I'm more than happy to be called "not trans", I just happen to think "cis" is just an ugly prefix in both sound and appearance.Is this seriously a real issue in your life?
I can see its relevance and use in specific activist contexts, but less so outside of that.I think that's a function of the fact that the general public isn't very aware of or invested in issues of justice for trans people. And that stinks and will hopefully change soon. As soon as the mainstream becomes conscious of trans issues, then cis- isn't going to be limited to "activist contexts," any more than "straight" is. And that will be a good thing.
When I was young, I was not. I wanted to hide my body, I wanted to hide my personality. I was not male and not a man and not a boy and not somebody I wanted people to interact with or talk to or listen to. I was not worth listening to and not worth loving. My person and my body were united: I hated my body and the position in society it granted me, and so I hated myself. I was stunted, undeveloped. Imagine the most embarrassing moment of your life: like you've done something stupid or thoughtless in front of your friends or family and you feel ashamed, panicky, almost frightened; you want to get away from everyone and just curl into a ball until this feeling goes away. Being a boy was like that, all the time, even when alone: even a glimpse in a reflective TV screen or a sideways glance at my own arm would prompt that feeling, like being trapped in a prison of hate. I was not.posted by ArmyOfKittens at 6:26 AM on January 23, 2012 [31 favorites]
Now, I am. I am a woman, a girl, a female. I am alive and I am free. I am a person worth knowing, worth loving, worth being. I love my body and the position in society it grants me, and I love myself. From I am not to I am.
More importantly, the declaration is perfectly equal in addressing both sexual orientation and gender identity without placing limitations or definitions. This isn't just about homosexuality. It's about everyone: homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer, genderqueer, transsexual, transgendered, cisgendered, et alia.using "non-trans" there would sure be clunky and weird there. "Normal" would be awful.
If the term bothers you because you don't believe the concept of gender aligning with sex organs, then you effectively don't believe transgenderism exists, in which case I don't think we can have this discussion.No, I am fairly sure we can all agree what the normal sorts of sex organs people are born with are, and the sorts of shapes people come in and the ways in which those shapes have cultural/biological associations to others and themelves, but I do not fully understand/accept this concept of "gender", do not understand the sort of gender a person can have, and do not think this is like, just written down in a book somewhere and beyond question in a thread about trans people undergoing surgeries and hormone therapies to align their physical appearance with their "gender"
So, MetaFilter? When should I transition?I'm about to send loq a note offering a shoulder. But to be frank, I have no experience dealing with what he's going through and am not sure I'd be the best sounding board. If any of you do and can spare him some time, it would be nice if you'd consider reaching out. Thanks.
Every time I've ever asked a close friend this question, or help with dealing with this question the most common answer is "never" or complete avoidance of the issue.
Right now I'm weeks or months into heavily withdrawing and pushing people out of my life and I sincerely wish I was dead. I wish I didn't have a life to have to deal with. I hate my own body to the point that it's making me toxic waste, and I live in a brutal world that doesn't seem to care.
I wish I was dead. I can barely read this fucking thread.
posted by loquacious at 11:21 AM on January 23 [1 favorite +] [!]
1. There are all kinds of things I learn that I learn from offhand references from someone else. Since I have only at great intervals encountered learning something that was actually worse than not knowing, a thirty second google search will either give me a tiny nugget of information that I will stick in the vaults with all the other unrelated things or it will give me a chance to learn something fascinating that will unroll a whole new wonderful thing to learn.It is the Internet. I figure there are two default options when confronted with something I don't know. I can either find out about it, or move on. Anything else is generally results in everyone who is familiar with the issue thinking I'm lazy and ignorant. I'm not clear on why people are so keen on owning those labels by making a song and dance about not knowing things when the solution to not knowing things is so easy to solve.
If, after that thirty second google search, I am aggressively indifferent to the thing, like all the times there's someone who mentions the patriots' superior team lineup strategy or why Tim Tebow is a horrible quarterback, I don't have to engage with it any further. But then the next time someone talks about the patriots or Tebow I can use my tiny nugget of information to slot into what they are thinking and roll the discussion along without a bunch of work. So that thirty second google search means that I can address people talking about it without appearing absolutely ignorant, at least so far as being able to nod intelligently while I listen.
2. If there is really a big clash between two groups of people, it is useful to know how not to tread all over their sensibilities. As a knagfuggite, it is just civil of me to know what is happening, and because (in this example) naming me with some name might clarify a conversation. It's not mystic wizardry whereby renaming me is equivalent to pasting a photo of me on a shoe and walking on my face to kill me.
Martin and Voorhies to my knowledge were the first to refer to the North American, male-bodied “beardaches” as a third gender and to their female-bodied counterparts as a fourth gender, implying that they constitute part of cultural constructions of gender that recognize additional genders apart from man and woman (Martin and Voorhies 1975:92ff). Such “cultural expressions of multiple genders (i.e., more than two) and the opportunity for individuals to change gender roles and identities over the course of their lifetimes” (Jacobs and Cromwell 1992:63) are termed gender variance in recent anthropological literature.To me, some people seem to be saying not that they don't "believe in" gender, but more that they "don't see gender", oddly akin to people saying they "don't see race"... and thus denying, or attempting to universally homogenize difference (this is bad to me, studies show that we thrive, and all share the profits, and boosts in efficiency that come of accepting difference, rather than managing, or stifling difference).
Apart from gender constructions, the roles and statuses of individuals who are neither men nor women in Native American cultures are embedded within the worldviews that emphasize and appreciate transformation and change. Due to the scope and subject of this contribution, such religious aspects cannot be discussed in detail here but have been elaborated upon elsewhere (Lang 1994, 1997b, forthcoming). Within such worldviews, an individual who changes her or his gender once or more often in the course of her or his life is not viewed as an abnormality but rather as part of the natural order of things. As Tafoya has observed, the emphasis on transformation and change in Native American cultures also includes the idea that an individual is expected to go through many changes in a lifetime (1992:257).
People who are familiar with their culture’s traditions of gender variance emphasize elements of spirituality that were crucial to the roles of women-men and men-women and still are important where such roles continue to exist. This even holds true for contemporary “two-spirited” Native Americans who for that reason may feel restricted by categories like “gay” or “lesbian.” These categories are defined in terms of sexual behavior instead of personhood, spirituality, and specific, complex identities deriving from the experience of being Native American (cf. Tafoya 1992:257), as opposed to being white or any other ethnic heritage.
cissexismI usually find people using cissexism to mean, basically, the attitude that my sex, as a transsexual person, is less valid than that of a cissexual person, less real; that because I had to take pills and have surgery to achieve what other people managed on their own -- to become a reasonably normal adult woman -- I am somehow "less" than them, that I am to be allowed into their spaces on sufferance, that I am somehow motivated always by my transsexual status and my opinions, beliefs, and actions are less valid because of my history. Believe me, this sort of stuff happens commonly enough that it needed a word.
The belief that transsexual genders are less legitimate than, and mere imitations of, cissexual genders. Cissexism is most typically enacted through one or more of the following processes: trans-fascimilation (viewing or portraying transsexuals as merely imitating, emulating or impersonating cissexual female or male genders), trans-exclusion (refusing to acknowledge and respect a transsexual’s identified gender, or denying them, access to spaces, organizations, or events designated for that gender), trans-objectification (when people reduce trans people to their body parts, the medical procedures they’ve undertaken, or get hung up on, disturbed by, or obsessed over supposed discrepancies that exist between a transsexual’s physical sex and identified gender), trans-mystification (when people use the relative infrequency or taboo nature of transsexuality to mystify, artificialize or to “other” transsexuals), and trans-interrogation (when people bring a transsexual’s identified gender into question by asking them to answer personal questions about their life story, their motives for transitioning, medical procedures they have undertaken, or when they obsess over what causes transsexuality - such questions reduce transsexuals to the status of objects of inquiry).
Those two terms have normalized to the point that they aren't used to foment division as much as a neologism that divides people into a false, binary identity model, and which also carries a lot of ugly political baggage that does sometimes come to the surface in discussions, such as this one. Maybe in a decade or two, "cisgender" will no longer be around, replaced with something else. Or, perhaps, it will have normalized to the point that the people who use it have learned to understand the context of its use as a means to divide and other, and they will endeavor to avoid that usage, in the same way we all have to take care about the contextual use of "gay" and "straight" as labels.Oopsie! Doesn't look like that's all you said, BP. That's no problem - people often don't really remember what they've said.
I'm not 'cisgendered', I'm not a 'homosexual', I am not the oppressor or deviant that either language other's me into: I'm a gay man, and I am happy and would prefer the dignity of being called one, where discussions of sexuality, humanity and identity come up.So, you want to be called a man, not cisgendered, which is the parallel to being called gay, not homosexual ... which I think is fine, but not mutually exclusive. If you want, you can be a transgendered man, or a cisgendered man. No problemo. Most of the time, it won't come up, though. You'll just be a man. It's so rare, in fact, that most people don't even know the term, let alone use it. The binary you think you are being forced into, which prevents you from being described a man, doesn't exist. It's odd that you think it does. If you hadn't popped in here demanding not to be called cisgendered... you would have been at little to no risk of being called cisgendered, except in the most abstract sense.
Using 'cis' is artificial in the same way that a subset of right-wingers go out of their way to call gay people 'homosexuals' on comments sections on local newspapers, for example. It is used not only to 'other' gay people and make their participation unwelcome, but it is a signifier that communicates which subset of the group has decided to own the conversation and dictate its terms to the rest of us. That's bullying, and it shouldn't be acceptable, regardless of the plight of whoever is doing the bullying.So, an example of that would be awesome.
: In other words, more is communicated by someone jumping into a thread and saying, "Hey, everybody. I'm cisgendered!" than just the functional aspect.Again, it would be interesting to see this happen in a thread on Metafilter which was not already about gender or trans issues. I mean, what you did here was jumping into a thread and saying "Hey, everybody, I'm not cisgendered!" But the thread was already about gender or trans issues, so that's not super surprising.
I don't particularly want to be labelled. In this sense, it seems odd that the 'call me what I'd like to be called/don't call me something I'd prefer not to be called' doesn't work both ways.Then you've got joeclark, in the MeFi thread, who suggests that the term is considered hate speech. So, yeah. It seems like (a) the level of offence contained in goy is highly questionable (b) it's not very useful for this reason and because the postulate - no goy would be truly offended by being called a goy does not map to no cisgendered person would be truly offended by being called cisgendered. That's a demonstrably falsifiable statement.
Another source of the discomfort and anger that Whites often experience [when first considering the concept of "White Privilege"] stems from the frustration of being seen as a group member, rather than as an individual. People of color learn early in life that they are seen by others as members of a group. For Whites, thinking of oneself only as an individual is a legacy of White privilege. . . .[so] they are sometimes troubled, even angered, to learn that simply because of their group status they are viewed with suspicion by many people of color. 'I'm an individual, view me as an individual!'It's possible this kind of thing might be one contributing factor to the resistance some people feel about having others encompass them in a "cis" designation. Again, I say this thinking about the general tenor of past and present conversations online and IRL. Not about anybody here. Especially considering that I'm sure some objectors here are plenty familiar with being treated as a group member first and an individual later.
"It's a tiny bit of welcoming and acceptance to people who are shut out in ways that make me hurt to think about by making an equivalent description of who people who are not transgendered are that relates to who people who are transgendered are."I would like to express my sincere respect for DU up here, who didn't like the look or sound of the word, but realised it was about much more than himself, and gave a little way, in recognition that others' needs are sometimes bigger than his own. No talk of guilt, or shame, or provocation, or privilege. Just, caring about other people:
Trans- people can use whatever word they want to refer to non-trans people. They have enough trouble already without having to defend word prefixes.That's all it took.
I found 39,100,000 or so results on Google for "gendertypical".If I put the word in quotes (to force exact matches), the number drops to "About 318 results."
It should be qualified somewhat: this was the biggest revelation of 2011 to a cisnormative audience and to cis people individually. For trans people who have (with gruelling patience) watched all of this cis fascination over trans children suddenly entering the cisnormative consciousness, one superlative of all superlatives emerged: this was the biggest non-story of our trans lives.This isn't othering? If someone was saying "I was talking to my cis friend the other day and ..." no, that has nothing to do with me and I wouldn't have an objection. Talking about cis culture an what "it" is doing to you is far different
As trans people, we’ve been shrewdly aware of this knowledge for generations. ...
For trans people, perhaps the only noteworthy step forward about 2011 was knowing that cis people — who have collectively upheld this cisnormative social order in which we all find ourselves — have begun to recognize our life-long realities as plausible, if not entirely probable. It’s a small concession by cis people — not some great leap forward.
Regarding her late-in-life sexual orientation switch, the “Sex and the City” star said:Huh. It's almost as if people generally don't like it when others define who they are based on concepts they don't agree with
I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.
Writer Alex Witchel reports that “her face was red and her arms were waving” as she continued, “It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate,” Nixon said. “I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive.”
Many of us reject racial whiteness as a personal identifier when we are ready to say that we disagree with the divisions that race perpetuates, the false categorizations that do not offer exact, accurate self-reflection. We do this believing that we are striking back against prejudice and racism. Through this argument, we hope to demonstrate that we will not be fooled into continuing a fundamentally flawed system of naming.-Shelly Tochluk, Witnessing Whiteness
Deciding that we are not white allows us to . . . move on with our lives, imagining that issues of race are taken care of as far as it relates to us. Sure, there are plenty of people who identify with race and prejudiced viewpoints -- but we are no longer part of the "race problem" because we are not part of the race. Those of us taking on this approach generally are philosophically opposed to prejudice, so we do not see ourselves doing anything that would cause distress in anyone from another group.
Unfortunately, there is also a subtle implication in this approach that often goes unnoticed by white people, but it is hardly lost on a good number of people of color. The implication is this: If we reject being called white, we also reject the idea that we are connected to a broader, white culture.
. . . If we are not white, then there is absolutely no reason why we should concern ourselves with what people of color have been saying for generations about the features of white culture. If we are not white, then we have nothing to gain by investigating how our country's history of racism shapes us. If we are not white, then conversations about our unwitting participation in perceived racism in our classrooms, on our school campuses, or in communities of color are irrelevant. All of these statements become possible when we take our whiteness off the table.
. . . The problem is that whiteness is related to a lot more than fair skin and we cannot deconstruct its effects by simply walking away from race.
. . . Although we hope that the distance [from the "white" label] excuses us from being a part of the problem of race, our denials do not stop us from being treated as white. Philosophically rejecting whiteness does not stop us from escaping racial profiling. We will never have to deal with the frustration of being passed over by cab drivers due to our race. We will never be mistaken for gardeners when working in our front yards. . . .
Worse, in our lack of investigation, we cannot recognize that benefits come with our whiteness. We remain blind to the myriad ways that our whiteness opens doors for us. . . .
I think everyone who reacted simplistically, with a half-cocked idea of trying to control other people, by method of subjective ‘aesthetics’Wow... OK, just to be 100% clear, I never said (or "asserted," or "demanded") that we not use the word "cisgender," or that it was somehow wrong or bad. I'm not trying to "control" anyone, I don't think the superficial associations I described "trump" anything, and I'm certainly not fearful of the word being applied to me because it sounds like "sissy." I never said anything like that, and yeah, it *is* pretty offensive to have my narrowly-focused and heavily-qualified linguistic spitballing described as "ignorant, sexist, anti-Woman."
that some ignorant, sexist, anti-Woman (and harmful to adjustment of Men), hyper-limited definition of masculinity based "sound association" (sissy=girl=icky-weak) should trump accuracy of terminology is something that would be just laughed out in any other topic.
I'd laugh, if so many people didn't express that fear of using a word to self-identify, because it might sound like sissy.
I was never more aware of how many people are actually super linguistic-experts and Aestheticians; until someone upsets the privilege of blissful ignorance of their status in a dominant linguistic hegemony.
Suddenly people seem to assert that their subjective, linguistically inaccurate, first blush "impressions" should trump... everything else.
Sexual differentiation is the process of development of the differences between males and females from an undifferentiated zygote (fertilized egg). As male and female individuals develop from zygotes into fetuses, into infants, children, adolescents, and eventually into adults, sex and gender differences at many levels develop: genes, chromosomes, gonads, hormones, anatomy, and psyche.What I often say is that while there may be an idealized way in which this all plays out into "complete" sexual differentiation, what happens in practice is that these disparate and complex processes don't really reach that supposed ideal in a complete way and so, as the article points out, while some aspects are dichotomous, others are simply statistical.
Sex differences range from nearly absolute to simply statistical. Sex-dichotomous differences are developments which are wholly characteristic of one sex only. Examples of sex-dichotomous differences include aspects of the sex-specific genital organs such as ovaries, a uterus or a phallic urethra. In contrast, sex-dimorphic differences are matters of degree (e.g., size of phallus). Some of these (e.g., stature, behaviors) are mainly statistical, with much overlap between male and female populations.
Nevertheless, even the sex-dichotomous differences are not absolute in the human population, and there are individuals who are exceptions (e.g., males with a uterus, or females with an XY karyotype), or who exhibit biological and/or behavioral characteristics of both sexes.
Sex differences may be induced by specific genes, by hormones, by anatomy, or by social learning. Some of the differences are entirely physical (e.g., presence of a uterus) and some differences are just as obviously purely a matter of social learning and custom (e.g., relative hair length). Many differences, though, such as gender identity, appear to be influenced by both biological and social factors ("nature" and "nurture").
The early stages of human differentiation appear to be quite similar to the same biological processes in other mammals and the interaction of genes, hormones and body structures is fairly well understood. In the first weeks of life, a fetus has no anatomic or hormonal sex, and only a karyotype distinguishes male from female. Specific genes induce gonadal differences, which produce hormonal differences, which cause anatomic differences, leading to psychological and behavioral differences, some of which are innate and some induced by the social environment.
The various ways that genes, hormones, and upbringing affect different human behaviors and mental traits are difficult to test experimentally and charged with political conflict.
I don't feel old. Society expects 70 year old to sit in front of a TV and watch Matlock. I want to be 30 so I can go to med school and get married. I'm trans-mature, so I'm getting age reassignment surgery so my physical age will match my internal maturity.All fine up until now. Maturity is a concept I can understand and accept at least colloquially. People can define themselves however they want
And since you're 70 and haven't had and don't want age reassignment surgery, you're cis-mature. What this means is, your external physical age and internal mental maturity are in alignment.But maybe I feel this hazy concept of maturity just doesn't have much relevance to my life, and since it's a label describing my own internal mental state, it seems like I ought to get to decide whether it's applied to me. But instead everyone who hasn't had/doesn't want reassignment is classified as having an aligned maturity and age
However, we can identify some key elements of prescriptivist metabolism, in terms of five different motivations that may be given for strictures about usage:It's okay that you don't like how cis- sounds to you in cisgendered. As I and others have written, most of us have word aversions. It's not okay that you are attempting to universalize your particular aversion with various arguments about how the word itself, because of that prefix, is inherently, objectively unpleasant.
1. Tradition -- how our forebears talked. Innovation is degeneration.
2. Fashion -- how an admired group talks. Deviation is alienation.
3. Rationality -- how one ought ideally to talk. Inconsistency is illogical.
4. Standards -- how we should agree to talk. Variation confuses communication.
5. Revelation -- how God taught us to talk. Alteration is transgression.
Particular cases are usually a mixture of these. Such [...] processes may cooperate or conflict depending on details -- thus an appeal to fashion may point in the same direction as an appeal to tradition, or in the opposite direction, depending on whether the prescriptivist admires the old ways or prefers the latest thing.
I wrote the song to think about things in a way I never had before. I had never met a transgendered person, or really even thought about them, until my friend told me how she felt. I started to realize that lots of other people could be living with these horrible feeling inside of them – that they are not the right way on the outside, the way they feel they should be. So I thought about them. I say sometimes that I wrote the song as a tribute to her. She did inspire the song, but I did write the song for myself, to deal with the news and explore the subject matter and wonder what it’s like for those who live with the secret and for those who are brave enough to make the change.Despite those few misgivings, I very much love the song and find it extremely haunting, actually. She has a real talent for evoking want and sadness with a light melodic touch that superficially seems ironic, but ultimately reinforces the melancholy.
posted by seanyboy at 3:57 AM on January 23, 2012 [6 favorites]