Last year the Aotearoa Psychotherapists Association of New Zealand (APANZ) held their national conference on the theme of sex, sexuality and gender. With a number of the talks focusing on gender identity, the words ‘cisgender’ as well as ‘transgender’ were obviously used. I was disappointed but not surprised to hear that a number of people expressed discomfort about the use of the prefix ‘cis’, claiming that it was a slur and exclusionary to use it (but not ‘trans’, presumably).
For those less versed in what these terms mean and where they come from, the prefixes ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ are Latin terms meaning ‘on this side of’ (cis) and ‘on the other side of’ (trans), just like the greek prefixes hetero and homo are used to mean ‘different’ or ‘same’. So transgender simply means ‘a gender identity on the other side of that assumed at birth’, and cisgender just means ‘a gender identity that matches that assumed at birth’. So taken at face value it’s hard to see why anyone would take offence to being called cisgender since it’s simply a descriptor – a confusion that’s reflected by the frequent questions that pop up on trans reddits or discords asking ‘why on earth do people feel like ‘cis’ is a slur?’
The most common answer that people give to this question is that some cis people see it as a slur because that’s how they use the word trans. That is, to them trans is an insult, something to be ashamed of or that makes you less than and therefore that people using the word cis are doing so in an attempt to reverse the insult, to make the cisgendered person feel judged or criticised. While this is clearly not how the word cis or cisgendered is commonly used, I think there’s some truth to this explanation but I think there’s more to it.
A second related explanation that I think partly explains this reaction is that some people see the prefix ‘trans’ as a qualifier when attached to a gender, rather than an adjective. This the people that would write ‘transman’ or ‘transwoman’ rather than ‘trans man’ or ‘trans woman’ – making it into a single word, as if ‘transman’ is a separate category of person that is not-quite-man, and ‘transwoman’ not-quite-woman. By this logic, both ‘transwoman’ and ‘transman’ as well as ‘ciswoman’ or ‘cisman’ would suggest a category that’s somehow different from just woman or man. People who make this argument often state that they don’t want to be referred to as ‘cis’ but rather just as women or men. As it turns out, that’s exactly what trans people want too. Most trans people reject the terms ‘transman’ or ‘transwoman’ for that exact reason, and instead use the terms ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ as adjectives, in the same way that we might say a ‘smart woman’, or a ‘kind man’. When used in this way, the terms trans and cis do not take away from the fact that someone is a woman or a man, but are rather just used as extra descriptors in situations in which it is relevant. We don’t need to specify that someone is cis or trans any more than we need to specify if someone is tall or short, except in situations where that makes a difference.
I think though that this point speaks to what I believe to be the larger underlying issue, which is that the cisgendered people who don’t like this term are often afraid of the normalisation of trans identities because of how it highlights privilege and undermines existing narratives of neutrality and objectivity. In the same way that many white New Zealanders dislike the word ‘Pākeha’, or even ‘white’, or in the same way that many people reacted negatively to words like ‘heterosexual’ and ‘neurotypical’, when we apply a label to the dominant or majority group it highlights the reality that that, too, is an identity. That there is not in fact a single, neutral, ‘default’ identity or perspective and multiple ‘abnormal’ and minority identities but that in fact our society is made up of multiple different groups with diverse perspectives and biases. That no group can be considered to be ‘normal’ or objective arbiters of truth.
This becomes particularly relevant when it comes to research and policy about issues relating to minority groups, such as the Cass report in the UK that examined the benefits of gender-affirming care for young people through the NHS. Leaving aside for the moment the many problems in the methodology and approach of the report itself, if we ignore the cisgender identities of the researchers then we have a report produced by ‘experts, clinicians and researchers into the experiences of transgender people’. If instead we center those identities, then we have a report produced by ‘exclusively cisgendered researchers into the experiences of transgender people, with no direct input from transgender people themselves’. This follows a long history of research by majority groups into minority groups that excluded involvement from those minority groups, such as studies on queer people conducted exclusively by straight people, studies on people of colour conducted exclusively by white people, and studies on women conducted exclusively by men.
In many of the cases when research of this nature is conducted the minorities that are the subject of the research are excluded from participating in conducting it due to claims that they would be ‘biased’ in their perspectives, which leaves the unspoken implication that researchers who are not a part of that minority can be objective, dispassionate and factual in their analysis on the basis that they have less of a stake in the matters at hand. When we highlight that the majority group conducting the research are just as much part of an identity group, then that claim becomes harder to maintain. Particularly when we consider that majority groups absolutely do have a stake in the way minority groups are understood and the policy that affects them – because their power and privilege depends upon it. White supremacy, colonialism and racism rely on the subjugation and othering of people of colour and indigenous people just as cis-hetero-patriarchy relies on the subjugation and othering of women, queer and gender-non-conforming people.
Additionally, the entry of terms like Pākeha, heterosexual, cisgendered and so on into the common vernacular already reflects a shift in the expected balance of power in which those in the dominant group are the ones that get to define terms, to label others and to frame the conversation. It’s an uncomfortable experience for those with privilege and power when a minority group gains sufficient influence to create their own labels and have those labels gain traction – even when the labels themselves imply nothing negative.
Whether it’s trans and queer people, people of colour, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people or any other minority group it is crucial for those who want to uphold the inequitable status quo to frame us as exceptions to the norm, abnormalities, mentally ill, morally wrong or any combination of these. And that’s why people are afraid of the term cisgendered: because it highlights the uncomfortable reality that actually, we’re all just human beings and that there is no ‘default’ way to be.
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