What is cisgender? Cisgender =

[Michelle Firestone]

Cisgender = someone going to heaven.

Sorry lol I just read that on another board. Somebody asked what cisgender was & somebody said that. I thought it was hilarious. It's not totally true though you could be cisgender & homosexual & so you'll still go to hell. Lol... but its still funny.

Idk how any of that really works anyway I was raised unitarian universalist which is really really lucky for a transgender person.

Not like I follow that religion either though...

Anyway Hail Satan!

[Stavros]

Cis [this side of] is one of those prefixes that has never really made it into common usage, unlike its opposite, trans, which is attached to a lot of words. Even after reading definitions I still find it hard to know what Cis is being used to denote. The claim is that 'cisgender' was first coined in the early days of the web when online groups like alt.transgendered were a key forum for people like us. More to the point, no matter how many labels are invented to try and define a person's sexual and gender identity, someone refuses to accept it, others can't understand it, and in the end nobody is any the wiser and sticks to conventional labels or rejects labels altogether. You won't find many people when asked saying I am heteronormative, or cisnormative, and if they did you might want to trans-port yourself across the road...

[CarlaFan]

Well, the important question, are they hot and they fuck on the first date? Hehe.

[lordworm]

I thought cis meant anyone who acts as their original gender. Either way yeah hail satan.

[dderek123]

Hail satan indeed

[SmithXXX]

Being a guy that likes TS & GG Im PERFECTLY happy with being called "male". I can't stand being referred to as "CIS-male". It offends me, and everybody I know. It's almost the same as calling us "sissy-males" just say'n that's my opinion.

[Ciffer]

Cis=same, trans=opposite
Typically these terms are used in chemistry to describe the orientation of molecules that are isomers, basically the same molecule orientated 2 different ways.

I understand the terminology to mean that a cis-gender female is a genetic female living life as a female and a trans-gender female is a genetic male living life as a female. Same true for the males.

[mina<3]

Satan may rule, but I will depose him one day and take the throne. In the meantime, I think cisgender is super useful and important for deliniating and identifying what is normalized and invisible. Just as whiteness in our society is an assumed trait of a person (which is why most Americans- especially white ones- will only identify someone's race in conversation if it's anything but white- whiteness is assumed to be the norm and therefore unnecessary to remark upon), being cisgendered is assumed to be so normalized that it's hardly worth remarking on, for most people. This leads to a precarious situation where only trans people are identified, and therefore singled out as the "other".

This, despite the fact that no one's gender identity is completely congruent with societal expectations of gender, means that we are singled out and marginalized de facto through the very language used to talk about us, while cisgendered people (the "norm") are left unidentified. If you really want to talk about liberation and the end of violence against trans women worldwide, then we need to start using more exacting, illuminating language that subverts ideas of normalcy equating to "rightness", that exposes the constructedness and mutability of all gender identities, including cis identities.

Without a way to define the "invisibleized" dominant group that the subaltern is detached from and marginalized by, it becomes a simple logical step to assume (and even champion the idea that) we are inferior, that we are somehow defective and not normal, and the statement "This group is oppressed" becomes "This group is defective and their circumstances are a result of their inferiority".

This process writ large spells the current epidemic of physical, emotional, and systemic violence that a frighteningly large proportion of trans women (especially trans women of color) will encounter in our lives.

So, yeah, maybe it sounds silly, like we're saying you're sissy-gendered, but it really, really matters a lot.

[Michelle Firestone]

I hope everybody understands that this is just a joke, & that I didn't want to debate anything or hear what the real definition is (I know what it means).

[fred41]

Anyways, in heaven there ain't no beer.