Cisgender
Encyclopedia
Cisgender (or cisgendered) is an adjective used in the context of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

 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
Gender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...

.

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
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

". 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." There are many derivatives of the term in use including cis male, cis female, and cissexual
Cissexual
Cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned"...

.

Language

The word has its origin in the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

-derived prefix cis
Cis
Cis may have the following meanings:* "Cis-" as a prefix of Latin origin, meaning "on the same side [as]" or "on this side [of]", with several derived usages:** In chemistry, cis- refers to cis-trans isomerism...

, meaning "to/this the near side," which is antonymous with the Latin-derived prefix "trans." This usage can be seen in the cis-trans distinction in chemistry, or in the ancient Roman term "Cisalpine Gaul
Cisalpine Gaul
Cisalpine Gaul, in Latin: Gallia Cisalpina or Citerior, also called Gallia Togata, was a Roman province until 41 BC when it was merged into Roman Italy.It bore the name Gallia, because the great body of its inhabitants, after the expulsion of the Etruscans, consisted of Gauls or Celts...

", i.e., "Gaul
Gaul
Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

 on this side of the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

". In the case of gender, however, "cis
Cis
Cis may have the following meanings:* "Cis-" as a prefix of Latin origin, meaning "on the same side [as]" or "on this side [of]", with several derived usages:** In chemistry, cis- refers to cis-trans isomerism...

" refers to the alignment of gender identity with assigned gender.

Internet use

The word cisgender has been used on the internet since at least 1994, when it appeared in the alt.transgendered Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 group in a post by Dana Leland Defosse. Defosse does not define the term and seems to assume that readers are already familiar with it. This may also have been independently coined a year later: Donna Lynn Matthews, the charter maintainer of the alt.support.crossdressing usenet group, attributed the word to Carl Buijs, a transsexual man from the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, claiming that Buijs coined the word in 1995. In April 1996, Buijs said in a Usenet posting, "As for the origin, I just made it up. I just kept running into the problem of what to call non-trans people in various discussions, and one day it just hit me: non-trans equals cis. Therefore, cisgendered."

While sexologist Volkmar Sigusch
Volkmar Sigusch
Volkmar Sigusch is a German sexologist, physician and sociologist. He was from 1973 to 2006 director of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft [Institute for Sexual Science] at the clinic of the Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main....

 used the term "cissexual
Cissexual
Cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned"...

" (or "zissexuelle" in German) in a 1991 article, "cisgender" may have been coined independently.

Academic use

The term has more recently been used in publications, such as a 2006 article in the Journal of Lesbian Studies and Julia Serano
Julia Serano
Julia Serano is a transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans activist, and biologist. Serano currently lives in Oakland, California and is the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity...

's 2007 book Whipping Girl. Serano also uses the related terms cissexual
Cissexual
Cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned"...

, which she defines as "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned" (p. 12), and cissexism
Transphobia
Transphobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards transsexualism and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender...

, "which is the belief that transsexuals' identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexual
Cissexual
Cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned"...

s
." While having been used by trans activists for some time, the term cisgender privilege has recently appeared in the academic literature and is defined there as the "set of unearned advantages that individuals who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth accrue solely due to having a cisgender identity" (p. 83).

Further Reading



See also

  • Cissexual
    Cissexual
    Cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned"...

  • Gender taxonomy
    Gender taxonomy
    The gender taxonomy is a classification of the range of different levels at which humans vary in sexual characteristics. It is mainly used by medical specialists working in the area of sex research....

  • Heteronormativity
    Heteronormativity
    Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...

  • Sissy (transgender)
    Sissy (transgender)
    A sissy is a man who crossdresses, adopts hyper-feminine behaviors, and engages in stereotypical "feminine" activities , often within the context of BDSM. Particularly within the BDSM community, a "sissy" will typically assume the submissive role to a dominant female and/or male partner...

  • List of transgender-related topics
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