(no subject)

[gfish]

People have problems with the term cisgender? That's... I don't know what that is. Quite an impressive knapsack, I guess.

Comments

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Ah, no, because one can experience X at one time, and not-X at another time.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Your requirements can be used to argue against any group's experience. The don't seem very useful.

[pielology.livejournal.com]

The thing I like about "cis" and "trans" is that they are as devoid of moralistic connotations as anyone can reasonably expect from natural language.

"Coherent", not so much. I get your literalistic interpretation of "to cohere", but I don't think the concept of "gender incoherence" will ever escape sounding like, e.g., the Pope's declaration that homosexuality is "disordered".

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

The experience of feeling one's body is the wrong gender is a characteristically transgender experience. It's a part, or perhaps the defining part, of a "transgender condition". It's how we think of this concept we've named "transgender".

So is there any experience that characterises a "cisgender condition"? What about the experience of feeling one's body is the right gender? Well, no, because with sufficient surgery transgender people might have that experience too, and not thereby become cisgender.

The best one can say is that someone is cisgender if they never have transgender experiences. In other words, that they are non-transgender.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Breeding in a way coherent with one's sense of gender, now that's part of a "cisgender condition". But can we find experiences to cover the rest of the cisgender condition?

[onefishjyuufish.livejournal.com]

As a total layperson, I popped "cis-" into my firefox dictionary search engine and it returned a definition that let me easily infer what it meant in relation to one who is transgendered.

I do understand nit-picky preference for correct usage/terminology, but isn't that ease of inference for as many laypersons as you can hope for the most important part?

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

What definition did it come up with?

And no, while it might be the most important part to some people, I have different priorities.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Sure. It's what I (and most cisgender people) grew up with--the experience of having your externally visible gender and your internal self-image of gender aligned.

I had it when I didn't even *know* it was possible to be transgender, so it's not defined relative to transgender experience but as an experience in itself.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Ah, but with sufficient surgery, transgender people may have that experience too. Do they thereby become cisgender?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I tried on clothes in the store and didn't have to worry that someone was going to consider me weird or dangerous, or an appropriate target for violence.

When people give me second looks in the bathroom, I don't have to wonder whether I'm "passing" because it doesn't matter.

When someone calls me "sir" by mistake I know they're not trying to make a point.

And my experience is considered so normal that some people think it doesn't exist.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

(rolls eyes) What IS it with the breeding? If people don't breed, are they genderless?

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

But transgender people can have these experiences too. What you're describing is simply the opposite of transgender experiences.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

(shrug) I guess transgender means having or having once had your external gender and your self image of gender not align.

And cisgender means having always had your external gender and your self image of gender aligned.

And of course, just like being male or female, or gay or straight, it's presumably a spectrum, with most people coming at one end or another and a handful somewhere in the middle.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Of course they're not genderless! That's the fascinating thing. But the converse is true: if people do breed, they are gendered in a very physically defining way, that cuts to the heart of the "binariness" of gender.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

(puzzled look) You think that transgender people don't have to worry about being considered weird or dangerous or an appropriate target for violence?

That's great! Where do you live?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

And so people who don't or can't breed are not gendered? Or just not in a physically defining way?

And if they're not gendered in a physically defining way that cuts to the heart of the "binariness" of gender maybe that means gender is not as binary as you thought.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

I think some of them don't.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

In other words, cisgender means never having had characteristically transgender experiences. Thus we might call cisgender "non-transgender". Though you do make an interesting point about a cis/trans spectrum.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

No, you see "breeding implies gender" is not the same thing as "non-breeding implies non-gender".

The thing is, there's a binariness in the concept of gender. We might ask, where does it come from? Why do people think of gender as being binary at all? The answer is that breeding phenomenon motivates the gender concept. Gender is defined with reference to breeding, even though one can be gendered without ever breeding.

[pielology.livejournal.com]

"according to the generally constructed identification" and "not according to the generally constructed identification" don't count as "sides"? Why on earth not?

Even if it did, the term 'cisgender' would be meaningless as used and would only make any kind of sense to describe someone who is on the "same side of gender" (whatever that would mean in this strange hypothetical universe) as the speaker is

The location of "Cisalpine Gaul" does not change depending on whether or not you're in Germany or Sicily. It is always on the same side of the Alps as Rome, which everyone in the Latin-speaking world was capable of recognizing as a privileged frame of reference. Using cultural context to help assign meaning is just really not that difficult.

[onefishjyuufish.livejournal.com]

1: on this side (cislunar) (cisatlantic)
2 usually italic : cis (cis-dichloroethylene) — compare trans-

I read the first definition, then my gaze skips all the way to "compare to trans-" and I can at least figure I'm dealing with a word that refers to those who aren't transgender (for some reason when I link it, it leads to this (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cis-) definition though).

I suppose it's your prerogative to have those priorities, it just comes off as needlessly belligerent, I suppose? A marginalized group has a word that does what they want and isn't so obscure that most moderately intelligent people can find the intended meaning of it without much difficulty - I know you're not saying that your priorities should or do overshadow that, but it's really easy to read that way.

Sorry, I know I'm not phrasing this well at all.

Down with L'Académie Française!

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Aha, you appear to have stumbled on one of *my* favorite nitpicks! :) To wit, the OED is a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. They don't attempt to define the English language or codify "correct" usage, merely to record the English language as it's used in day-to-day life. If "cisgender" isn't already in the OED (and I'd be surprised if it weren't), it shouldn't take much more than a letter with a few citations to put it in. But my point is, using the OED to argue that a word "should" or "shouldn't" mean something is hideous misuse of one of the greatest linguistic endeavors of all time. Not that I *really* care that much, and I don't mean to pile on you, but it does feel nice to let my inner pedant out once in a while. :)

---

Personally, as a sometime linguist, my attitude toward language is that it's fine for it to produce Lovecraftian horrors, growing "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." Or, uh, something slightly less apocalyptic.

All that said, now you've put a possible alternative meaning for "transgender" in my head, roughly along the lines of "has transcended earthly gender categories", which amuses me greatly. :)

Re: Down with L'Académie Française!

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

I'm fully aware of the OED's descriptivist leanings, as much as I'm not a fan of them. That doesn't change the thrust of my argument, to wit, all extant uses of the 'cis' prefix are totally at odds with what people want to use it to mean in 'cisgender' (which is, of course, not in the OED, although I have no doubt that it someday will be, despite my hopes to the contrary).

--

Your attitude towards linguistics is certainly the prevailing one, it's simply not mine.

--

That is, indeed, precisely what I would like the term to mean, and a state I sincerely wish more people would attain.

Re: Down with L'Académie Française!

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I became a lot happier with this viewpoint when I realized that language is inherently a crude and sloppy way to communicate, and can never be anything more, since it relies on mental categories, which are never precisely the same in any two people, and are simply abstractions anyway, and thus inherently faulty.

So yeah, it's broken, fixing it is impossible, stopping it is impossible, and slowing it down is a waste of time when TV is doing our work for us.

But we all get to pick our own battles, of course. :)

[pielology.livejournal.com]

GENDER HAS SIX SIDES, FOUR CORNERS IN SIMULTANEOUS ROTATION. YOU ARE EDUCATED STUPID.