularized in, among other places, a book called Whipping Girl, which is not, as you might have guessed, about a dominatrix but about the transsexual experience. Why is the transgender community creating words for what I should call myself? So that the trans community will feel better about themselves? In the words of a Tumblr blogger called Nerd is my gender:
Do not call me cisgender. You have no right or authority to name me without my consent. . . . It does not come from us, as its origins are from a trans perspective. . . . Do not call me cisgender. That is offensive to me. I am offended that you consider that you have power over me, and can name me.
Maybe I should come up with a new word for people who reject the cisgender label and make that the 27,957th gender choice on Facebook. Please leave any ideas in the comments section below.
Christine Sisto is an editorial assistant at National Review.
Genetic Homophobes are now the most persecuted minorities, after Genetic gunnies.
Just waiting for them to pass a law saying we must identify ourselves with gold stars or similar.
I need to go to re-education camp.
I am never going to be able to understand the 50+ gender choices with Facebook. I assume Facebook is trying to bend over backwards to prove how liberal they are, and that they are with it and all that. But now we are supposed to know about all these gender identities????
I can only come up with eight possibilities. Straight male, straight female, gay male, gay female, bi-sexual male, bi-sexual female, trans-sexual male, trans-sexual female.
Are there multiple permutations within the above, or am I just so out of it that I am missing obvious gender identities altogether???
As noted, send me to re-education camp right now.
Answer: Normal versus F***** idiots.
As far as gender identification, we are far beyond just looking down there to see what is there, and classifying people based on that. We are supposed to be liberal, and too sophisticated to go by such primitive indicators.
Lawdy nearly 28,000 gender categories
someone has too much time on their hands.
Never heard of cis-gender
although I know a few trannies (transsexuals)
But I did hear of Big Cis (j Napolitano)
is she a trannie as well? does that count? lol
that woud be...FINGENDER in todays gnomenclature.....
Two.
But most all those “terms” are not labels on phsyical design, but are all behavior and preference labels...
It is like filling out a form and where it asks for my name I write in “I love to eat Pudding and Big Mac Sandwiches”....
The only label that makles sense in any way besides male and female is “intersex” where someone is born with some variation of their parts that is not found inthe the 99% of the rest of the population...
All those labels labels about preferences and behavior are not relevent in the category they cram them in.
“According to BasicRights, referring to cisgender people as non trans implies that cisgender people are the default and that being trans is abnormal.”
Well... they are. This is an attempt to de-normalize normal. We have to nip this in the bud.
Before reading this article, the only word in which I have seen the prefix “cis-,” meaning “on this side,” is “cisalpine,” meaning south of the Alps, as opposed to “transalpine,” and the term is usually found in descriptions of ancient Gaul.
Easy -
XX: Female
XY: Male
.00000001% cases that don’t have this makeup - we’ll account for.
It’s a cultural thing. I my culture, you strip ‘em from the waist down, examine the area between their legs and then stamp ‘em male, female or hermaphrodite.
What hijinx is going on in their head is not relevant.
But what uf the doctor was drunk at the time and checked off the wrong box on the birth certificate? Would I be a cis-male or a semidocumented-non-cisfemale? This is getting more complicated than Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's "Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations".
Genetic Homophobes are now the most persecuted minorities, after Genetic gunnies.
Rinse and repeat. I’ve been doing it regularly since around 2005.
According to BasicRights, referring to cisgender people as non trans implies that cisgender people are the default and that being trans is abnormal.
Well... they are. This is an attempt to de-normalize normal. We have to nip this in the bud.
Period.
They hate when I point that out, but I never get banned from sites because I always say it politely and use technical words. Some of them do get banned when they go al verbally vicious on me. Some come back and try to make logical arguments - but they don’t have any that can’t be shot down with my eyes closed.
I have a hunch that if the doc got it wrong, Mommy would have noticed it at the first diaper change.
Just a hunch, mind you.
I also find myself in a position where I can hit them with arguments that they never expected. (the GOP rarely debates the issue)
Young adults here are especially supportive of same sex marriage, I have found . A few have told me they couldn't support the GOP because of social issues like that one, even though Dems frustrate them on some other issues. I don't know what their life experiences were that led them to those opinions.
Rather discuss the related issues rationally they just repeat that us old (homophobes) will die off and not be able to stop them.
They buy the arguments by Dems (in this case) that the polls select the winning side.
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