There are experiences that many transgender people experience but almost no cisgender people experience. Are there experiences than many cisgender people experience that almost no transgender people do?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
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.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
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.
no subject
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.