An absence of belief is not the erasure of someone else’s
Last year glosswitch wrote 9 reasons why “cis” isn’t working.
1 Cis is not a necessary alternative to trans
Many people find it hard to see what is wrong with this statement:
But what if someone said this:
“anyone not Muslim is Christian”
It doesn’t make any sense, does it? The fact that being a Muslim is predicated on having a religious belief does not mean that anyone who is not a Muslim must have a different religious belief, let alone one specified by you.
She’s framing “cis” as a belief about gender, part of a belief system about gender. The point is, not everyone buys into that belief system. We don’t have to, and many of us don’t. It’s not our belief system.
There is quite clearly something missing: the space for people who do not wish to be defined by these belief systems at all. In the case of the former statement, that would be a huge number of feminists, with good reason.
I am not religious. I don’t define myself as an atheist any more than I define myself as a “not believer in fairies”. I just don’t wish to define myself in relation to religion in any way, shape or form. Does it mean I don’t believe Muslims are Muslims? Of course not. Similarly, does not identifying as cis mean I don’t believe trans people are trans? Clearly not. Nor does it mean that I am agender (I am female and I am a woman. Gender does not come into it). An absence of belief is not the erasure of someone else’s. On the other hand, the demand that someone actively endorses your worldview by declaring themselves a believer or risk being deemed a bigot and subjected to ongoing threats and abuse … well, what would you call that?
An absence of belief is not the erasure of someone else’s.
That’s such an important point.
2 It’s morally unacceptable to demand that another person swears allegiance to a belief system they experience as harmful
This is what is being done when feminists who do not believe in gender as anything other than a construct are ordered to identify as cis. It is not merely unfair; it is cruel, a cruelty which is intensified when the consequences of not submitting are to be declared a hateful bigot and a TERF.
And expelled and ostracized from all decent society.
3 Individuals should have the freedom to identify with any gender – or none
This is linked to the previous two points and it is that basic: to be cisgendered has no meaning to someone who does not experience themselves as gendered in any way other than by the gaze of others.
That. It’s nothing to do with stuffing a sock down your jeans, it’s to do with who you are to yourself as opposed to the gaze of others.
In a recent piece for the Guardian, Fred McConnell described gender as “one’s innate sense of self”. I don’t know what this means. This does not mean I am deficient or ignorant. It means I don’t think that’s what gender is. Hence when McConell says “cisgender […] refers to those whose sex and gender do match” I am 100% sure that I am not cis. I don’t experience this matching but nor do I experience a sense of allegiance with any other gender construct.
My “star sign” is Aries, but that means nothing to me, and it wouldn’t mean any more to say my “star sign” is Leo. There is no match between my sense of myself and any star sign, because I don’t believe in astrology.
4 Trans women should not depend on non-trans women for self-definition
Why the hell should they even want to? My not-cis-ness says nothing about your trans-ness. You don’t need me as a foil to offer validation. You are your own person.
And I’m my own person. I reject the claim that my sex and gender match, but that doesn’t mean I think nobody is either cis or trans.
Oh, this is so spot on.
Isn’t it?
Oh man, this is poor arguing, poor thinking. I’m surprised you’re featuring it. This part in particular: “does not identifying as cis mean I don’t believe trans people are trans? Clearly not. Nor does it mean that I am agender (I am female and I am a woman. Gender does not come into it).”
If you’re saying that transness is a belief system about gender akin to religion being a belief system about the universe and/or morality, then you are also saying that you don’t believe that trans people are trans, just that they believe themselves to be trans. You’re saying that being trans has no independent meaning, that it’s possible to simply not be trans. You’re saying, implicitly, that you know what causes people to be trans and they they have a choice not to be.
There’s certainly room for this to be the case- I always try not to elevate my hunches to the level of fact prematurely, and I don’t claim to know what causes trans people to be trans. Perhaps being trans is a belief system which one can choose not to have. That doesn’t in any way accord with my experience, but who knows, maybe it’s a culturally specific disorder and subconsciously I’m expressing something else through this. But, make no mistake, to say that being trans is to choose a certain belief system about gender is to say that you know what causes trans people to be trans, and that it’s possible to believe yourself out of being trans.
There’s no other interpretation. Poorly argued, does not convince. Next.
VR Urquhart @3:
Hold on a sec. Let me grab some popcorn. This should be fun.
#4, Did you read the thread where I argued that if gender really is 100% socially constructed, then we could do away with sexism in a generation by the simple mechanism of all women transitioning to male and all female children being raised as male?
That was fun. I’m pretty sure I won it, too.
The point is, if you start from the premise “In reality, there is no such thing as a man or a woman beyond the physical biology, but I’m tolerant of your calling yourself whatever you like so long as you’ll be tolerant of my believing you aren’t one.” Then all you’re doing is declaring victory in the guise of offering a compromise. And, to reiterate, there’s nothing so wrong with having that belief about gender and talking about, it may even be accurate for all I know, but it’s not a compromise it’s the whole shebang.
Here’s a question: If you’re female, and you use female pronouns for yourself, and you’re comfortable calling yourself a woman, and you’re not trying to change your female body, then what do you think you’re objecting to when you object to using the shorthand “cis” to encompass all that? (Here’s a hint: you’re objecting to trans people.)
@5, wait, were you under the impression that I give a living shit about your arguments on a previous thread? A dead shit? Any shit at all? Because if you were under the impression that I give a shit about any argument you have ever made on any platform in any universe, you are simply wrong. I honestly could not care less about you or your arguments. Before I read the phrase “There’s no other interpretation” and copied your name, I didn’t even know you existed.
Instead, when I read the phrase “There’s no other interpretation” I think, well, here’s a colossal blowhard who will soon be shown wrong by folks who will provide other interpretations. Like, for instance, here’s one: She is not saying that transness is a belief system about gender akin to religion being a belief system about the universe and/or morality.
Boom! And just like that, another interpretation.
That was fun.
Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought by going for popcorn you were indicating that you enjoyed this sort of thing.
And, yes, she is saying that. Let’s go to the text:
From Ophelia: “She’s framing “cis” as a belief about gender, part of a belief system about gender. The point is, not everyone buys into that belief system. We don’t have to, and many of us don’t. It’s not our belief system. ”
And, from the original author: “In a recent piece for the Guardian, Fred McConnell described gender as “one’s innate sense of self”. I don’t know what this means. This does not mean I am deficient or ignorant. It means I don’t think that’s what gender is.”
The author has a belief about what gender is that is incompatible with believing trans people have an innate sense of [gendered] self. I don’t say so, she says so.
Having objected to being defined as the opposite of the male for thousands of years it should not come as a surprise to anyone that women, females if you will, object to being defined as the opposite of the trans. And yet it does.
Both of these belief systems make truth claims. Either all people have an innate sense of gender, or some people have an innate sense of gender and others don’t, or gender is not something about which one can have innate senses because it is entirely socially constructed and no part of it is or could be innate. Believing one of those three things does not change the fact that one of them is the case and the other two aren’t.
The religion example is not inapt. In religion, there are many possibilities, but at the core of the matter is: “Either there is one or more supernatural deities or there are none.” Believing in a supernatural deity or not believing in one has no real bearing on the question of whether there are any, or what their nature is if there are.
If I were to say “Supernatural deities are entirely a matter of belief and culture, they don’t actually exist. But don’t worry- this doesn’t mean I don’t believe that Christians believe in God and Jesus and all that, of course they do believe that!” Then am I offering a compromise with Christianity that respects their belief system as equally valid to my own, or am I slyly putting it down and re-stating my lack of belief in it? This shouldn’t be a hard one, but take all the time you’d like.
No, you really didn’t.
@8: No, she’s saying that the sort of sense of gender and self reported by some trans people is not a universal since lots of other people (cis trans and other) report not having that. One can agree that A personally experiences such a sense without conceding that everybody does. I don’t think you’ve read with any great attention to comprehension. Possibly you should pay less attention to trying to “win threads”, which isn’t actually a thing.
Ophelia, I crafted a panel in your honor about this very topic. Don’t know how to get it to you, without posting it
Okay, interesting, SAWells. It’s certainly possible to believe that some people don’t have an innate sense of gender (I’m arguably one of those people) and others do. But, if that’s the case, and if she’s not trans, then what exactly is she objecting to when she objects to the word cis?
I mean, I’ve quoted her above, and my interpretation is that she doesn’t understand gender writ large as being something that has an innate component- that is the “belief system” she’s going on about. But, if you have a different interpretation (One perhaps not based on anything she actually says, but on what you hope she believes?), then I’d love to hear it.
As for the ‘winning threads’ thing- a joke, sorry. I thought the popcorn comment indicated that good ol’ #4 and I came from a shared point of reference about internet arguments, and that they’d enjoy reading through a good one. I was wrong, it only indicated that my dear friend #4 thought I was… what did they call it… oh yes, a colossal blowhard. Which I will cheerfully cop to! I can be a real colossal blowhard at times, and no hard feelings to my esteemed #4 for pointing it out. After all, we all have our flaws, after all, don’t we?
Being trans implies dysmorphia, doesn’t it?
If a person feels like they are the other sex (in a binary system) or some other sex, they are trans. That is real. I for one am perfectly willing to admit trans women to the larger category “woman” based on that.
“Gender” is another kettle of fish. It seems to be the kettle we’re arguing about.
I would never argue with anyone’s sense of their “innate self.” But if they claim, for example, that their innate fondness for soft colors and self-decoration means they’re women because objective gender categories exist in which “women” are known by their fondness for pink and make-up, we have a problem.
Indeed, we do. And I appreciate your good humor about it.
LadyMondegreen, Personally, I’m basically okay with using the presence of at least some dysphoria as a criteria for transness. In the trans community, there’s this whole thing over it, it’s very complicated, but for you and me here and now we can go with using the presence of dysphoria as the dividing line between trans and cis.
This makes things very easy, doesn’t it? If someone doesn’t have dysphoria, particularly if they’re not seeking transition or asking for any change of pronouns (that’s where the complications come in, but they’re a distraction, believe me), then we call them cis. Cis is just a short word that means “not trans” or “doesn’t experience dysphoria” or “not seeking to transition or change pronouns”.
Anyone who continues to object to the word cis is really objecting to the word trans as well, after that point. At least- and I’m sure #4 will correct me if I’m wrong- I don’t see any room for agreeing that you’re not trans, that you don’t experience dysphoria, and that you’re not seeking to transition (or have transitioned already), and having a problem with shortening that as “cis” that isn’t also a problem with some people being trans.
All that being said, I do think there are finer gradations in there. Not everyone who experiences dysphoria experiences the same level of dysphoria. So, maybe there are people who experience some dysphoria but aren’t seeking to change genders or pronouns who don’t fit perfectly in either category- but that’s not what the author is saying. She’s not saying “I have dysphoria, but not enough to rise to the level of being trans”. If she was, it would be really a different conversation entirely.
The only way I can see to interpret it is:
some people experience gender as something internal and intrinsic to them, and may be transgender or cisgender.
other people do not experience gender as something internal and intrinsic, and do not fit that paradigm.
Thus, people who do not fit that paradigm can accept that other people do, and treat their sense of identity with respect. However, we ask the same respect be paid to our sense of self.
VR, the writer isn’t saying you aren’t trans. Ophelia isn’t saying you aren’t trans. I’m not saying you aren’t trans. You experience yourself that way– why should we disagree?
The question is, why do you say that other people don’t have the right to define their own internal experiences? Why do you think you have the right to the the writer or Ophelia that their experiences have to fit into your paradigm?
Oh, also, a small point: gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia are different things. Whether/how they’re related is a whole other conversation, and an interesting one, but basically gender dysphoria is about feeling that gendered parts of your body are wrong and you want to change them to be different, while dysmorphia is believing your body to be different than it is. A dysmorphic person might have successive nose jobs while continuing to see their nose, falsely, as huge, but a dysphoric person sees their body as it is and will become more comfortable with it as it changes to approximate the one they’d like to have.
Medically speaking, this is why the treatment for dysphoria may include surgery, but the treatment for dysmorphia wouldn’t.
If cis means not trans, that’s one thing (but there are different degrees of dysphoria).
But if it means, as I have often seen it defined “someone whose sense of gender matches their assigned sex at birth”, then hell, no, many people do NOT have a sense of gender that matches their assigned sex. i believe *this* is the definition of cis that the writer was referring to.
Samantha, I believe I quoted the writer, and Ophelia, accurately. I certainly have never said that I don’t think some people’s gender is culturally determined- that if they’d been born into a different body they’d have been equally comfortable. But, if that’s so, then they’re still cis since all cis means is not trans or not experiencing dysphoria or not seeking to transition. Anyone who fits that fits cis.
Perhaps the misperception here is that she/you/Ophelia think that someone is saying all cis people have to strongly identify as their gender and feel a deep inner sense of it and consider it a huge part of their identity?
If I made up a word for “not a one eyed giant” would you object to being called that on the grounds that you’d never really defined yourself as not being a one eyed giant before? I mean, you either are a one eyed giant or you’re not, so, what’s the problem?
We cross posted, making my previous comment a bit redundant- sorry!
“maybe there are people who experience some dysphoria but aren’t seeking to change genders or pronouns who don’t fit perfectly in either category”
Yes. Yes, there are.
I’d be hella confused if some people defined a one-eyed giant as a cyclops, while other people defined a one-eyed giant as anyone who wasn’t a four-eyed dwarf.
I agree. I also agree that there is probably a spectrum.
Glosswitch is discussing problems with the concept of cis gender.
So I think your #3 was premature. She’s not saying trans-ness is just “a belief system about gender,” or that “being trans has no independent meaning.”
Quite right, and not such a small point, either! Thanks, VR.
Samantha #23, Well, I get that. I really do. It’s not something that comes up in the conversation much, but it really should, because I think it’s not uncommon and may be at the heart of some of the bad feelings that come up in these discussions for some people.
My own history is of being the transphobic closeted trans guy (much like the homophobic closeted gay person we’re all familiar with). I used to absolutely rage about trans people and how pathetic and fake they were, and it’s embarrassing and unfortunate but it seemed to me that if anyone was trans then I was trans too, so therefore I had to prove that anyone being trans was bullshit. I still struggle with a lot of transphobia to this day- I’m doing better, but I’m far from over it.
For me, when I finally realized that no one was actually stopping me from just transitioning if I wanted to, it was a huge moment of relief and change for me. Just allowing the possibility that I, too, had the option to transition made me instantly so much less angry, less resentful, less jealous. What I was really angry about was being forced to stay a woman while other people got to not be, and when I admitted that I was the only person forcing that on myself I started to get better.
I don’t want this to be taken in any way to say that anyone with a bit of minor dysphoria is really trans and needs to transition (I haven’t even fully decided if I’ll do so, although I lean that way most days). But, I am saying that I can relate to feeling left out and resentful of the cis/trans language.
I’ve opted for genderfluid as a descriptor. When I’m in male mode, it goes so far as to influence my homonculus (the part of the brain that gets readings from the body) and creates a sort of ‘phantom limb’ effect giving me a sense of a male body. On the other hand, most of the time I spend in neutral mode and try to ignore my body (mostly due to poor health). Sometimes, I am in touch with my body as it is. If a magic wand gave me the right to have one body, but only one, of my choice, I would probably be perfectly healthy, six feet tall, and male… in that order of importance.
If the magic wand didn’t confine me to one body, I’d be a shape shifter.
Since there are no magic wands, the only thing I should focus on is my health.
Good luck to you with your plans.
@VR Urquhart – thanks for clarifying the dysphoria/dysmorphia issue. Much appreciated.
As to the cis/trans thing, I’m perfectly happy to be called cis if the definition is “not trans”. Or “does not have dysphoria”. I’m really NOT happy if the definition is “my innate sense of gender matches my socially assigned gender”. These definitions seem somewhat slippery in discussion.
I’m also prepared to go out on a limb and say no-one has an innate sense of gender. I’m pretty sure they do have an innate sense of sex, and a really strong identification with the associated gender, but gender is so culturally, socially and historically varied that it’s not really possible to be innate.
Pliny @ 12 – feel free to post it if you’d like to. Or I could email you via the address in your sign-in? Or you could use the contact button, which goes to my email.
Just to reiterate what Samantha and Alethea and SAWells have already said – I too have no problem with cis meaning not trans, but I do have a problem with cis meaning comfortable with/identifying as assigned gender. It’s not the case that cis is always used to mean not trans, it’s often expanded into those extras that do not describe me. That’s glosswitch’s point too.
Why do we need a word for “not trans” as if trans is the default? Trans is the modifier. If I’m not trans, then I don’t need to specify that I am trans, and can therefore call myself man or woman. Cis is a meaningless term.
So, we’re just arguing over the straw man of “all cis people must feel totally comfortable in their assigned gender”? If you say so- that’s not what the quotes said, certainly.\
There are many ways of being trans. So, it follows that there are many ways of being cis. There are even, yes, border cases. You won’t get drummed out of your blogging network for saying something like “Even though I’m not trans I do have a very complicated relationship to gender in general and my own gender in particular, and I wouldn’t say I feel fully comfortable in it.”
Not that I think OB should have been drummed out, obv. Even if she really was saying the things it seemed like she was saying until she clarified that she and the author she quoted were both saying this other thing. I believe I’ve even gone so far as to write an article to that effect. I do, however, think this blog has a tendency to take issue with straw men, or to quote others who do so. Cis really just means not trans. Further descriptions are generally meant to clarify or inspire empathy, and shouldn’t be taken as definitional or representative of some belief system about how all cis people feel that is held by everyone who considers themselves trans or somehow necessary to trans identities.
@33, VR Urquhart
Identity is a legitimately odd idea if you don’t have one.
“One of the big things we talk about, in trans feminism, is the concept of “gender identity”– the subjective internal sense of oneself as male, female, or nonbinary. Trans people are people whose gender identity doesn’t match their gender assigned at birth; cis people are people whose gender identity does.
But the thing is… I think that some people don’t have that subjective internal sense of themselves as being a particular gender. There’s no part of their brain that says “I’m a guy!”, they just look around and people are calling them “he” and they go with the flow. They’re cis by default, not out of a match between their gender identity and their assigned gender.”
https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-default/
Cis just means not trans, in the same way that North just means not South.
Anyway, I’m sitting in a chemistry department right now! the posters on the walls have cis trans ortho meta para dextro levo …
Hang on, let me get a Rabelais ref… Anti-peri-cata-met-ana-par-beuged-amphi-cribrationes! (the sifting of the prepositions).
From the discussion:
After reading the comments – and after finding that *no one* here (well, including me) seems to have any problem with “cis meaning not trans” – I followed the link from the OP. I wanted to understand glosswitch’s real point. I wanted to know why the piece was written. (Or, in other words, I wanted to see what’s hidden behind the strawman.)
Here are the fragments which strike me as crucial:
And also:
As I see it, glosswitch criticizes „cis” in order to get rid of irksome phrases like “cis privilege”, being thrown at the AFAB women. If “cis” is so hopelessly wrong as she suggests, this surely would give us an excellent reason to “just leave it there”!
It is my impression that most (all?) of the commenters here are not particularly happy with these methods. The means chosen by glosswitch are not satisfactory – that’s the general consensus, isn’t it?
How about the aims, then?
Ariel above,
I don’t have a problem with it, but it’s not a sufficient definition because it’s a privative so that it relies on a definition of “trans” which is not circular.
John Morales, I was thinking of VR Urquhart’s “it’s very complicated, but for you and me here and now we can go with using the presence of dysphoria as the dividing line between trans and cis. […] Cis is just a short word that means “not trans” or “doesn’t experience dysphoria” or “not seeking to transition or change pronouns” (see #18).
I wasn’t claiming that it’s a perfect definition (I think nobody here made such a claim); it’s just that for many aims – including the present discussion – it’s workable enough.
It’s helpful to have working definitions, even if there’s are some complications and unanswered questions, I think. That’s why, even though I know trans people who claim not to experience dysphoria, I think it’s still useful to use dysphoria as a stand in for a longer, more complicated discussion where there’s still room for disagreement.
In the gay rights movement, the existence of bisexuals was once felt to be something of a threat to gay rights, because these were people who could choose not to be with someone of the gender. So, people denied bisexuality existed, or went along with stereotypes of bi people as devious, promiscuous, or dishonest. Tensions exist between bisexuals and gay/lesbians to this day, but we certainly don’t see the existence of bisexuals as an existential threat to gay rights any more. The existence of people who want to medically transition but don’t have dysphoria, or people who seek pronoun changes without medically transition, are probably going to be a bit like that. Not an existential threat, even if they are a bit different from the sorts of trans people who experience dysphoria.
I read the earlier post about the genderfuck who wanted to fly with a sock down their pants, and it’s a good example of what I’m talking about. Whatever that person’s deal is, it doesn’t delegitimize trans people whose concerns are, shall we say, maybe a bit more pressing than whether or not to keep a sock in their pants while boarding an airplane.
VR @ 34 –
Well, yes, if I say so, because I’m the one who posted this and I know what I was thinking. I do say so – and it’s not a straw man; I see people saying that and variations on it frequently.
You think that’s a straw man so there’s no issue; fine, then this thread won’t interest you. It does interest me. I do take an interest in this claim that women who are not trans “identify as” women.
VR @ 41 –
Indeed it doesn’t; that’s part of why I posted it. (Only part. Another part was just the plain hilarity. But still part.)
The identity thing. Oh, man, the identity thing. “Identify as” is a meaningless phrase- let’s just all agree on that.
I’ve spoken with intelligent trans advocate type people, the sort you’ve ended up fighting with, and when you pin them down on “identify as” it’s really just a way to say that yeah, we think people either are trans or aren’t trans, but we don’t make a big deal out of trying to smoke out the fake trans people and distinguish them from true trans people- we take people at their words when they say they’re trans or cis, even though people can lie, they can be mistaken, and there’s some underlying combo of nature and nurture that makes a person trans that can’t just be identified into or away from.
I understand, this isn’t necessarily what everyone is saying, and it’s not what is generally said publicly, and I share the frustration with that. People use “identify as” constantly, and they defend “identity” as sacrosanct, and all without being able to clearly articulate what identity even means in this context. I mentally substitute “just be nice and don’t argue with what people say they feel is true about themselves” while rolling my eyes hard whenever it’s used in ways that make it more than that.
Ok, but this is the issue, isn’t it. I try not to get in people’s faces about how they personally identify, but that doesn’t mean I think the whole subject should be walled off from discussion. That’s exactly what I don’t think. I think subjectivity, and the self, and identity, and what they all mean and how we think about them, and how we think about how we think about them, and meta to as many levels as you like – I think all that has to be wide open to discussion.
And that’s why I needed to leave the blog network I was on and come back here where I can freely discuss subjectivity and the self and identity.
OB, I very strongly support your doing so. I know I only tepidly supported you on Slate, but I’ve got a career I’m trying not to lose in LGBTQ journalism.
I think this “identify as” stuff is totally fair game- actually I think it’s all fair game, but I think the issues you take with the identity language are some of your stronger points.
Personally, I make an effort to seek out the more intelligent, thoughtful people who write about a certain topic, ones who have already heard all the most obvious objections and answered them, and then I test my arguments against those people, rather than looking for idiots who have never thought deeply about a question and blowing them out of the water. That’s both a) why I comment here and b) a standard I expect from others who are capable of participating in discourse at a high level. You’re smarter and more experienced at this than I am, so I don’t always understand why you bother taking potshots at the low hanging fruit, (other than that, perhaps, you’re still learning the lay of the land on this topic, to some extent.)
And me also.
VR – Ah. Right, I get you.
Partly it’s just that I’m interested in what you call low hanging fruit, which I see more as a very popular and influential rhetorical campaign. That’s the second part. I’m interested in it, and also, it’s popular and influential. Because it’s so popular and influential, it’s doing a lot of harm, I think.
To you these are low hanging fruit but as someone who is kind of new to the issues, I’ve been trying to figure out where I fit in based on definitions I’m being told. So when the definitions conflict with each other or just seem to limit the range of allowable behavior, etc, I am uncomfortable.
Samantha Vimes, #29:
There’s no such thing as a magic wand, don’t be silly. I’m waiting for a Mind ship from The Culture (Iain Banks’) to drop by and solve our (very similar-sounding) problems ;)