Equal vocabularies: Why we need the word "cis," and a new word for "normal weight."

On another thread, Ron asks a 101-style question about the term “cis”:

So “cis-gender” would be that your physical and your … what, mental? … gender are the same…

Not mental and physical. Rather, it’s that the gender you were assigned at birth, and the gender you identify as, are the same. (See Julia Serano’s excellent FAQ on this subject.)

Except that “cis-gender” is pretty much the default, so there’s little need in normal discourse to use the term.

Maybe it doesn’t come up in your “normal” discourse, Ron, but I find that the term is useful in my day to day discourse.

Plus, as a political matter, it’s important that the unmarked “defaults” have names. Imagine if, instead of the words “Jewish” and “Christian,” we had only “Jewish” and “normal.” Or if, instead of “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” we had only “normal” and “homosexual.” We can’t discuss things on an equal basis without an equal vocabulary.

* * *

Which reminds me: We really need a vocabulary for weight. The current, official vocabulary is “underweight,” “normal weight,” “overweight,” and “obese.”

I’m happy to replace “underweight” with “thin” or “skinny” (although of course, the real question is if those people medicine labels “underweight” are okay with that), and “overweight” and “obese” with “fat.” But I really hate calling the medically/socially approved default body “normal” (or just as awful, “healthy”). Suggestions?

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97 Responses to Equal vocabularies: Why we need the word "cis," and a new word for "normal weight."

  1. Elusis says:

    Huh. I can’t figure out why my comment is showing up as having posted at 5:26 am and at the top of the list, but I just now made it (11:26 am Pacific time) and so it should fall somewhere between #13 1nd 17.

  2. Myca says:

    Elusis, I really don’t know what was going on. I moved your comment down to the right general area, and hopefully it won’t keep happening.

    :)

    —Myca

    EDIT: AW, Dammit. it just happened to THIS comment. And PG is getting told she’s posting too fast. Okay, there’s an actual problem.

    EDIT II: Okay, should be fixed, more or less.

  3. Mandolin says:

    He has proposed defining paraphilias as “any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners.”

    Yikes.

  4. iiii says:

    I use “currently fashionable weight.” The phrase makes no judgments on the morals, health, or “normality” of those who don’t (or do) have the medically/socially approved default body, but instead reports what you can tell from casual observation.

    The trouble with calling the currently fasionable weight “medium” or “middle” is that the statistical mediums and middles of the US female population wear size 14-16 and fall into the “overweight” and “obese” cohorts. The medically/socially approved default body is somewhat thinner.

  5. Sailorman says:

    Weight labeling runs into the relative/absolute problem.

    If you believe that people have a “best for them” weight (whatever that may be) then it would be perfectly appropriate to use the terms described above. It’s just that “normal” (or “ideal” or “best” or “goal”) weight would be different for each individual, and the other terms would be relative to that weight.

    This would significantly impede the use of those terms as a descriptor, since the descriptive term is objective and relates to things like BMI and/or appearance.

    The goal therefore would be to come up with clarifying language which makes it clear whether you are talking from a FA-type “everyone has a normal weight and mine is ____” perspective or an objective-type “this is where I fall on the population graph of ____ (BMI, absolute weight, etc.)”

    I’m all in favor of such a thing, as you can probably guess from my various “semantics matter!” posts on rape, racism, etc. I will note, however, that attempts to redefine “normal” don’t tend to work very well. You could rename “normal” weight “goofy” weight, and in 2 years everyone will just say “that person is of goofy weight–which is normal, of course.” Normal is such a handy descriptor that it’s very difficult to eliminate.

  6. Rich B. says:

    Your Serrano link is broken, so I can’t tell if it answers the 101-type question I have, in the context of transsexuals being called “freaks” with a “mental disorder” in the other thread: What is the proper way to approach whether something should be considered a “mental illness”?

    In the context of homosexuality, it always seemed obvious enough to me that it shouldn’t be considered a mental illness — although the psychologists disagreed with me for most of the 20th century. It also seemed obvious that “Alien Hand Syndrome” is a mental disorder. Transsexuality (or, the sometimes related desire for sexual reassignment) strikes me intuitively as closer to the latter. I am also, however, intuitively repulsed by the crazy folks who would want to “cure” transsexuals.

    Is a desire to engage in bestiality a mental disorder? Is the desire to rape a mental disorder? How would one examine the issue without deciding that its a mental disorder if I think it’s gross/ don’t like it?

  7. PG says:

    Hmm. Is this a term that you would want to be part of medical discourse as well? For example, a term that a pediatrician would use to tell parents that, judging by weight, their infant is thriving? (And would you want the doctor to say, if the infant weighs less than the doctor thinks is compatible with what the baby needs to grow properly, that the infant is “skinny” or “thin” rather than “underweight”?)

    I ask because I tend to prefer using medical terms when we purport to be discussing matters of health. For example, I always use quotes around “partial birth” abortion and prefer to use the more precise term intact dilation and extraction to describe a medical procedure.

    Skinny, thin, fat, etc. are terms relating not to health but to aesthetic perceptions.

  8. PG says:

    Rich B.,

    With regard to both homosexuality and transsexuality, you might want to examine why you think that the desire to have your relationship with someone of the same gender legally and socially recognized isn’t a mental disorder, but the desire to be legally socially recognized as the gender you consider yourself to be might be a mental disorder.

    Not all of this is a matter of “ew, that’s gross/ silly.” I find furry play rather silly, but don’t consider it a mental disorder, just a sexual fetish. It does no harm of any kind and is quite compatible with our status as human beings (indeed, one could argue* that vanilla sex is closer to unintelligent animal sex behavior, while much of what is considered “kinky” — roleplay, use of objects, engagement of multiple partners, etc. is actually engaging more of the mind imaginatively and otherwise, something that we can do only because of our higher brain development as humans).

    Obviously, rape does harm, and bestiality is problematic because animals cannot give consent and human beings on a species-wide level are capable of recognizing, giving and withholding consent, therefore it would be improper for them to have sex with entities who can’t engage on that level.

    * Since this seems to have caused confusion on the libertarian cartoon thread, I just want to clarify that THIS IS AN ARGUMENT THAT I FIND NOT OBVIOUSLY RIDICULOUS, NOT ONE WITH WHICH I PERSONALLY AGREE.

  9. Rich B. says:

    Also, “Avoirdupois.” It means, essentially, “weight” so could be converted to be a middle term between Overweight and underweight.

  10. Rich B. says:

    PG,

    I’m not thinking about a man wanting to “live as” as woman, or wear female clothing, or have a relationship with a man. That strikes me as a lifestyle choice, not a mental disorder.

    I’m thinking of wanting to take hormones to change your body, or have surgery to make your external sexual markers match your internal feelings. Maybe there is a different term than transsexuality? Or maybe its a sub-set of transsexuality? Whatever it is, it strikes me as closer to a line that all people agree is a mental disorder — like Alien Hand Syndrome. Or do some people not consider that a mental disorder either,

  11. Madeline says:

    The problem with the labels “skinny” and “fat” for “underweight” and “overweight” is that they are very subjective. “Underweight” and “overweight” are based on strict medical definitions and measurements: underweight = a BMI below 18.5, overweight = a BMI over 25. These numbers may be misleading and arguably useless compared to other ways of determining the state of someone’s health, but at least it is clear what a doctor means when he/she writes “overweight” or “underweight” on a patient’s chart.

    In everyday conversation, I support the use of terms like “skinny” and “fat” instead of “underweight” and “overweight,” because outside of a medical context there is no need to be so exact. However, I am unsure of what to do inside of a medical context.

    Certainly, I would replace “normal weight” with something else. For the definition of “normal,” I get “the usual, average, or typical state of condition.” Yet in the United States, most adults are considered overweight, not normal weight.

    What about “medium weight?”

  12. Ampersand says:

    I’ve fixed the link to Julia Servano’s FAQ (which doesn’t cover Rich’s question).

    Rich, my answer — and I’m neither trans, nor an expert — is that transsexuality is not a mental disorder. However, it’s a little complex, in that some trans people have needed to accept a diagnosis (which is “gender identity disorder”) in order to have access to the medical help they need.

    Some useful links for you to read: GID Reform Advocates, a post on Pam’s House Blend, and this article from Psychiatric News.

  13. Ampersand says:

    Madeline, “medium weight” seems good, both as a term for day-to-day conversation, and as a replacement for “normal” in BMI classifications.

    I can’t control what terms doctors use (alas), but I’ll start using the “medium weight” term myself.

  14. Rosa says:

    @PG – medical discourse for children is a little different, because they have height and weight charts based on actual measurements that are re-evaluated based on measuring actual kids on a pretty regular basis. So if the pediatrician says “your child is underweight for his height” they mean something very specific based on an average kid his age (& sometimes race/adoption status – there’s more than one chart).

    Except in my experience they don’t say underweight/overweight they say “at the 11th percentile” or “at the 98th percentile”.

  15. Geek says:

    I wrote something smart (and refreshed or something, so lost it) about definitions of normal (we think of “normal” as “average”, whereas normal for BMI is actually a rule instead of an average). Anyway, both are correct usages of the word normal.

    My suggestion:
    “Government mandated normal” (20-25 BMI)
    “Average Normal” (23-28 BMI in the US), given that the average USAmerican woman weighs 160-something pounds and is maybe 5’5″.

    I think there’s no problem with saying govt. mandated skinny and govt. mandated fat, especially if we do so with some disdain.

  16. My children use the word medium.

  17. Ali says:

    Thanks Geek, from now on I’ll refer to myself as government mandated fat!

  18. Ali says:

    And I completely agree with Amp about the need to name defaults. If the defaults were all unmarked, it just makes it that much easier for people to forget about / overlook whatever isn’t the default.

  19. Elusis says:

    I was thinking of “moderate weight” but I like “middle” better.

    Rich B’s comment about “alien hand syndrome” is thought-provoking, though I’d point out it doesn’t appear in the DSM. The intriguing question is, if we clearly consider “my hand is not mine/not right somehow” a mental disturbance, what is the difference between that and “my genitalia are not mine/not right somehow”? As a trans advocate, I unequivocally consider the latter to be different, but I’m hard-pressed to articulate in just what way.

    On the other hand, as Bree pointedly asks her doctor in “Transamerica,” “don’t you find it odd that plastic surgery can ‘cure’ a mental disorder?” And the position taken by trans activists most often these days seems to be that the “problem” for a transgender person is not their brain, but their body – a kind of “birth defect” if you will, which indeed raises serious questions about GID as a diagnosis. Unfortunately with Kenneth Zucker chairing the sexuality and gender identity working group for the DSM-V revision, the diagnosis is unlikely to disappear and may even get more perjorative.

    And with Ray Blanchard chairing the paraphilia sub-group, the next DSM may be even more narrow in its definition of sexual “normalcy,” as Blanchard has been pressing to get his “autogynephilia” diagnosis in, as well as to define as paraphilias sexual interest in transmen, transwomen, and even fat people. He has proposed defining paraphilias as “any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners.” Feministing has more here.

    But then, Foucault identified decades ago that power structures have a vested interest in establishing and policing what’s “normal,” and even convincing those subject to power to self-police, with language as one of the most important tools for enforcing ideas of normalcy. I’m teaching all my marriage and family therapy students about the term “cisgender” so they have a way of talking about transpeople that doesn’t pit them against “normal.”

  20. Tea says:

    I like the word normative. It’s different enough from normal that when i use it in conversation with people they don’t automatically assume what i mean. I like it because it speaks to something that cisgender doesn’t cover – that a cisgendered person might be regulated for not being enough like their gender too. Of course differently and more insiduously (and at times, far less violently) than transpeople are.
    So for example, a cisgendered woman who does not meet the normative expectations of female-ness, not just the beauty ideal, but who doesn’t register as female even if she identifies as such.

    Rich,
    I think that a lot of people don’t like the designation of “mental disorder” because they don’t see themselves as sick, and they don’t see the desire to change their bodies as necessarily pathological. instead of comparing it to alien hand syndrome (although there is a totally fascinating documentary called “whole” that does make this comparison implicitly) it might be useful to think of the desire for breast augmentation in cisgendered women. The desire for larger breasts, in general and by most of the medical community, is seen as a self-evident desire that has to do with self-esteem, rather than a pathological body dysmorphia.

    Of course the problem with this line of thought is what ampersand said earlier, in that it’s often necessary to have a disorder diagnosed in order to have access to surgery. and of course plenty of people do think of breast augmentation as pathological. but i hope you see the point.

  21. Kris McN says:

    Mid-weight?

    It’s what I use. I use fat (to describe myself) and thin for the those who are thin. Medium weight seems fine too. I used mid-weight to describe a fat-phobic co-worker once – he got pissed off. Turns out he’s really attached to the “healthy” label. I told him to cram it.

  22. Very educational thread by Serano… I would have said so over there, but I see she was forced to close the thread because of assholery. :(

    So, I’ll say it here: great post, I enjoyed the childbearing/menstruation discussion and replies to other questions I’ve had but did not know how to ask.

    Thanks for linking.

  23. Beth T says:

    One thing that I always remember when I think about my weight is back when I was still growing, my doctor showed me a height-weight-age chart with a thick line running through in an arc, representing the mean and other lines radiating out to show the more common ranges. I always thought of the dot that sat on the line as my “arc” weight. It was one ‘normal’ weight, but one of many.

    I get that people probably won’t like a definition that’s still chained to ratios and averages and ‘normal’ (and doctors), but that arc-weight idea changed my perspective even as a 12 year-old that there was one body type and you were supposed to judge yourself in terms of how close or how far you were. It showed me that there was one body type that was the most common among a whole field of other types.

    …But on a more casual note, anyone else read ‘Ladies no. 1 Detective Agency’? The main character gets called ‘fat’ by plenty of people, but she insists on referring to her body type as ‘traditional’, and considers it a shame that people ‘don’t value traditional body types anymore’. That always makes me smile.

  24. chingona says:

    preparatory fondling

    He sure knows how to make a girl feel special.

  25. Siobhan says:

    Midweight?

    I’ve always liked endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph to describe body types. They seem to carry less baggage.

  26. Medea says:

    I like “middling weight.” It sounds appropriately vague and unscientific.

  27. timberwraith says:

    Alien hand syndrome from Wikipedia:

    An alien hand sufferer can feel normal sensation in the hand and leg, but believes that the hand, while still being a part of their body, behaves in a manner that is totally distinct from the sufferer’s normal behavior. They lose the ‘sense of agency’ associated with the purposeful movement of the limb while retaining a sense of ‘ownership’ of the limb.

    Exactly how does that compare with a transgender person who feels the need to go through a medical transition? No, please, don’t answer that. I’m not interested in your answer.

    I’m a trans woman. I’ve been through hormones, surgery—the works. I find your analogy to be incredibly offensive, Rich. If you had penned that analogy on a transgender blog, several people would have handed you your head. Trans people have to hear crap like this all the time and we are thoroughly tired of it.

    Before you say something else incredibly offensive, I’d recommend that you do a lot of reading. Reading Julia Serano’s book Whipping Girl is a good start. Reading the blogs of trans people is also a good start. Whatever you do, please be quiet and just listen to what trans people have to say about their lives. Otherwise, you are going to face a lot of well justified invective.

    One more thing:
    1) Trans women are women. Full stop. End of story.
    2) Trans men are men. Full stop. End of story.

    If you start with that simple assumption, the rest falls into place.

    That is all. Over and out.

  28. Rosa says:

    Timberwraith, thank you.

  29. Rich B. says:

    The desire for larger breasts, in general and by most of the medical community, is seen as a self-evident desire that has to do with self-esteem, rather than a pathological body dysmorphia.

    But that’s the issue. If a person is depressed because of her small breasts, the options are (a) treat the depression through medicine, so the person is just mildly annoyed by her breasts, instead of depressed; (b) try to engender “A-Cup Pride” to fight the depression; or (c) give her bigger breasts.

    Which choice you make depends a lot on the social judgment you make about the “right” way to react. A-Cup Pride sounds good for the small breasted, but if depression is instigated by the death of a family member, you are going to just (a) treat the depression, not (b) try to convince the person to be glad the loved one is dead (or (c) hold a seance).

    I am reading through the links Ampersand provided, but they seem (intentionally?) vague.

    It is time for culturally competent psychiatric policies that recognize the legitimacy of cross-gender identity and yet distinguish gender dysphoria as a serious condition, treatable with medical procedures.

    What is the difference between timberwraith’s apparently non-disordered “cross gender identity” and a serious case of “gender dysphoria” mental disorder? They seem to be two ways of looking at the same phenomenon.

    And what are the “medical procedures” that will treat it? That could mean (a) hormones and gender re-assignment; (b) treating the dysphoria to make you a euphoric female in a man’s body; or (c) a partial lobotomy to make you “act like a man.”

    Timberwraith — I certainly did not mean to offend. I was attempting to present a continuum, with “alien hand syndrome” on one extreme, and asking where trans-ness fell along that continuum — and how one would go about considering it. I do not want to minimize your or anyone else’s suffering, but if the initial question is “Is X a mental disorder?” it seems like a poor methodology to begin by asking a lot of people with X if they are mentally disordered.

    Even granting that “1) Trans women are women. Full stop. End of story.” Does that necessarily imply that women should be given hormones and surgery to make their bodies look more like women? Should flat-chested low-hormone-leveled cisgendered women be given hormones and surgery?

  30. Mandolin says:

    Rich B.,

    This is not a trans 101 thread. You might try looking some of this stuff up, or going over to one of the trans 101 threads on feministe. In any case, you’re offending our trans readers, and you need to back off.

  31. Ampersand says:

    Rich wrote:

    …a partial lobotomy to make you “act like a man.” […] I certainly did not mean to offend.

    Here’s the problem, Rich. It actually make it worse that you don’t mean to offend. If you were intending to be offensive, then you could decide not to be offensive anymore.

    But — taking you at your word that your offensive and derogatory comments aren’t intentional — it seems pretty clear that, not knowing what is and isn’t offensive, you’ll be unable to cease being offensive even if you try.

    For that reason, in addition to the massive derail, I’m asking you to step off this thread. Thanks.

  32. B. Adu says:

    1) Trans women are women. Full stop. End of story.

    If you start with that simple assumption, the rest falls into place.

    Yes, and also this is exactly how I feel about myself regards ‘cis’, if you leave out the ‘trans’ of course.

    As for normal weight, I think we should ask them what they feel is true for them, as long as it doesn’t insult/ degrade/ belittle others.

  33. Rich B. says:

    Okay. Based on the first sentence of the post, I assuming it was a “Trans-101” style thread. Again, I did not mean to offend, but I don’t think the portion you quoted accurately represented the point that I was (obviously poorly) trying to make.

    This is me now stepping off.

  34. Nathan says:

    I’m underweight (according to BMI charts anyway) and I will take “thin” over “skinny”, though I would find neither offensive. “Scrawny” is just derogatory.

  35. Fate's Lady says:

    I consider myself (in regards to weight) “healthy” and my body type “athletic”. I have stepped away from terms such as average and normal because the average and normal person in America has swollen in this last half century or so, as several other people have pointed out.

    I know I’m going to have my head handed to me for this statement, but while I don’t support supermodel skinny, I also have a hard time wanting to cater to the special emotional needs of people who are 300 lbs because they have a steady diet of McDonald’s. My husband and I are barely scraping by financially, but I still manage to cook relatively healthy meals, and go figure, we’re both a healthy weight (obesity runs in his family).

    Why should I not be allowed to call myself “healthy” when I, in fact, am, especially in contrast with the woman next to me who is suffering from health problems because of her extra pounds? I find the attempt to contrast the fat/thin debate with the homo/hetero situation offensive. One is an inborn trait, and while you may have a body that is predisposed to carrying extra weight… I’ve seen people fight that battle and win.

  36. RonF says:

    Maybe it doesn’t come up in your “normal” discourse, Ron, but I find that the term is useful in my day to day discourse.

    Maybe it’s an issue of your day-to-day community and what you’re involved in in your life. I have had more than just momentary or incidental contact with only one trans-gendered person in my entire life – she worked at my current employer for about 2 years. She’s not here anymore, but we’ve had a few layoffs over the last few years so there’s a LOT of people who aren’t here anymore. When I first started my professional career I worked with a group that did a lot of technical editing and writing and there were a couple of gay guys in it, but since I left that group – crap, 20 years ago – I’ve only worked with a couple of other gays. I can’t think of anyone I work with now who’s gay (although there’s at least one guy I see in the fitness center who is), and we’re a bit of a social crowd so I’ve pretty much met the wives and husbands and girlfriends.

    My point is this: the default for human beings appears to me at least to be cisgendered by a rather wide margin (and heterosexual by a rather wide margin as well). When I meet someone new I and everyone I know presumes the new person to be cisgendered unless there’s something to specifically indicate to the contrary, and that seems to me to be both reasonable and functional. There’s no need for me to use the term “cisgendered” in general discourse because there’s no context in which the distinction needs to be made.

  37. RonF says:

    The intent of my original post in the other thread was in reaction to your footnote where you said cis = !trans. I was making the point that cis is not just the negation of trans but has a specific meaning of it’s own. To the overall point of this, I’m not saying that there’s not a valid context in which the use of cisgendered vs. transgendered isn’t useful and even needed. I’m saying that it’s not something that’s going to come up in most discussion contexts for most people.

    Hypothetical example; I go to a parent’s meeting at my local school. Let’s say that there’s a kid there with two parents where one seems to be transgendered. I might note that in a discussion and say “[name] looks transgendered to me”, but there would be no need to say about another couple “[name] looks cisgendered to me”. It’s presumed, and it’s a very safe presumption.

  38. Larkspur says:

    I’m a little uncertain about weight descriptions, but it really does matter about the context. In the doctor’s office, for example, we should be talking about weight in terms of what’s “within normal (or optimal) limits”, because it matters about age, body frame, current state of health – an accumulation of relevant details. Because obviously, a person can be thin or slim, but not exactly “lean”, because lean implies a lower BMI and a degree of musculature, where slim or thin can be a health crisis for a particular person for a number of causes. I mean, I’d much prefer to be on the high side of “within normal limits” than to be a smoker on the low side of WNL. But I would prefer not to be obese, insofar as “obese” is a medical term suggesting the possibility of current or future health problems.

    But in a non-medical setting (and that’s a problem, because our social descriptions of peoples’ shapes and sizes often bear a medicalized type of criticism), descriptions are going to vary. You have to ask yourself, “Why is this important?”, and then deal fairly in accordance. Are you describing a celebrity’s appearance or clothing? Are you interviewing for a job placement? Are you being asked informally about what person is your “type”? If you are being fair, you say tall, short, heavy, athletic, stocky, sturdy, thin, willowy, and yes, sometimes “anorextic-looking”or “very fat”.

    So I tend to prefer “within normal limits” or “within average limits” or “appropriate to height” – but you’d have to trust that my idea of appropriate is pretty inclusive, and that I’m necessarily unclear in terms of “normal” and “average”, because they’re not the same, and because while they can and should be used descriptively, they are also loaded with judgmental implications.

    Sometimes I think the more important point is to speak up when size descriptions are clearly being used offensively or just irrelevantly. “He’s fat.” Simple sentence. But what’s the context? Is it a response to “He certainly seems to be qualified for the position” or “What’s he like?” or “Do you think I’d like him?” or “I’m giving away some of my dad’s clothes, and there’s some really good stuff. Do you know anyone who’d like them? Maybe your roommate?”

    After each of the preceding “He’s fat” answers, my subsequent responses would tend to be “So?” and “And that’s all?” and “Do you mean he doesn’t like to hike and stuff?” and “Oh, well, too bad.”

  39. Jessica says:

    RonF, what you’re saying is exactly what was said in the original post: that the “default,” whether cisgendered, white, straight, Christian, or male is often not named and is taken for granted. The original post was saying that that’s a problem because “We can’t discuss things on an equal basis without an equal vocabulary.” Nothing you’re saying negates the original post, it’s just that Ampersand has been trying to explain why it’s necessary to go beyond that.

  40. Holly says:

    One thing that I always feel needs to be included in a discussion like this is the fact that many trans people (and heck, people of all kinds) are anxious to escape the stigma of being labeled as mentally disordered, or having a mental “problem” of some sort. Which is totally understandable.

    However, it begs this question: should people whose brains work differently, people we call mentally disordered, be stigmatized at all? Should I, as a trans person, be ashamed and anxious to remove myself from a categorization that lumps me in with them?

    I’m not so sure about that. Obviously a conflation of different types of psychiatric issues is troubling and bad (no, I am not a schizophrenic or someone with borderline personality disorder just because I’m trans, as has been suggested by some) but what would be better is if we weren’t all so goddamn grossed out by being considered part of the “mentally ill.” Of course, that’s not the world we live in. The anxiety to escape from a realm of pathology is understandable. But when we’re talking politics, the intersection of trans people’s lives and medicalization should really take into account a broader analysis of disability rights too, instead of just trying to paddle as fast as possible away from that territory.

    Personally, I don’t care what you call it. I care about results. Nobody has managed to make anyone “act like a man” through lobotomies, testosterone shots, electroshock therapy, pavlovian reinforcement, or years of talk therapy. The reason those things aren’t talked about as solutions is because they have never been shown, in the many decades of health care professionals helping trans folks, to make anyone’s life better. A combination of responsible, patient-specific therapy to help trans folks sort through and cope with various issues related to dysphoria, and individualized medical interventions aimed at re-embodiment (hormones, surgery, etc) has had very good results for many people. And other than misdiagnosis, there is not a lot of downside, despite the fact that right-wingers will argue that having a bunch of “surgically mutilated freaks” and “mismatched he-shes” running around is somehow bad for society.

    If that makes sense, then personally I don’t really care about whether anyone wants to classify me as “mentally disordered” or “has a birth defect that needs physical correction” or other categories that people try to claim are better. My brain doesn’t (didn’t) work well with my body, is the most basic point. I care more about people receiving health care that works for them, and about destigmatizing all of those categories — which all historically have a lot of horrific stigma and real harm derived from that stigma, to the point that it almost seems grotesque to argue about which is a better or more privileged club to be in. Which some people do. Is it better to be lumped in with “birth defects” or “the mentally ill?” Oh wait, how about “intersexed?” No, how about we rethink this whole thing?

  41. RonF:

    Suppose you’re in a group of all white people and the question that deals with race and/or racism comes up. It’s not too hard for me to imagine how, in a conversation like that, it could, despite the fact that everyone there is white, become necessary/valid/desirable for the people involved to acknowledge explicitly that they are white. Nor do I imagine that people would find this odd–they might resist what it means in the context of the conversation for them to acknowledge that they are white–but I can’t imagine it would seem strange to them that there is a word that is equivalent to “Black” or “Asian,” or whichever other race happened to be part of the discussion. And one reason they would not find this odd, I would guess, is that race is so present our cultural consciousness that it is impossible to avoid.

    The same is not true for the questions/issues raised by the existence of people who are trans, and so the notion that a group of cisgendered people ought to be as conscious of their cisgendered status as a group of white people ought to be conscious of their white status still feels odd/awkward to people who are cisgendered. I know that when I first started reading/hearing the term, it was an awkward fit for me, and I still am getting used to it, and I also deal with very, very few trans people on a day to day basis. In other words, it’s not just about what goes on in your daily discourse that matters; it’s about what cultural categories you are willing to give presence to in your thinking in general; it’s about how and why one perceives/organizes one’s perceptions of the culture around one in the way one does.

  42. Madeline says:

    A documentary series I once watched, called “Transgeneration,” had a moment in it in which one of the transgendered students in it summed up what transgender really means, at least for me.

    He said that although people say that being transgender is a mental disorder, the treatment given for it changes the physical aspects. That implied to him that being transgender was a physical, and not a mental disorder – that the mind was right, and the body was wrong, rather than the other way around.

    That made a lot of sense to me. In current medical practice, a transgender person must be diagnosed as having a psychological problem before he or she is allowed to have sexual reassignment surgery or hormone treatment. But what if instead of diagnosing him or her with a psychological problem, the doctor diagnosed a physical problem? That way the transgendered person could receive the appropriate treatment to change his or her body without having to submit to being labeled by the DSM.

  43. elle says:

    iii, “currently fashionable weight” is an extremely narrow band – so narrow that I don’t think this is a useful term.

    For example, I wear a women’s clothing size 10 or 12, and have a BMI of just under 25; most people would probably include me in “normal”. When I’m commenting at a fat-acceptance blog like Shapely Prose, if it’s relevant, I might identify myself as a “non-fattie” (fattie being the affectionate self-chosen term of choice over there, where fat is actually the default).

    But I am clearly too big to be “currently fashionable” – a “currently fashionable” woman ranges in size from a 0 or 2 to absolutely no more than a 6, max. The difference between a 4/6 and a 12 might sound trivial, but it can feel huge.

    (I also think that “currently fashionable” is problematic for men, but for a different reason. I think that there are two very different body types – the very slender emo boy and the extremely broad-shouldered muscular athlete – that are equally fashionable for men, and I wouldn’t know which you meant.)

  44. PG says:

    Holly,

    This might be my own cis-gender privilege showing, but it seems to me that in a society that was ideal with regard to gender, people would feel safe identifying anywhere along the gender spectrum regardless of the body configuration with which they were born. Then changes to that configuration would be less a matter of basic personal safety (not getting beaten up or killed for having what others consider the “wrong” body for one’s gender) and legal compliance (a woman who uses the women’s restroom but does not have what are considered female genitalia can be arrested), and more a matter of personal preference for what one’s body should be.

    My parents decided that I should have a significant medical intervention while I was a minor in order to put me closer to the socially accepted norm. I appreciate that they felt this was the right choice to make my life easier, and I’m OK with it despite the unpleasantness that a long-term medical intervention generally entails.

    However, I still think it would be better if society were more adapted toward PG-with0ut-medical-intervention, rather than PG-having-to-get-intervention-to-adapt-to-social-norm. And I really can’t disaggregate my parents’ decision from what the social norms are. I find it unlikely that they would have opted for an intervention that consumed significant time and money, and that I was resistant to, if it has been a matter of mere personal aesthetics or preference.

    I don’t think medical interventions for transpeople can be disaggregated from those social norms (often enforced through both state force and private violence). And inasmuch as I find social norms regarding sex/gender to be particularly self-evidently absurd (what difference does it make and how does it affect others?) as well as Constitutionally suspect, in a way that social norms about how any human adult should function in public are not (e.g. being evidently paranoid, schizophrenic, etc. does make a difference in how you will behave in a way that can affect others), I think it’s important not to lump being trans into the category of “mental illness” or “mental disorder” or anything else that implies that the condition is likely to harm the life of the person with the condition or those around him.

    I don’t mean this in the sense that people with depression or schizophrenia should be stigmatized, but their conditions make a difference that I’ve just never seen for trans people. I have one friend who is a cis-gendered white woman, and another who is a trans-gendered white woman. The first has depression, and it does affect her life in an ongoing, daily fashion, as well as those who are with her. It affects whether she will feel up to keeping a social engagement, for example, or how she will behave if she attends when she’s forcing herself to do so.

    I’ve never had any such effect in my friendship with the trans-woman — being trans just doesn’t affect her ability to work, to socialize, to do anything. The only things that affect that are others’ imposing their views of what she should be onto her and letting that affect their interactions. This seems to me a meaningful difference between my two friends. (And I do think that the social norms of complying with plans that have been made, or being attentive to others when one does socialize, are norms worth keeping even if they are more difficult for some people than for others.)

  45. PG says:

    Fate’s Lady,

    Simple answer: you can’t call any given weight, and especially any perceived weight (based on your visual estimation of a stranger’s size), to be “healthy.” Have you not seen the Lipitor commercials with the woman walking down the red carpet who falls down, symbolizing her cardiac problems because she has high cholesterol?

    I used to be that lady — cholesterol over 230 — but look like I was perfectly healthy; nowadays I’m carrying more fat — although actually not much more weight — so someone might try to guess from my appearance that I’m not so healthy.

    Health is based on many factors, most of which don’t have much to do with the number of pounds showing on a scale. My vegetarian friends who look fatter and weigh more than I do have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, more endurance for physical exercise, and probably will live longer with less medical intervention than I will. They’re healthier than I.

  46. Eva says:

    RJN – thanks for post #40 in response to RonF’s post #36. Nicely done.

  47. RonF says:

    Jessica, Richard; I can understand that in a discussions regarding transgender issues the term “cisgendered” would come in quite handy. What I don’t see is what kind of discussion that I have in every day life that the term would come into use.

  48. chingona says:

    RonF … I think the issue is that you are assuming you would not be talking about transgender issues in every day life. You are distinguishing transgender issues and every day life as if that is a meaningful distinction.

  49. Jessica says:

    RonF, in that case, I don’t see what you’re objecting to. Someone taught you a new vocabulary word, but you don’t think you’re going to use it that often, so what do you do? How about just write it on an index card and put it in your back pocket in case you’ll ever need it. Same as if somebody told you what a pneumatophore is, and you happened not to use it in everyday conversation.

  50. Holly says:

    RonF,

    In that case, when does the term “white” as it applies to race come in handy? Or the words “heterosexual” or “straight?” When you’re talking about those issues, or to recognize your own position with regards to systems of race and sexual orientation. I suspect it’s probably true that people who accept heterosexuality (for instance) as the unquestioned, default norm, or who aren’t ever aware of interacting with gay folks, or want to avoid talking about the subject completely except when strictly necessary, probably don’t use the word “straight” very much either (except to give driving directions and talk about the shape of a line). But other straight people use that word all the time, for a variety of reasons. The word cisgendered is not that much difference, it’s just that trans issues are considered more “fringe.” You could argue that this is because of population size, but it’s also because of marginalization.

    PG,

    I actually agree with you completely about a hypothetical better society’s attitudes towards gender, and about how we can’t really disaggregate societal pressures from other reasons for say, wanting to change what your body looks like. I’m not sure what you’re saying that means for the ethics of medical treatment, though.

    I tend to think that part of the goal for trans people in a process of deciding what’s individually best for them in transition, ideally with quality help from mental and physical health care providers, is to do as much disentangling as possible, even though it may never be completely possible to disaggregate. I mean, part of this is actually quite vital for real informed consent and diagnosis; do you want a mastectomy because of gender dysphoria, or because of other reasons that have less to do with gender identity and more to do with negative feelings about your body and eating disorders? (Piny is a good source for thoughts about this, having gone through something like that which I couldn’t even hope to sum up briefly.) And this was a huge part of my own process too — trying to sort out external pressures, like fear of harassment and violence, access to “normal” things like gym locker rooms, and legal requirements, from more fundamental, less external reasons to transition or decide on medical interventions.

    There is a suggestion in part of what you wrote that there’s a binary distinction between “social norms” and “personal aesthetics or preference.” I know you weren’t just speaking of trans issues or gender dysphoria, but it’s worth pointing out that most trans people will readily tell you that gender dysphoria isn’t really either of the above. And I think part of the reason for peer support, family support, and good respectful individualized mental health care is to try and separate that stuff out as much as possible. Of course, it’s also the reason to keep fighting for a better world where there are far fewer “social pressure” reasons for people to change their bodies, right? Nobody should be getting surgery in order to access proper legal identification, or out of fear of violence. We should be addressing those problems as a society.

    As far as the second part of what you said — yes, I think there is a valuable distinction to be made between people who are dealing with a condition that makes it possible they’ll harm the lives of others around them, vs. people that aren’t. But there’s a pretty huge spectrum within the category of “mental illness” and how people are being treated, where they’re at in treatment or in some cases recovery, that change that. For instance, someone who is dealing with depression may reach a point where they have still been diagnosed with depression (and may even always have to carry that stigma, for instance on certain types of application forms) but where they’re actually pretty functional, due to treatment or recovery or changes in their life, in a way that doesn’t affect others. Similarly, being trans is something that trans people, and other people around us, first become aware of because of the effect being trans has on feelings and behaviors. There is no diagnosable physical marker for being trans (except maybe in the brain, and that’s not totally clear yet / there’s no test for it / what would it mean if a trans person “failed” that test anyway?).

    For a very long time, and still today in many ways, trans people could only get treated if the symptoms and side-effects of being trans in a trans-hostile world (which often include depression) are “bad enough” to warrant doing something about, to become a “problem worth treating.” I don’t think this is 100% because of social pressures and a “fix the problem” model of medicine, it’s partly because difficult feelings often have to get to a certain point and cause us problems before we can fully realize and deal with them, and because medical interventions are a big step to take. In a better world, maybe a lot of this stuff would be easier. But for now, reaching the point where a trans person (and people providing care) can actually say yes, there’s a diagnosis / steps should be taken, and then going through that process of “treatment” or transition, can actually be really difficult and involve a lot of pressures, side-effects like depression and anxiety, and other things that very significantly affect both the trans person and other people around them.

    What you’re saying about your depressed friend and your trans friend is correct, of course. But the difference is that your depressed friend is still dealing with depression as a condition that is affecting her negatively, and it sounds like your trans friend isn’t. But most if not all trans people DO go through a period of life where being trans really is either a huge burden and mental weight, or a major thing going on and affecting our whole lives, or both, or one after the other. It’s just that most trans folks get to come out the other side of that, which is something else that kind of shows that hey, transition really can work to alleviate a problem. So I don’t really have a problem, for instance, with a comparison or analogy of “being partnered with someone who is coping with serious depression” and “being partnered with someone who is in the process of gender transition.” They’re both really difficult and do affect others, and they’re experiences that stay with you your whole life (and carry a stigma and prejudice, too — in different ways). But you can also move past that point, and that’s a good thing. In that way of looking at things, transitioning is actually the “cure” for being trans, or at least for the dysphoric aspect of being trans, and that’s why some trans people actually prefer to say that they’re not trans anymore, after they’ve transitioned.

  51. E says:

    RonF, even if you don’t talk about trans issues or encounter trans people on a daily basis, there are plenty of everyday conversations that can benefit from the word cisgender.

    Examples:
    “Men can’t get pregnant.” Wrong. Cisgender men can’t get pregnant.
    “All women are at risk for cervical cancer.” Nope, cisgender women are at risk for cervical cancer.
    “A woman can’t get pregnant accidentally if she has sex with another woman.” Actually, a cisgender woman only having sex with another cisgender woman or a transgender woman having sex with a transgender woman can’t get pregnant accidentally. Not necessarily true anymore if one of the women is transgender and the other is cis.

    Just because it’s easy to pretend trans people don’t exist and erase them with cisgender-centric generalizations doesn’t mean it’s ok.

  52. RonF says:

    Chigona – pretty much for me they are separate from everyday life. I don’t know any transgendered people, I don’t have any acquaintances with transgendered people, and the issues that they face – whose validity I do not contest – are not something that touch on my everyday life as far as I can see.

    Jessica, in fact that’s exactly my viewpoint on the matter. It’s a useful term in certain contexts that rarely occur in my life but occur a lot more in some other people’s lives. The fact that I would not have a reason to use the term doesn’t mean that there’s no need for it or that it’s not a valid word to use. As opposed to another thread where we were talking about using the terms “positive rights” and “negative rights” vs. “entitlements” and “rights”, I don’t see this as an attempt to decieve or misdirect.

    Holly, I see what you’re talking about. Consider a case where I was being asked to describe someone. I would not mention the person’s race if they were white – I would only mention their race if they were NOT white, or if the description was being given in a context where you would have a reason to presume that they were not white (e.g., it’s already been established that they live in a location whose population is known to be 90% black). Most people in the U.S. are white. White is the default, and if it’s not mentioned that’s what you presume in most circumstances. It’s the same thing with being cisgendered. It’s the defaul, a lot more than them being white would be. Certainly there are circumstances where someone’s status as such would not be a reasonable presumption, and there this would come up. But I don’t see, at least in my life, where there would be very many such circumstances.

    So then I ask, under what circumstances would one imagine that the use of the term “cisgendered” come up? Again, I can see that there are some. But how many? What do you think they would be?

    I’ll try another analogy. If I tell you “Bill is married”, you’re going to presume with no other information that the person he’s married to is female. If ythat’s not the case you might say “Bill’s in a same-sex marriage”, but if it is the case you’d just say “Bill is married.”. Would people propose that from now on I should say “Bill’s in a heterosexual marriage” every time I talk about him in that context?

  53. RonF says:

    E, as is I hope piercingly obvious I don’t have a lot of contact with transgendered people. I also have a couple of degrees in the biological sciences. I tend to use the word “male” and “female” as being tied to one’s genome. So from your first example, if someone can get pregnant they’re not a man – they’re a woman, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves a man or a woman and regardless of what gender they generally express. I have, and had at the time, no problem referring in general discussion to that employee that I was talking about earlier as “her” or “she”, but if I’m talking about something as tied to genetics and biology as pregnancy, she’s a he as far as I’m concerned.

    This may seem insensitive to some of you. I do not speak in this fashion in order to offend. I regret any distress that this may cause anyone. But that’s what I think.

  54. chingona says:

    RonF,

    I don’t know anyone in real life who is transgendered (that I know is transgendered, anyway), and I don’t talk a lot about trans issues. But there are all kinds of things I don’t talk about a lot that might come up in regular life, and it’s good to have a vocabulary for talking about things.

    Suppose these radio DJs were in the media market you lived in, and it became a local-to-you instead of Internet controversy. Suppose some people you work with were talking about why they shouldn’t have said it or why it was fine and everyone should lay off. Perhaps the discussion turned to “what’s up with trans people?” Or suppose there was an article in the newspaper related to trans issues – my paper just ran an article about veterans who are trans and the difficulties they face getting medical services. Might be the kind of thing that sparks a discussion, unless you never discuss things you read in the paper, which seems unlikely.

    Or maybe a friend will tell you they are going to be transitioning. You might be thinking, “Not my friends,” and statistically speaking, you’re probably right, but you never know. You might want to have the words to talk to your friend in a way that was not offensive or alienating to them.

    I might very well not use the actual word “cisgender” or “ciswoman,” depending on my audience, but having the concept – having the concept that I’m a woman in one way you can be a woman and trans women are women in another way you can be a woman, as opposed to the concept of “real” women and trans women – might be a useful concept to have in mind, even if it only comes up every now and again.

  55. E says:

    RonF, then clearly one of the reasons you find no relevance for the word cisgender is that your concept of gender as it relates to biology is transphobic (and yes, insensitive despite your disclaimer). Please don’t hide behind biological science degrees when you’re making statements like that; my genetics degree is perfectly compatible with respecting people’s self-identifications.

    If you’re hell-bent on sticking with the idea that someone’s sex as assigned at birth determines their gender, and hence trans men and trans women somehow aren’t really men and women, then you’re unlikely to find uses for cisgender because you’re likely content ignoring trans people’s existence. There are plenty of examples outside of the anatomy-centric ones I brought up, though. The biology/healthcare situations were just the first ones to come to mind because they’re what I encounter most often.

    More examples:
    “There aren’t any women who were Boy Scouts growing up.” No, there aren’t any cisgender women who were Boy Scouts as kids, but there are definitely women who were–trans women.
    “Smith College doesn’t admit men.” Actually, they don’t admit cisgender men. They definitely admit transgender men, though unfortunately still exclude trans women.

    I also wonder how accurate your perception that you don’t know any trans people is. You don’t regularly encounter anyone who’s trans to your knowledge, fine. That’s not the same thing unless you regularly require chromosome and genital checks of your friends and acquaintances.

  56. PG says:

    E,

    If you’re hell-bent on sticking with the idea that someone’s sex as assigned at birth determines their gender

    That’s technically not what RonF said, because sex assignment at birth generally is based on whether the obstetrician estimates there’s enough of a penis for what the doctor considers “normal” male functioning. Ron’s saying he bases his assessment of someone’s sex not on a birth assignment but on biologicial abilities, such that if someone is capable of bearing a child, Ron will not deem that person to be of the female sex.

    That obviously can’t work in reverse (if my aunt is infertile, that means she’s actually my uncle?) but it’s not quite the same thing as going by birth assignment.

  57. B. Adu says:

    my genetics degree is perfectly compatible with respecting people’s self-identifications.

    Cisgender is not self-identification. I respect the right of trans people to name and describe themselves in their own terms. I just want the same for myself, I don’t see the difference.

  58. PG says:

    B. Adu,

    What term would you prefer to describe yourself in this respect, then?

  59. chingona says:

    B. Adu …

    What bothers you about “cisgender”?

    I don’t see anyone being asked to use it all the time. I see it as a term that’s useful when a distinction needs to be made or noted but you don’t want to resort to thinking of “real” and “fake” women (or men).

    I don’t get why people are objecting to the existence of a word to describe people whose assigned gender and gender identity match, instead of having to write out “people whose assigned gender and gender identity match” in discussions of cis/trans issues. It seems that something is at stake, and I’m not clear what it is.

  60. Geek says:

    Ali,
    Doesn’t “government mandated fat” sound ridiculous/fun/can’t take it seriously :)?

    I’m government mandated fat too. It’s a nice life to have.

  61. Grace Annam says:

    In current medical practice, a transgender person must be diagnosed as having a psychological problem before he or she is allowed to have sexual reassignment surgery or hormone treatment. But what if instead of diagnosing him or her with a psychological problem, the doctor diagnosed a physical problem? That way the transgendered person could receive the appropriate treatment to change his or her body without having to submit to being labeled by the DSM.

    This. If someone asked you whether you, the essential you, is your body or your mind, which would you choose? I believe that most people would choose their mind. Some would want to say “soul”, but my followup would be: Okay, which is closer to the concept of “soul”, body or mind? Almost everyone would choose “mind”.

    Now, imagine that your body and your mind were not congruent. Which would you change?

    What if someone who barely knows you, or who doesn’t know you at all, told you that you were wrong, that it was obvious that your mind should change, and that if you didn’t agree, then you were delusional? Would you find that acceptable? Would it make you indignant? Angry?

    Trans people are told to accept such judgements all the time.

    The problem is that even though we regard the mind as more essential, we can’t see other people’s minds. We see their bodies. And we make assumptions based on what we see, and assign people to categories based on our own prior experience. For a trans person who is trying to interact with the world in the gender she identifies with, it simply makes life a lot easier if she can present cues to help people come to the correct conclusion (I use “she”, but it could be any pronoun). If society were different, that would be a lot less imperative, and probably in many cases unnecessary. There have been, after all, societies which accepted and valued trans people, and until the last few decades, no human being had access to the surgical interventions which make a modern transition possible.

    So, in order to live without every social interaction being a slap in the face, there is pressure on trans people to modify ourselves to conform to society’s expectations of a binary gender system. For the most part the pressure is not deliberately conscious, but it’s always there.

    Leaving aside value judgements as to which is more desirable, it’s a simple fact that there is no known way to change gender identity, but there are many ways to change the body. Given that set of facts, when someone insists that I should change my mind rather than my body it starts to look a lot like willful ignorance.

    Grace

    P.S. Thank you, Amp, for working hard to create a trans-inclusive space, where trans people can choose to do trans 101 or not, but are not expected or required to, and where trans people don’t always have to be the ones to call someone on cis privilege. It’s wonderful to have a public safe space where we can engage respectfully with all sorts of people. Too many trans safe spaces are trans ghettos.

  62. Grace Annam says:

    In the context of homosexuality, it always seemed obvious enough to me that it shouldn’t be considered a mental illness — although the psychologists disagreed with me for most of the 20th century. It also seemed obvious that “Alien Hand Syndrome” is a mental disorder. Transsexuality (or, the sometimes related desire for sexual reassignment) strikes me intuitively as closer to the latter. I am also, however, intuitively repulsed by the crazy folks who would want to “cure” transsexuals. Is a desire to engage in bestiality a mental disorder? Is the desire to rape a mental disorder?

    This looks a lot like you are drawing an analogy between transsexuality on the one hand and bestiality and a desire to rape on the other hand.

    I’m at a loss to think how you could do that and not see that it would be deeply offensive, just as offensive as drawing a parallel between homosexuality and pedophilia, and for the same reasons: (a) there is no connection, and (b) transsexuality and homosexuality are internal to each single person, and in themselves harm no one, while bestiality is abuse of an animal unable to consent, and rape and pedophilia are abuse of another human being who has not consented or cannot consent.

    This is probably one of the reasons that Ampersand said/did this:

    But — taking you at your word that your offensive and derogatory comments aren’t intentional — it seems pretty clear that, not knowing what is and isn’t offensive, you’ll be unable to cease being offensive even if you try.
    For that reason, in addition to the massive derail, I’m asking you to step off this thread. Thanks.

    That said, I know that I have said ignorant, offensive, privileged things in my life, things which I keenly regret and wish I could unsay, but which I only came to understand long after I said them. So, I hope that you learn and return to be able to participate again.

    Grace

  63. Grace Annam says:

    1) Trans women are women. Full stop. End of story.
    2) Trans men are men. Full stop. End of story.

    If you start with that simple assumption, the rest falls into place.

    Timberwraith, you rock. Spot on.

    Grace

  64. Grace Annam says:

    B. Adu wrote:

    Cisgender is not self-identification. I respect the right of trans people to name and describe themselves in their own terms. I just want the same for myself, I don’t see the difference.

    Cisgender can be self-identification. I’ve heard plenty of cisgender women use it in reference to women who were not trans, including themselves.

    But, as you can see, “women who are not trans” is clumsy and begs for a more compact word. “Cisgender” works. I’ve read some women objecting to it, but I’ve never read one present reasoning against it which seemed persuasive to me.

    Can you explain a bit more? What term would you prefer to use, particularly in reference to yourself, to mark yourself as not-trans? What makes that term preferable?

    When timberwraith wrote:

    1) Trans women are women. Full stop. End of story.
    If you start with that simple assumption, the rest falls into place.

    B. Adu replied:

    Yes, and also this is exactly how I feel about myself regards ‘cis’, if you leave out the ‘trans’ of course.

    I’m not sure what you’re saying. Would you clarify? When you say, “leave out the ‘trans'”, do you mean this “Women are women. Full stop.” or do you mean “Cis women are women. Full stop.”

    The second uses terminology which you object to. The first is obvious, unless the first “women” means “women who aren’t trans”.

    If we have “women” and “trans women”, then “women” implicitly becomes “non-trans women”, and by extension, “trans women” is something other than “women”. If we’re dividing the group into cis and trans, cis people don’t get to claim the name for the group and thereby exclude non-cis people from it. That would be like writing “birds” and “blackbirds”. The first contains the second, and you can’t use it for a group which excludes the second without making the second something other than the first.

    I really want to understand this objection to “cis” and “cisgender” better. I feel like I’m missing something obvious. I think chingona put it very well. What’s at stake?

    Grace

  65. Myca says:

    Cisgender is not self-identification. I respect the right of trans people to name and describe themselves in their own terms. I just want the same for myself, I don’t see the difference.

    Hair color is not self-identification either, it’s description.

    ‘Brunette women’ are women, full stop.
    ‘Blonde women’ are women, full stop.

    Yet if 99% of women are brunette, and a lot of people question whether blond women can rightly be considered women at all, I don’t see a single thing wrong with making a point of using the brunette descriptor.

    Why?

    Because it’s a good way of emphasizing that everyone has a hair color, not just blond people.

    Trans- and Cis- are descriptors. Both Transwomen and Ciswomen are women.

    Full stop.

    —Myca

  66. Mandolin says:

    I don’t know where B.adu is comign from, but some of the objections we’ve had on this cite to the ‘cis’/trans’ dichotomy have come from queer or gender queer women who consider themselves women but who have a gender presentation ambiguous enough that they are often read as male. Also, there are people whose gender identity is strongly baed around feeling neither particularly male nor female — and I don’t mean here the people who just haven’t considered what ‘male’ or ‘female’ mean, but rather people who have a place within radical communities but whose gender identification is very complex. These people are not necessarily served well by the trans/cis dichotomy (I hear one friend of mine call herself non-cis sometimes), which doesn’t mean — I think — that it’s not a generally good terminology to use in broader discussions.

  67. A.W. says:

    Mandolin,

    Which is the problem there, cisexual or cisgender? Since cisexual is subconscious I wouldn’t think anyone would have a problem with the word? From your description, it sounds like the latter wouldn’t fit but the former would prolly work well enough when discussing some issues, as long as people are clear. Clarity lacks, people like to shorten words. Though with the complaints I’ve seen previously on Alas I’m a bit surprised people haven’t made another word to replace the cis’s that they don’t like. The objections online in memory seem t’boil down to ‘trans doesn’t exist, so cis doesn’t either’ (Well, that or Robert’s ‘It’s the genomes/chromosomes/imaginary fertility options/little neon markers under the microscope/what have you), and I’m hard pressed to come up with any other remembered reasoning. And while ‘trans’ is a pretty broad descriptive society really doesn’t like the connotations that’s attached to it. ‘good enough for thee but not for me, I’m a – normal – person’ – perhaps that’s not what’s going on, but it’s been a hell of a cynical couple of decades. I’m trying to think of another part of …life? that the trans / cis options don’t account for, maybe a word’ll come up. And if a word doesn’t float itself into my head, I’d think there’d still need to be a term to refer to a group of people who don’t/don’t generally experience x-list of things past the broader set. Like say, when discussing employment opportunities. Or really, lack thereof.

  68. Vidya says:

    I also have a hard time wanting to cater to the special emotional needs of people who are 300 lbs because they have a steady diet of McDonald’s.

    So, does your bigotry allow exceptions for you to cater to the ‘special emotional needs’ of people who are 300 lbs and strict vegans, like myself? Incidentally, I think identifying oneself as ‘healthy’ while espousing such sick ideas is misleading…

    Btw, I use ‘normate’ body/weight to refer to the socio-medically constituted ‘ideal’ weight/range.

    I also find ‘cisgender’ a very useful term (although it doesn’t fully capture the nuances of my own gender identity/circumstances).

  69. Sailorman says:

    RonF, are you objecting to the existence of “cisgender” as a modifier? It seems fairly obvious that you don’t need to use it in normal conversation, as transpeople are a minuscule percentage of the US population. (although your choice of white as a default was relatively poor, as whites are only a 75% majority in this country and are less than 50% of the population in various areas. Statistically speaking if one were going to start qualifying one’s ‘societal default normal’ assumptions, the first four choices would probably be sex, race, religion, and hetero status. Trans would probably be pretty far down the list.)

    I can’t imagine bothering to describe someone as cisgendered in normal life, just because it’s so common. But compare:

    “Bob is trans. Norm and Bob do not agree on the APA classifications regarding gender and transsexuality.”
    to
    “Bob is trans and Norm is cis. Norm and Bob…”
    or
    “Bob is trans and Norm is not. Norm and Bob…”

    The latter two are much more clear. You can use “not trans” if you would like, but when you get sicmk of it you’ll be glad you have “cissexual” to fall back on.

  70. Julia Sullivan says:

    There are lots of contexts in which it’s helpful to have the “trans” and “cis” categories for discussion. “Cisgendered women and transgendered men should be alert to the following signs of ovarian cancer, while cisgendered men and transgendered women should be alert to the following signs of prostate cancer” is one that springs to mind off the top of my head.

    This may not be an everyday conversation that you have, RonF, but it’s an everyday conversation lots of people in the public health space have. I know of a woman whose prostate cancer took unconscionably long to be diagnosed, because the lab assumed that the request for PSA levels on her bloodwork was an error. Her doctor eventually had to walk the blood over herself and wait for the results in person, because the lab software kept rejecting a PSA result for someone with a female identity.

  71. Daisy Bond says:

    Re: Mandolin at 66. As someone with an identity on that general end of the spectrum, I understand that issue, and I think it’s therefore really important to differentiate between cissexual and cisgender. I am cissexual, but not cisgender, so when people say “cis women,” I have no idea whether that includes me or where I fit in the discussion. I wish we had a word for “cissexual and cisgender” — maybe that’s what people mean when they just say “cis”? In which case “cis women” excludes me. Hmm.

  72. This is an eye opening post. I was embarassed to ask what cisgendered meant, but I’m really glad I know now.
    And realizing that it’s a powerful statement to make, I’ll start trying to use it more often.

    I will be thinking for a while about what to call people who are at the “default” weight or size. Weight isn’t really what is being described, and I’m not sure size is either, because a short fat person can easily weigh less than a slender very tall person.
    To me, it has to do with having more fat, less fat, or almost no fat. In some ways, those body type classifications have it right, but they don’t describe someone who is perhaps genetically inclined to be larger but is struggling to be slender, or someone who finds extra weight uncomfortable for them.
    I’m finally comfortable calling myself fat, and lately, I’ve been referring to people who are in that middle, socially acceptable spot “not fat.” Considering that “average” is what by medical standards is considered overweight, it is a confusing, and subjective, thing.

    I’ve been struggling with this idea of saying someone has very little fat, has some fat (“average”), has lots of fat, and has lots and lots of fat. That puts fatness in the center, recognizes that every person has at least some fat, and that fat isn’t inherantly unhealthy. But it sure sounds weird.
    I was talking with my therapist about feeling uncomfortable around some coworkers, and said “Jane and Paul (not their real names) believe that if you eat right and exercise, you’ll be at a healthy weight.” — Therapist says “so do you.” I say, “but… but… oh, yeah, right.” So I believe healthy weight is highly variable on an individual basis.

    And Fate’s Lady, it seems like your issue is with people whose choices lead them to have ill health. So, apply that standard across the board, not only to those who are fat, but those who are thin but eat by your standards poorly and suffer ill health, too. You don’t have to look hard to find them. And if someone is able to eat by your standards poorly and “gets away with it,” health-wise, why wouldn’t you judge them, as well?

  73. Elusis says:

    I’ve been thinking the past few days about trying out the terms “low weight,” “middle weight,” and “high weight.” But that still raises the question “… as compared to what?”

  74. annie says:

    Okay, a little late on this one. Sorry!

    I like the terms lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight to refer to thin, “normal”, and fat people. But right now I’m really enjoying using the term “weird” to describe people who don’t fit in the normal BMI category. Because really, that’s just taking the logical progression a little farther – if you aren’t normal, that means you’re too thin or too fat (no one’s body could possibly be healthy without conforming to The Standard!), and that makes you a weirdo!

    Also, gosh. I haven’t been commenting on any blogs other than HAES and FA-related ones lately, but I almost forgot how common it is for (even normally progressive) people to espouse fat hatred. Remember, you can’t hate someone for their own good.

  75. Crissa says:

    I don’t find timberwraith’s comments to be helpful or educational.

    Many transsexuals (and other gender dysphorics) do find their genitals to bring them a loss of agency and would describe their genitals the same exact way that the phantom limb or alien hand syndrome is described. That’s one reason why self-mutilation in regards to sexual gratification is a symptom of gender dysphoria.

    There is no ‘full stop’ when it comes to the treatment thereof; the treatments can cause bodily harm to those who are seeking it inappropriately, and that brings harm to the very access to the treatments transsexuals need!

  76. I think that the objections to “cisgender” are pretty valid when one considers that people can be unwillingly labeled “transgender” based on behaviors that they themselves don’t view as “gender variant”. This is also why I strongly object to “transgender” being used as some kind of “umbrella” — it gets used to label people such as myself just because I had a sex change forever ago. My sex and my gender align just perfectly, thank-you very much.

    It seems to me that what’s being advocated here really is forcing labels on people against their wishes — and that includes the “fatty” and “skinny” labels right along with “transgender” and “cisgender”. I keep being surprised (and more than a wee bit offended) that supposedly progressive people are doing that.

    A word that is based on historically and socially constructed norms of behavior is just not a word that I think has a place in a progressive lexicon. “Behavior” is not an immutable trait, unless one wants to assert that Scots and Irish (and some English and some assorted wannabe …) men have some immutable trait that allows them to wear what is essentially a pleated (or not) plaid skirt.

    Nothing gives greater lie to the assertion that behavior is “gendered” than events such as the WWII war effort and the participation of women in heavy industry and all-but-shooting-bullets-at-NAZIs military supporting roles. Or as I’ve put it many times — why don’t male-to-female cross-dressers think that jeans and a button down cotton blouse is “women’s clothes”?

    “Transgender” has, if anything, done more to reify “gendered norms of behavior” than anything in the past 1,000 years, including “The Stepford Wives” and the Moral Majority. To imply that “trans-gender” is “on the other side of” (from the Latin root) and “cis-gender” is “on the same side of” is to say that the sides are somehow “real” and it used to be (and should still be …) that sex stereotypes were considered harmful, and particularly harmful to women. How feminism went from believing that to deciding it needed more terms to more clearly assert that gender stereotypes are “real” is behind my ken.

  77. Jessica says:

    I think your argument boils down to “Transgender” has, if anything, done more to reify “gendered norms of behavior” than anything in the past 1,000 years, including “The Stepford Wives” and the Moral Majority. and I think that’s demonstrably not true. There are plenty of people out there currently who have no idea what transgender even means, or think it’s synonymous with gay, and they have no problem holding up traditional gender stereotypes. If we were to go back over the past 1000 years like you suggest, that would be even more true.
    Basically, I think you can’t blame transgender people for living in and adapting to the world as it exists today, rather than in feminist-theory utopia. I would love to live in a world where gender stereotypes didn’t exist, and it’s possible that in such a world, fewer people would experience gender dysphoria. But it’s not their fault that we haven’t achieved that world yet.

  78. Jessica,

    There was a lot more to my post than just the objection that “transgender” serves to reify gender stereotypes. In particular, I objected to labels being applied to people against their wishes.

    As regards the specific point you objected to, I’ll note that “transgender” is not breaking down stereotypes — it is reinforcing the notion that there is a “correct” set of stereotypes for each sex (“cisgender”) and an incorrect set (“transgender”).

    Twenty or so years ago, back when I participated on a the USENET newsgroup “soc.women”, there was a poster by the name of “JJ” who was a man who happened to wear women’s clothing. I think he put it best — “these aren’t women’s clothes, these are my clothes”. My comment, as it relates to clothing, is that there are no penises or vaginas stitched in the hems of any of my clothing. I’m presently wearing three articles of “men’s” clothes and four articles of “women’s” clothes. My clothing has nothing to do with my “sex” or my “gender”. I wear women’s jeans because they fit. I buy men’s work shoes and boots because they also fit. I don’t check my clothes for tiny penises or vaginas, I check them for size and fit.

    I could go on, but it USED to be a tenet of feminism that the proper way to deal with such things was to expose them as socially-constructed, not to argue about the correct words for categorizing things into “fits social constructs” and “doesn’t fit social constructs”. As such, I’d argue that words like “transgender” and “cisgender” are counter to the goals of feminism — eradicating gendered classes of people. And that means that the “feminist utopia” you say we don’t have yet, but would perhaps be nice if we have, is all the less likely to come into being.

    The proper response to “transgender” and “cisgender” people should be a yawn. Or perhaps “Good morning” / “Good afternoon” / “Nice weather we’re having.” (the last does not apply in Texas in the summer time. The current practice — coming up with new words and descriptions and political arguments about whether or not a person adheres to gender stereotypes is just plain wrong on so many levels.

    Many years ago, back when I lived in an apartment in Dallas, there was a married couple where the husband and wife were both nurses. The man confided in me that many people assumed he was gay because he was a nurse, and not a doctor. We talked about how he came to be a nurse — he’d been an engineer, his wife was a nurse, he learned how much money they could both make nursing, and how they could relocate just about anywhere and make a living — and it all seemed to make sense to me.

    What “transgender” does is say that “not making sense” is somehow different from “making sense”. It doesn’t say that the entire concept of “making sense” is itself flawed, it gives a name to both concepts. I wear 12-Tall women’s jeans. I own a few pair of men’s jeans, because I happen to think those particular styles of jeans are tres chic (button fly jeans? very hot.). I also own, and wear, silk dresses, because I think they are very classical, and nothing says “snob” more than a dress that thousands of moths died for. The poor dears.

    The point, to wrap up this post and this now overgrown edit, is that people should have the freedom to be themselves without having others label them. AND we should facilitate that by breaking down labels, not coming up with new ones.

  79. Elusis says:

    I think it’s a neat rhetorical trick, how you manage to blame feminists for 1) noticing how the dominiant discourse privileges certain performances of gender roles, 2) coming up with a psychological/medical/sociological description of one variation on how to occupy said gender roles, and 3) using language to describe things.

    It’s… unique, anyway.

  80. I think it’s a neat rhetorical trick, how you manage to blame feminists for 1) noticing how the dominiant discourse privileges certain performances of gender roles, 2) coming up with a psychological/medical/sociological description of one variation on how to occupy said gender roles, and 3) using language to describe things.

    It’s… unique, anyway.

    If all that were being done is describing behavior as “gender variant” and “gender conforming”, and observing that “gender conforming” is privileged both in speech and social behavior, I wouldn’t be making the arguments I’m making. That’s a no-brainer and discussions about gender conformity go back to the earliest feminist discussions.

    However, “transgender”, which has become this completely insidious term in much of 3rd Wave Feminist Discourse, includes with it certain assumptions and assertions about “gender identity” and social classes. “Gender variant” and “gender nonconformity” are now being replaced by “transgender”. “Gender variant”, by itself, does not imply some “gender identity”, or membership in a different gendered social class, nor does it imply the potential for medical intervention the way that “transgender” frequently does.

  81. chingona says:

    Furry Cat Herder,

    I’m a feminist who believes that gender is mostly, if not completely, a social construct. Honestly, I have no idea how to fit what appears to be the experiences of people who are trans into that framework. I had always thought that was one of the reasons there’s a history of tension between feminism and people who are trans. But I’m trying to not be alienating or unintentionally hostile to people just because they don’t fit my theory of how gender works. It’s very difficult for me to conceptualize what it would feel like or how these people are relating to gender. So while I’m reading and trying to understand better what these people are saying about themselves, I’m trying to use the language they want me to use. This is actually the first time I’ve heard it suggested this is something feminists are trying to impose. I had thought it was language that had become the norm in the broader feminist community at the request of transgender activists.

  82. Elusis says:

    Chingona – exactly. I think laying words like “transgender” at feminism’s feet is rather odd. And since it seems to be part of the vocabulary preferred by the gender-variant people, activists, authors, etc. whom I’ve encountered, I find it really strange to suggest that “feminists” are doing something unwelcome to gender-variant people in using it.

  83. Grace Annam says:

    I think that Jessica in #77 said it better than I could have, and certainly more succinctly. Thank you, Jessica.

    FurryCatHerder wrote:

    In particular, I objected to labels being applied to people against their wishes.

    You did. But I think that this is a problem innate to language. Nouns and adjectives are imprecise by their nature. It is what makes them so powerfully flexible, but it’s also what necessitates clarification, and sometimes the attempt to create words which are not so burdened by connotation.

    It’s all part of the mess, isn’t it? We come up for a label for something in order to talk about it. Someone objects that the label doesn’t fit, and they may be right or wrong or in between, and there’s discussion and dialogue and meanings gradually shift. Show me a label and I’ll show you an exception which the label doesn’t fit, and also someone who objects to being so labelled.

    So I think you’re objecting to water being wet. You can’t have labels without imprecision and people objecting to it, often rightly. But you can’t have /any/ kind of discussion without labels. Sociologists have to wrestle with this all the time, and it takes up a large amount of their effort. How do you divide populations such that you can study differences between them and try to learn something? You have to draw lines somewhere, and inevitably that line will be in the wrong place when you view it from some other perspectives.

    One line you could draw might be between people whose determined-sex-at-birth is the same as their internal sense of themselves, and people for whom that is not true. But it’s usually a lot easier to write “transgender” and “cisgender”, even though the terms may not be a perfect match for that particular definition.

    It does seem to me that you are consistent in decrying both transgender and cisgender, as opposed to some feminists who are comfortable with “transgender”, and apply it to other people, but who reject “cisgender” and refuse to apply it to themselves.

    FurryCatHerder wrote:

    …it USED to be a tenet of feminism that the proper way to deal with such things was to expose them as socially-constructed, not to argue about the correct words for categorizing things into “fits social constructs” and “doesn’t fit social constructs”. As such, I’d argue that words like “transgender” and “cisgender” are counter to the goals of feminism — eradicating gendered classes of people.

    But a few posts earlier, she wrote:

    My sex and my gender align just perfectly, thank-you very much.

    FurryCatHerder, you’ve aptly demonstrated that the world is very much with us. You decry gender as social construct, and then you use it to talk about yourself. It’s a handy label, isn’t it?

    I was raised by a single feminist mother. I subscribe to that feminist ideal that we should work to get rid of gender as a social construct, or at least make it as irrelevant as possible.

    However, despite appearing biologically male and having been raised as a feminist, I find myself not comfortable living in this world while presenting as male. Perhaps, in the world feminists are working toward, I could be comfortable (perhaps not, since on the deepest level I expect to see breasts every time I look down, and they aren’t there… yet). But this is, at best, a world transitioning toward that world, and we’re nowhere near it yet. And tomorrow, I have to go out the door into this world.

    You write that “transgender” does this, and “transgender” does that, as if it were an entity capable of independent action. It seems to me that “transgender” can’t “do” anything, any more than “male” can “do” anything, or “female” can “do” anything, or “short” or “tall” can do anything. “Transgender” is simply an adjective which can be used to specify specific characteristics or a set characteristics, mostly based on personal identification and life experience.

    This argument that “transgender” reifies something-or-other… I don’t follow arguments like those very well, and where I really start to object to them is when they start to have negative impacts on individual human beings.

    Right now, your argument against “transgender” feels to me like a denial of my identity, and I’m not sure what you propose as an alternative. If I assert that I’m female on the basis of my deeply-felt sense of self, despite a physical appearance to the contrary, are you ready to back that? If so, then what does “female” mean to you in that context? If not, then where does that leave me if we do away with any concept of transgender? And if you argue that “male” and “female” gender are outmoded concepts which we should do away with, then why did you yourself transition to female?

    Perhaps you can think of the category/concept/label “transgender” as a necessary or useful stepping stone from this present, imperfect world, toward a better one. Maybe someday its utility will wane, and we’ll move on to other things. But for now, I find it a useful label for talking about who and what I am, in relation to the world I live in.

    And having to argue my existence, and my right to self-definition, while talking to a feminist… that does feel a bit odd.

    Grace

  84. Grace Annam says:

    RonF wrote:

    I also have a couple of degrees in the biological sciences. I tend to use the word “male” and “female” as being tied to one’s genome.

    With a couple of degrees in the biological sciences, you’re in a better position than most to understand than genes aren’t everything. After genesis comes teratogenesis.

    So from your first example, if someone can get pregnant they’re not a man – they’re a woman, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves a man or a woman and regardless of what gender they generally express. I have, and had at the time, no problem referring in general discussion to that employee that I was talking about earlier as “her” or “she”, but if I’m talking about something as tied to genetics and biology as pregnancy, she’s a he as far as I’m concerned.

    I’m fascinated. How do you determine whether each person you encounter is fertile? Is there some sort of test you have to apply, or do you have some sort of fecundity radar?

    Gender is primarily social, not biological (though obviously there’s a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram). When we encounter people, we don’t analyze their chromosomes, or ask how the sperm count is today. We look at many physical markers and social cues, classify them as male or female, and behave accordingly. Certainly when we’re planning to procreate the biological issues may come up, but the vast majority of the time they are unknown, assumed, and irrelevant. You pointed out earlier in this thread that you don’t have much day-to-day use for the term “cisgender”, and that’s fine, but by the same token, you don’t have much day-to-day knowledge of someone’s chromosomal makeup.

    You may not even know your own. Most people don’t. I don’t.

    If you met my brother, who is trans, you would be meeting a man. He shaves daily or grows his beard. He’s a tenor. He served in the Marine Corps (pre-transition, as our military is still transphobic) and saw combat, and shot and killed the enemy. He’s working to become a firefighter. He wants to marry his girlfriend, but is biding his time until her family accepts him. He’s a man. And, because the Veterans’ Administration’s policies are transphobic, he doesn’t have the medical care which was promised to him upon his honorable discharge, and therefore he still has ovaries and all the rest, even if they cause him problems.

    In other words, the only person who frankly has any right to care about his trans history is his girlfriend, and she doesn’t. So why should you? If you got to know him and palled about with him and liked him, and then found out that it was theoretically possible for him to get pregnant, would you suddenly start treating him as you would a woman? I doubt it.

    Biology is not always destiny. It’s not difficult to find examples of men with something other than XY chromosomes and women with something other than XX. Shoot, let’s try Wikipedia.

    There’s 5-alpha-reductase-deficiency. XY individuals who sometimes have female primary sexual characteristics, and generally (though not always) identify as female. For those who don’t masculinize at all, their appearance, upbringing, socialization, and complete life history are all within the normal range of human variation which we would call “woman”. But they can’t get pregnant.

    There’s complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. 46XY karotype, but external female appearance, and usually female gender identity.

    There’s Müllerian agenesis. XX chromosomes and external female appearance, but the uterus doesn’t develop.

    Congenital adrenal hyperplasia. XX chromosomes, but sometimes self-identifies as male and can have male development physically … except for female internal sexual organs. Can get pregnant (mechanical issues aside), but raised and presenting as male.

    How about someone who is a genetic mosaic? In some cases, such a person has both XX and XY chromosomes, and a great many combinations of various tissues are possible.

    And there are others. Among them, those of us who are trans for unknown reasons (maybe there doesn’t have to be a reason; maybe we’re just another way of being human, like you cis folks).

    Woman? Man?

    As Dr. Becky Allison wrote,

    Is this a woman – this person standing before you? Is the decision yours to make?

    Why not let the person decide, and leave the question of pregnancy to the people with a personal interest?

    Because that’s what’s at issue, here: how we treat people. Not squares and triangles on a genealogical chart. Not egg and sperm donors. People. How we treat them. And I would argue that, in general, we should treat people as they wish to be treated, or failing that, as we would wish to be treated ourselves, in the same circumstances.

    Grace

  85. Mandolin says:

    Grace — thank you very much for your comment. I have been mulling over FCH’s comments and am pleased to see how well you summed some of the many objections to her analysis.

  86. ARGH!

    No, I never said that “transgender” is something that feminists are trying to impose. I’m saying that “transgender”, as a concept, needs to be “re-worked” rather than “prettied-up”

    The word “transgender” was coined by Charles “Virginia” Prince, the same man who also founded the “Society for the Second Self”, or “Tri-ESS”, a support group for heterosexual male cross-dressers (and to some extent their wives). Prince’s original objective was to coin a term that cross-dressers who spent significant amounts of time “En Femme”, but did not identify as women and did not intend to have any kind of body modifications. And that was just fine.

    What has happened since is that more and more groups are being included under the “Transgender” label, including groups that DO NOT WISH TO BE INCLUDED. The result is this entire “Cisgender” fiasco, including women who DO NOT WISH TO BE INCLUDED under the “Cisgender” label.

    And since it seems to be part of the vocabulary preferred by the gender-variant people, activists, authors, etc. whom I’ve encountered, I find it really strange to suggest that “feminists” are doing something unwelcome to gender-variant people in using it.

    It isn’t like this controversy is a big secret. It’s re-enacted on countless feminist and transsexual boards and blogs on a regular basis. Within the transgender and transsexual communities, it is a regular source of strife.

    Simply put, “transgender” is applied to people who object to having it applied to them for a wide variety of reasons. The same objection is raised for “cisgender”.

    The “Feminist I” objects to “transgender” on the grounds that gender is socially constructed. That what is “normal” behavior isn’t intrinsically “normal”, except to the extent that it is actually based on biology. If there is no “normal” to gender, how can one be normal or not-normal? The quote “There are few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. The rest should be open to everyone equally” comes to mind.

    The “Transsexual I” objects to “transgender” on the grounds that it erases the very significant differences between the lives of “transsexual” people and “transgender-but-not-transsexual” people. Even in this discussion, “transsexual” is frequently replaced by “transgender”. There is a very large group of people who are “transgender-but-not-transsexual” who have no reason for legal, medical or psychological intervention. Yet here we are, talking about “transgender” like it’s this thing that requires access to all these services and so on. “Bob The Cross-Dresser” and “Jo The Stone Butch” don’t have 1/10th the grief someone who does the full-on sex-change thing can experience.

    The “Lesbian I” objects to “transgender” on the grounds that it has subsumed identities that previously existed. The majority of my sexual partners since the great sex-change-switcher-ooo have been somewhere on the butch scale. That includes women who are called “He” and “Sir” far, far, more often than I am. Many in the transgender community call such women “transgender”, rather than leaving things be and allowing them to identify with the more traditional “butch”. There are also serious doubts that lesbians-who-become-men are doing so with complete agency when there is so much “transgender everything” going around these days, complete with the incorrect notion, as I mentioned above, that “transgender” has anything at all to do with changing sex.

  87. Grace,

    I don’t know enough about you to make any kind of statements with a high degree of certainty that I’m right. But based on what you’ve said, I can tell you that if anything, I’m trying to give you back your identity rather than take it away.

    If I say “Grace is a transsexual woman”, the potential that someone is going to get the wrong impression is pretty much limited to whether or not you’ve had, or will have, “The Surgery”. And that’s about it. They might think you are really just a gay man, but they’d think that regardless of which term I (or you) used.

    If I say “Grace is a transgender woman”, the potential that someone is going to get the wrong impression is much greater, because “transgender” covers far more areas than “Grace is changing / has changed sex”. Some of those differences are very significant — like, are you LEGALLY “Grace”? Are you going to go back and forth ever? Does your internal anatomy differ from other women, and if so, how? And what about the external parts?

    Here’s a very simple, very real example —

    When I was hired by my last employer my name was a nice, typical male name — one of the more common ones, even. Over the course of the 14 years I worked for them, I started writing invention disclosures and have even had a fair number of U.S. patents issued. The trouble is that the “Non-Disclosure Agreement” that covers intellectual property I’ve developed has my old, male name on it. When I started having to forward that document to other people, people I never told I changed sex and never intended to tell, I had to come up with a process for getting that NDA changed. It was very difficult, and so far as I know the transsexual men and women who still work for that company can now use it if they need to. If “Bob The Crossdresser” attends a social function as “Bobbi The Transgender Woman”, by all means — call her “She” and all the other socially appropriate terms, etc. for a woman. Don’t harsh on her for using the women’s restroom and don’t ask pointy-headed questions about things that really aren’t anyone else’s damned business. But when Bob goes back to work, unless someone at the office met “Bobbi”, Bob doesn’t have to deal with issues, like my first patent was issued in my old name and the patent number was attached to my employee file.

    What “transgender” does, in the case of transsexual men and women, is erase those differences. If I want new life insurance, I have to be underwritten as a male, because my shriveled up prostate gland might someday go crazy. Even though I’m more likely to die from breast cancer than prostate cancer, life insurance companies require that I disclose what is one of my most closely guarded personal matters. And don’t get me started on the subject of medical treatment — like, that I have to lie about the hysterectomy I never had if all I want is a few stitches in a cut (I play with power tools a lot), or antibiotics for some sinus infection I have, or to have a solar keratoma removed (I play with power tools in the sun).

    When someone tells me that I’m a “transgender woman”, I find it really offensive that the differences between me and “Bob The Cross-Dresser” or “Jo The Stone Butch” have just been erased. Unfortunately, it’s pretty common for different experiences to be erased within the transgender community.

  88. Grace Annam says:

    FurryCatHerder, thank you for your reply. I understand better now where you’re coming from.

    If I say “Grace is a transsexual woman”, the potential that someone is going to get the wrong impression is pretty much limited to whether or not you’ve had, or will have, “The Surgery”. And that’s about it. They might think you are really just a gay man, but they’d think that regardless of which term I (or you) used.

    If I say “Grace is a transgender woman”, the potential that someone is going to get the wrong impression is much greater, because “transgender” covers far more areas than “Grace is changing / has changed sex”. Some of those differences are very significant — like, are you LEGALLY “Grace”? Are you going to go back and forth ever? Does your internal anatomy differ from other women, and if so, how? And what about the external parts?

    I think that the level of general ignorance on this topic is such that most of those questions are going to be asked in either case.

    The reason that someone is perhaps more likely to get the wrong impression with the word “transgender” is part-and-parcel of its utility: it’s not as precise as the word “transsexual”, which has a more definite meaning. But sometimes imprecision in language is very useful.

    Here is how I understand the two terms and how they relate together:

    Some cats are Siamese. All Siamese are cats.

    Some transgender people are transsexual. All transsexual people are transgender.

    To me, it seems strange when someone comes along and says, “I’m transsexual. I’m not transgender.” It’s as though someone came along and said, “That’s not a cat; it’s a Siamese.”

    But that’s where the problem arises, in a form of transphobia. There are transsexuals who don’t want to be lumped into the same group with the crossdressers, the drag queens, and the genderqueers. They insist that they are completely different. Some of them get pretty strident about it, even vicious. And they’ll go on to insist that they should be entitled to rights which they would deny to the crossdressers, because the crossdressers are different, aren’t real, etc.

    That attitude (and I’m not saying it’s yours), has always struck me as pretty despicable. It’s on a par with someone who is climbing a hanging ladder to safety, hears the thing creaking, and chooses to saw the bottom off the ladder rather than strengthen the structure. To hell with all those people climbing along behind; if they were fit to rule they’d have climbed faster.

    It seems to me that transsexuals like you, who can disappear into the woodwork, and like me, who plan to be able to, owe a great debt to public crossdressers and others who put it right out there. There would not be a national dialogue about our rights right now if it were not for them. There would have been no Stonewall, no Compton’s, if it weren’t for them. As uncomfortable as they may make many people, they were the ones getting beaten down first, and so they started fighting back first.

    So, apart from what I have in common with all human beings, I may not have a lot in common with crossdressers. But I do have this: most of the same people who want to bash their heads in would be happy bashing mine in, and vice versa, and wouldn’t care about any differences between us even anyone tried to explain it to them.

    And that means that we share something in common. On that level, and some others, we are the same, even if there are also differences. So I’m transgender, and make no bones about it. I’m also transsexual. I’m also not a crossdresser or a drag queen. And I’m comfortable with all of that, the same way I’m comfortable with the fact that some cats are Siamese, all Siamese are cats, some cats don’t have hair (Manx), most cats do, and so on.

    The world is a messy place, and infinitely more complex than human understanding. Theory is very useful, but we should be very leery of imposing our theories on individual human beings; a lot of horrific history has that aspect of human behavior at the root.

    What “transgender” does, in the case of transsexual men and women, is erase those differences. If I want new life insurance, I have to be underwritten as a male, because my shriveled up prostate gland might someday go crazy. Even though I’m more likely to die from breast cancer than prostate cancer, life insurance companies require that I disclose what is one of my most closely guarded personal matters.

    I don’t think you can fairly lay the problems with insurance underwriting at the feet of the concept “transgender”. If we admit that it’s fair for insurance companies to price based on risk, then we have to accept that they get to try to assess that risk, even if we may limit that assessment in some cases. I don’t know what that has to do with the word “transgender”, except that you have to out yourself every time you buy insurance. That’s true, but the root of that problem is transphobia, not the word “transgender”, and we deal with that problem the same way we deal with sexism: social and political action. Medical records are a pain, because transitioned trans men can’t get computers to accept that they might need a hysterectomy or pap smear, and transitioned trans women can’t get computers to accept that they need PSA screening. But that’s ignorance or transphobia on the part of the people who coded the databases; I don’t see where it has anything to do with the utility or problems of the word “transgender”.

    …if all I want is a few stitches in a cut (I play with power tools a lot), or antibiotics for some sinus infection I have, or to have a solar keratoma removed (I play with power tools in the sun).

    Frankly, it sounds like we’d get along! I played with concrete and power tools in the sun yesterday, and I’m about to do it again today.

    When someone tells me that I’m a “transgender woman”, I find it really offensive that the differences between me and “Bob The Cross-Dresser” or “Jo The Stone Butch” have just been erased.

    So tell them that “transgender” covers a lot of ground, and that it’s really better to call you as a particular individual “transsexual”, because that’s more precise. I’m totally with you on that.

    Grace

  89. Elusis says:

    FCH – you said this here at 76:

    “Transgender” has, if anything, done more to reify “gendered norms of behavior” than anything in the past 1,000 years, including “The Stepford Wives” and the Moral Majority. To imply that “trans-gender” is “on the other side of” (from the Latin root) and “cis-gender” is “on the same side of” is to say that the sides are somehow “real” and it used to be (and should still be …) that sex stereotypes were considered harmful, and particularly harmful to women. How feminism went from believing that to deciding it needed more terms to more clearly assert that gender stereotypes are “real” is behind my ken.

    And then at 78 you say

    it USED to be a tenet of feminism that the proper way to deal with such things was to expose them as socially-constructed, not to argue about the correct words for categorizing things into “fits social constructs” and “doesn’t fit social constructs”.

    My objection is not to having a critical discussion about gender and the language we use to talk about it. It is to your sudden assertion that “femninism” has gone from believing that “sex stereotypes [are] harmful” to “deciding it need[s] more terms to assert that gender sterotypes are ‘real.'”

    What do feminists have to do with anything here? Did feminists invent the term “transgender”? Since when is “feminism” (in quotes because it’s hardly a monolith) suddenly announcing “stereotypes are A-OK!” Are feminists deciding the terms of the debate on gender identity? I would argue that no, differently-gendered-people are mostly having the debate, and if anything, mainstream feminism is trying to come to the table belatedly and figure out how to accomodate the expansion of categories like “man” and “woman. Not that mainstream feminism is doing it well, or at least second-wave feminsim – witness arguments still being had about who can come to which music festival/retreat/bath house/etc. – but younger feminists in particular, who have less of a tendency to be gender essentialists, do generally seem to endorse the idea that we should honor people’s self-definitions because the ability to self-define is a key component of agency. And that includes talking about those who define themselves as “transgendered,” by using that term. *And* not definining “the opposite of trans” as “normal,” because it pathologizes others as “not normal.”

    Thus, feminism would seem to be the *ideal* framework for having a more nuaunced discussion about how even the “trans/cis” discussion breaks down and is imperfect, because sex and gender are complicated, and nothing complicated is ever going to be cleanly and precisely capture-able by something as imperfect and rough as language and its categories.

    My objection here isn’t to saying “trans/cis” is imperfect, or that people should have the right to say “that label doesn’t work for me.” It’s to you blaming feminism for this imperfection, and for using the term to describe people who do say “that works for me.” Saying “feminism is at fault, feminism should know better, oh for the days when feminists actually believed _____” is an argument that mostly benefits anti-feminist forces.

    And I then run up against statements like

    When someone tells me that I’m a “transgender woman”, I find it really offensive that the differences between me and “Bob The Cross-Dresser” or “Jo The Stone Butch” have just been erased. Unfortunately, it’s pretty common for different experiences to be erased within the transgender community.

    and I have to wonder what’s the function of transphobia in your own argument here. I have been an ally of transpeople for a long time, and when I see this whole “oh don’t imply that I have anything in common with the cross-dressers or the butches or the faggots or the whatevers,” I wince, because the primrose path to being the oppressed oppressor is so seductive, and full of privilege, and I see the internal hierarchy of “fully-transitioned, totally stealth people on top; everyone else line up behind or maybe get thee to another group because you’re Not Like Us” as actively hurtful to fighting gender oppression because it just replicates the dominant discourse. Kyriarchy, here we come.

    Which isn’t feminism’s fault either.

    Grace says it better in 88.

  90. Grace writes:

    The reason that someone is perhaps more likely to get the wrong impression with the word “transgender” is part-and-parcel of its utility: it’s not as precise as the word “transsexual”, which has a more definite meaning. But sometimes imprecision in language is very useful.

    But … upthread it is very clearly stated that “transgender” people are the ones who transition and need access to therapy, etc. That’s not at all the case for the reason you (mistakenly, in my opinion) gave — “Some transgender people are transsexual. All transsexual people are transgender.” If you actually look up-thread, “transgender” is used to describe, for want of a better term, “The Transsexual Experience”. Here — go look at your response at 61.

    What’s not been discussed in this thread is all the other categories that are “transgender” — the primary focus of “what is ‘transgender'” would be more accurately “what is transsexuality”.

    Julia @ 70 further reinforces the “transgender is transsexuality” theme by stating that “Cisgendered women and transgendered men should be alert to the following signs of ovarian cancer, while cisgendered men and transgendered women should be alert to the following signs of prostate cancer” So, what is a gay male drag queen who fully identifies as a man? Is he no longer “transgender”? Or, is he no longer a “man” because Julia says so? Are male-to-female cross-dressers, most of whom will strenuously insist they are men, somehow different?

    Are you starting to see my point? And are you planning to apologize for accusing me of transphobia at any point in this discussion?

    So, let’s start over with the cast of characters, toss you in for good measure, and add Bob’s wife Sue.

    Furry — post-op male-to-female transsexual.
    Grace — pre-op male-to-female transsexual.
    Jo — stone butch lesbian who frequently unintentionally passes for male.
    Bob — male-to-female cross-dresser.
    Sue — Bob’s natal female wife.

    Using “cisgender”, “transgender”, “man” and “woman”, classify those 5 people, then see how well that aligns with your medical advice example. And can you even come up with five “assignments” that actually make sense and don’t wind up saying someone is a man or woman when they tell you otherwise.

    Now, for all the people you labeled “transgender”, see how well your statements about needing access to “The Transsexual Experience” actually apply. Furry and Grace? Yeah, sure — a nice little old man in Neenah did some very nice things to my body, and it sounds like you’re on that path as well. Jo and Bob? Survey says … not so much.

    What utility, exactly, does “Transgender” have again?

  91. Grace Annam says:

    But … upthread it is very clearly stated that “transgender” people are the ones who transition and need access to therapy, etc. That’s not at all the case for the reason you (mistakenly, in my opinion) gave — “Some transgender people are transsexual. All transsexual people are transgender.” If you actually look up-thread, “transgender” is used to describe, for want of a better term, “The Transsexual Experience”. Here — go look at your response at 61.

    Okay. /Grace reads her post at 61./ We could discuss how clear I was, but I think you’re reading something from what I wrote which I didn’t intend. I used “trans”, which is easy shorthand and deliberately vague. It could be short for “transgender” or “transsexual”. The person I was replying to used both “transgender” and “transgendered” (the latter a term I dislike), but clearly intended to include people who require medical intervention.

    Regardless, I disagree that the usage I quoted in 61, or my own verbiage in 61, support your contention that

    …it is very clearly stated that “transgender” people are the ones who transition…

    because I don’t see the dichotomy you do between “transgender” and “transsexual”, for reasons I recently laid out. I see transition as a continuum, just like gender.

    Whether someone wants or needs medical intervention, and to what extent, is not a binary issue. Those who complete a total social and medical transition obviously need the most, but there are those who can’t get GRS because unrelated medical conditions don’t permit surgery. There are those who want hormones for feminization or masculinization and could have GRS but don’t want it. Some MtF people, and some crossdressers, get electrolysis and stop there.

    I don’t have a good term for “people who aren’t cisgender but don’t want/get/need/have medical intervention”. Perhaps that would be a useful term, but “transgender” is not that term.

    So, what is a gay male drag queen who fully identifies as a man? Is he no longer “transgender”? Or, is he no longer a “man” because Julia says so? Are male-to-female cross-dressers, most of whom will strenuously insist they are men, somehow different?

    Good questions. In my opinion I might call either or both of them transgender, depending on context, but I’m certain there are people who would answer differently. Who is right? We each have our own idiolect. Maybe we’re all wrong, or all have a piece of the puzzle, and maybe the puzzle is not fixed in time and space, but a moving target. Trying to pin language down is like trying to nail Jello to a wall.

    Are you starting to see my point?

    I’m pretty sure I saw it earlier, but I see you presenting it again. I just don’t agree with it.

    And are you planning to apologize for accusing me of transphobia at any point in this discussion?

    I didn’t know that I had. I referred to a particular point of view as transphobic, but I did you the courtesy, explicitly, of not assuming that it was your point of view. If you /do/ subscribe to it as I wrote it, in 88, in the paragraph beginning “But that’s where the problem arises”, then I stand by what I wrote. I think that point of view is transphobic.

    So, let’s start over with the cast of characters, toss you in for good measure, and add Bob’s wife Sue.

    Furry — post-op male-to-female transsexual.
    Grace — pre-op male-to-female transsexual.
    Jo — stone butch lesbian who frequently unintentionally passes for male.
    Bob — male-to-female cross-dresser.
    Sue — Bob’s natal female wife.

    Using “cisgender”, “transgender”, “man” and “woman”, classify those 5 people, then see how well that aligns with your medical advice example. And can you even come up with five “assignments” that actually make sense and don’t wind up saying someone is a man or woman when they tell you otherwise.

    Sure. Just for fun, I’ll add in a few more people on the spectrum:

    Robin – genderqueer person born biologically male but asserting that ze is neither male nor female
    Leslie – born intersex, assigned female at birth, but identifying as male and taking a small dose of testosterone in order to masculinize, unable to have large surgery because of diabetes
    Hank – born intersex, assigned male at birth, and identifying as male despite having ambiguous genitalia, but non-op by choice because he doesn’t see the need

    As I use the term, Furry, Grace, Bob, Robin and Leslie would be transgender. Furry, Grace and Leslie would be transsexual. Using the word in its broadest sense, some people would classify Jo as transgender, but I don’t think I would unless Jo claimed it. Sue and Hank are cisgender.

    Furry, Grace, Jo, and Sue are women. Bob, Leslie and Hank are men. Robin is neither.

    Now, for all the people you labeled “transgender”, see how well your statements about needing access to “The Transsexual Experience” actually apply.

    “The Transsexual Experience” is your term, not mine. I would never use the definite article in that way, because I don’t think there is one monolithic transsexual experience. If, by that phrase, you mean medical intervention, then Furry, Grace and Leslie would need medical intervention, Bob and Robin might or might not, and the others don’t.

    Ambiguous? Yes. But I’m okay with that, because when it comes down to individual cases, individuals can assess cases and do their ethical best to act appropriately. Everything else is theory.

    What utility, exactly, does “Transgender” have again?

    It’s an umbrella term for people whose personal experience of gender does not match heteronormative expectations. Sometimes, you need to refer to that population en bloc, and there’s your term for it.

    At http://nodesignation.wordpress.com/definitions/ I found another definition which I like, and which is pertinent to this discussion:

    Transgender or trans – [adj] … a person whose gender is not universally considered valid.

    Grace

  92. Grace,

    So now we have the case where we both seem to agree that “Bob” is a transgender man. We can agree with that, right? And we can agree that “Sue” is a transgender woman. Right?

    So, let’s get back to the earlier statement by Julia @ 70 — the one about “transgender women need to be checked for prostate cancer”, or whatever. No longer accurate, is it? And yet that example was touted as a reason for having “transgender” in the lexicon. Except that it is only an accurate statement for TRANSSEXUALS (and some intersex people).

    A very large part of the problem with “transgender”, besides the fact that some people very rudely insist on using it to describe people who’ve plainly asked NOT to be labeled with it, is that it covers so much territory that it is functionally meaningless. That’s shown by Julia’s comment @ 70.

    The same problem happens in all the other areas that are touched by people lumped under “transgender”, and that’s what makes “transgender” so very difficult to wrap ones head around —

    Good questions. In my opinion I might call either or both of them transgender, depending on context, but I’m certain there are people who would answer differently. Who is right? We each have our own idiolect. Maybe we’re all wrong, or all have a piece of the puzzle, and maybe the puzzle is not fixed in time and space, but a moving target. Trying to pin language down is like trying to nail Jello to a wall.

    In the case of the meaning of “transgender”, yes, very much a moving target. The term that “transgender” replaced was not that difficult to get right — “gender variant”. The reason that it was a much better term is that it doesn’t carry all the complexities of all the different ways someone can be “gender variant” along with it.

    “Gender variant” implies nothing about legal, medical, psychological, etc. issues. A “gender variant” man may or may not need medical intervention, the ability to change identifying documents, difficulty marrying a person of his preferred sex (or gender), or any of the other myriad problems that are often discussed as “problems that transgender people face”. “Bob” — no jurisdiction is going to deny him a marriage license when he wanted to marry “Sue”. “Jo” can marry any man she wants (even though she doesn’t want to), but it’s not clear that I can marry anyone and have my marriage respected. Texas can’t even decide what sex I can marry.

    Unlike “transgender”, the problems that “gender variant” people face are fairly common amongst all “gender variant” people — social pressure to be gender conforming, ridicule, rejection, ostracism, potential discrimination, and so on. Likewise, the needs of “gender variant” people tend to be pretty common as well — education of the unwashed masses, civil rights protections, better social acceptance, and perhaps a few other things. Finally, because “gender variant” doesn’t carry with it any implied actions (see my comment about all the confusion about “transgender people transition”), backlash over such things as “Butch Flight” aren’t introduced by people who are advocating for “gender variant” people.

    And guess what — using “gender variant” covers all the same people as “transgender”! It’s more functional and far less controversial.

  93. Elusis says:

    Grace –

    I don’t have a good term for “people who aren’t cisgender but don’t want/get/need/have medical intervention”. Perhaps that would be a useful term, but “transgender” is not that term.

    “Genderqueer” is one many folks seem to be using, or “gender variant.” Genderfork is an online place for some folks who might indentify with “not trans, not exactly cis either”.

  94. Sorry, missed that one —

    I don’t have a good term for “people who aren’t cisgender but don’t want/get/need/have medical intervention”. Perhaps that would be a useful term, but “transgender” is not that term.

    Are you aware that historically “transgender” referred ONLY to people who “don’t want/get/need/have medical intervention”?

    I realize people are supposed to distrust everyone over 30, but one advantage of being over 30 is remembering when “transgender” ONLY referred to that set of people. A huge part of why I have so little to do with gender activists is because circa 1998-2000 they decided it would be great to thoroughly confuse people by replacing “transsexual” with “transgender”.

    I did a public presentation once and was asked almost nothing about transsexuality, and just about everything about “transgender”. Into the early 00’s I was being asked for all sorts of “transgender” advice that I had no clue about. I don’t know the best way to make fake breasts — I grew my own myself. I don’t know how to hide a beard — I don’t have one. The only time I speak up in public anymore is to correct misperceptions or incorrect information. Why? Because of your comment —

    I don’t have a good term for “people who aren’t cisgender but don’t want/get/need/have medical intervention”. Perhaps that would be a useful term, but “transgender” is not that term.

    — and the same attitude from other “activists” who just don’t know the history of the community.

  95. Grace Annam says:

    So now we have the case where we both seem to agree that “Bob” is a transgender man. We can agree with that, right?

    Sure.

    And we can agree that “Sue” is a transgender woman. Right?

    Um… no. Sue is a natal woman who identifies as female, and in post 91 I labelled her as both “cisgender” and “woman”.

    So, let’s get back to the earlier statement by Julia @ 70 — the one about “transgender women need to be checked for prostate cancer”, or whatever. No longer accurate, is it? And yet that example was touted as a reason for having “transgender” in the lexicon. Except that it is only an accurate statement for TRANSSEXUALS (and some intersex people).

    Okay, then Julia used the term in front of her and perhaps should have used “transsexual”. Or perhaps she meant something other than what you mean. Maybe she meant to include people crossdressers who take hormones and present female (or aspects of female) full-time but still identify as male. I don’t know. I’m not Julia.

    Furry Cat Herder, you’re asking for total consistency from a term which is still in flux, as you’ve noted. Language changes. Words even reverse their meanings. “Uncanny” no longer means the opposite of “canny”. “Tawdry” evolved out of a kind of fine lace, “St. Audrey’s lace”. “Gay” used to mean “happy, joyful”. This term is in a state of change from what it used to mean to something else. The definitions I’ve presented are from my own current experience, and they are how I see the term being used in most general conversation.

    The term that “transgender” replaced was not that difficult to get right — “gender variant”. The reason that it was a much better term is that it doesn’t carry all the complexities of all the different ways someone can be “gender variant” along with it.

    “Gender variant” implies nothing about legal, medical, psychological, etc. issues.

    It certainly does! It implies that there is a standard set of genders, which are the norm, and then there are those genders which vary from the norm. That’s what “variant” means.

    By contrast, “transgender” and “cisgender”, or “transsexual” and “cissexual” put no implicit value judgement on one group in relation to the other. I think that’s very, very valuable.

    I realize people are supposed to distrust everyone over 30, but one advantage of being over 30 is remembering when “transgender” ONLY referred to that set of people. A hugepart of why I have so little to do with gender activists is because circa 1998-2000 they decided it would be great to thoroughly confuse people by replacing “transsexual” with “transgender”.

    The only time I speak up in public anymore is to correct misperceptions or incorrect information. Why? Because of your comment –

    I don’t have a good term for “people who aren’t cisgender but don’t want/get/need/have medical intervention”. Perhaps that would be a useful term, but “transgender” is not that term.

    – and the same attitude from other “activists” who just don’t know the history of the community.

    I think that at this point I will try to bow out of this conversation, for a number of reasons. It’s going to be a busy week for me, and my time is limited. We are starting to go ’round in circles and drift off topic. I’m starting to get the impression that I’m spending significant time trying to address the core issues, and that you’re no longer reading my replies very closely. The tenor of the conversation is going downhill, and at this point it’s pretty much two people not agreeing. If you want to reply to this message, I’ll do my best to let you have the last word and leave it at that.

    Best wishes,

    Grace

  96. Grace writes:

    It certainly does! It implies that there is a standard set of genders, which are the norm, and then there are those genders which vary from the norm. That’s what “variant” means.

    By contrast, “transgender” and “cisgender”, or “transsexual” and “cissexual” put no implicit value judgement on one group in relation to the other. I think that’s very, very valuable.

    Well, it is obvious that we’re talking past each other. That much is very clear, because you completely missed what I wrote. I didn’t write about “value judgments”, I wrote about the implications that the two terms carry with them.

    I think you’ve more than adequately demonstrated my objections to “transgender” — every time “transgender” comes up, you want to find a way that “transgender people” are changing their bodies, even though “transgender” is supposed to be an umbrella term that covers the full spectrum of gender folk — most of whom will never take a hormone pill or modify their bodies in any kind of permanent manner.

    My answer to “Why we need the word ‘cis'” is that we don’t. We need to start using much more precise, error prone, misleading and confusing terms — “gender variant” and “gender normative”. For people who feel they are neither, “gender queer” seems to work.

  97. Ampersand says:

    I think that at this point I will try to bow out of this conversation, for a number of reasons.

    I just wanted to say that I’ve really appreciated your participation on this thread — although I haven’t had much to say, I’ve been reading the whole thread, and really enjoyed your posts in particular. Thanks!

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