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Friday, July 24th, 2009 05:40 am (UTC)
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. :)

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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. :)

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