Don’t Call Me Cis.

CAUTION : Post deals with issues of gender identity.

NOTE : This post is not designed in anyway to denigrate the real issues suffered by transpeople, and this post should not be read as such. It is intended as part of a series of thoughts on gender, and how it applies and affects those I know and love. If you choose to leave a comment that is derogatory to any group, it will be removed.

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Over the past few weeks, gender normativity has been much on my mind, and there is likely to be a few posts around this issue over the coming weeks.

One of the things that makes me feel very uncomfortable, is the label “Cis”, for all kinds of reasons.

First, cis (meaning, litterally, “on this side of”) is a very polarising term. It suggests that, in the gender debate, the options are “Cissexual”, or “transexual”, and that there is nothing in between. It suggests that gender has gained ANOTHER binary level. You are either Cissexual, that is that your physical and mental genders have always aligned and know nothing else, or transexual, where you haven’t. This seems to me to be replacing one binary (male and female) with another binary (cissexual/transsexual), rather than approaching gender in a much more fluid and sensible way (Mimi Marinucci makes the same point, so wikipedia informs me).

Gender is not a binary. It is a scale. Cissexual is one very tiny dot on one side of this scale. Perhaps it is even a mythical dot, the place where all other gender ideas are defined against, and from there the scale moves. Perhaps it’s not even a scale, perhaps it’s a wheel, spiraling out from the center. However you want to mental map it, it’s definitely not a binary.

Cissexual, as a term, makes all kinds of assumptions. It assumes that people are aware enough of gender issues to have thought them through for themselves, and it assumes that any mis-match between gender and biology immediately forces one to question that assigned gender, and at the moment of questioning become ‘transsexual’. Not only does this remove the lived experience of those people who have struggled for a long, long time with their gender identity, but it also moves a lot of people who would not consider themselves transexual into that camp, and further makes a term that has been fought for to be less meaningful. It seems to me that to suggest that if you even question your identity you cease being Cissexual can cause all kinds of social anxiety, which is not something we need any more of.

Second, calling me Cissexual because I present as a white, middle-class male does exactly what those who are seeking equality and normativity for the term transexual are against. You are applying a label to me that I do not accept for myself. It is a label that I don’t recognise as applying to myself, and while I would neither take up the mantel of transexual, I cannot assent to the idea that my physical and mental ideas of my gender have always been aligned.

That’s before I get into the idea of what on earth I think my gender actually is. Masculinity/maleness is such a vague definition, with very little bounding, that it is hard to find a place in it that looks anything like what I would consider my experience to be.

For most purposes, I fit into the ‘male’ box, but it’s not a box I chose, but rather one that was assigned. I don’t feel overly uncomfortable, and there is no other option that fits. I stay here, being male, because the debate hasn’t got to those of us living in grey areas. I can define myself as not being female, and have no desire to be famale, but this box labelled male is not me. It is a label I rarely think about.

Personally, I find Cismale as being insulting. Especially when the term is used about me without any form of conversation simply because I present as male. To say that I’ve never found it difficult to reconcile my physical gender, with my understanding of gender without asking for my world experience is a complete denial of my world experience, and an insistence that I accept theirs.

There needs to be a much wider debate on sexuality, though perhaps the world is not quite ready as it’s still getting it’s head around transexuality. I think that for me, I would like people to only use labels that they apply to themselves. If person A is happy with transexual, then let them use it of themselves, and then let the world use that label for them. If a Cissexual person is happy with the term, then let them use it of themselves, and let the world use that label for them. However, let us not force labels onto people who may not entirely fit them

~BX