In gender studies, cisgender ( /ˈsɪsdʒɛndər/) and cissexual are a closely related class of gender identities where an individual's gender identity matches the behavior or role considered appropriate for one's sex.^[1] There are a number of derivatives of the terms in use, including "cis male" for a male with a masculine gender identity, "cis female" for a female with a feminine gender identity, and "cissexism".

Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook defined "cisgender" as a label for "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity", complementing "transgender".^[2] A similar adjective is "gender-normative"; Eli R. Green wrote, "The term 'cisgendered' is used [instead of the more popular 'gender normative'] to refer to people who do not identify with a gender diverse experience, without enforcing existence of a 'normative' gender expression."^[3] Jessica Cadwallader characterizes the slightly wider "cissexual" similarly, as "a way of drawing attention to the unmarked norm, against which trans* is identified, in which a person feels that their gender identity matches their body/sex".^[4]

Cisgender v. cissexual[link]

According to Julia Serano, cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned", while cisgender is a slightly narrower term for those who do not identify as transgender (a larger cultural category than the more clinical transsexual).^[5] A crossdresser, therefore, could theoretically be "cissexual" but not "cisgender". Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty and She's Not the Man I Married, has argued on her blog that "cissexual" is a less loaded term than "cisgender" and reflects fewer assumptions about the person's relationship to gender roles and the transgender community.^[6]

Origins[link]

Cisgender has its origin in the Latin-derived prefix cis, meaning "to/this the near side," which is antonymous with the Latin-derived prefix "trans." This usage can be seen in the cis-trans distinction in chemistry, or in the ancient Roman term "Cisalpine Gaul", i.e., "Gaul on this side of the Alps". In the case of gender, however, "cis" refers to the alignment of gender identity with assigned gender.

Internet use[link]

The word "cisgender" has been used on the internet since at least 1994, when it appeared in the alt.transgendered Usenet group in a post by Dana Leland Defosse.^[7] Defosse does not define the term and seems to assume that readers are already familiar with it. It may also have been independently coined a year later: Donna Lynn Matthews, the charter maintainer of the alt.support.crossdressing usenet group, attributed the word to Carl Buijs, a transsexual man from the Netherlands, claiming that Buijs coined the word in 1995.^[8] In April 1996, Buijs said in a Usenet posting, "As for the origin, I just made it up. I just kept running into the problem of what to call non-trans people in various discussions, and one day it just hit me: non-trans equals cis. Therefore, cisgendered."^[9][10]

Academic and Literary use[link]

German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch may have been the first to use the term "cissexual" ("zissexuelle" in German) in a peer-reviewed publication: in his 1998 essay "The Neosexual Revolution", he cites his two-part 1991 article "Die Transsexuellen und unser nosomorpher Blick" ("Transsexuals and our nosomorphic view") as the origin of the term.^[11] He also used the term in the title of a 1995 article, "Transsexueller Wunsch und zissexuelle Abwehr" (or: "Transsexual desire and cissexual defense").^[12]

The terms "cisgender" and "cissexual" have more recently been used in publications, such as a 2006 article in the Journal of Lesbian Studies^[13] and Julia Serano's 2007 book Whipping Girl,^[5] after which the term gained some popularity among English-speaking activists and scholars.^[14][15][16] Proponents of using the terms rather than terms like "non-transsexual" or "non-trans" have argued that it calls attention to and unsettles the assumption that people, by default, have an internal sense of being male or female that matches the sex marker they were assigned at birth: for example, Jillana Enteen wrote that "cissexual" is "meant to show that there are embedded assumptions encoded in expecting this seamless conformity."^[17] On the other hand, other authors have argued that other terms are more likely to be familiar to readers: for example, Krista Scott-Dixon noted "I prefer the term non-trans to other options such as cissexual/cisgendered... as I think it both centers trans as the norm, and presently offers more clarity to the average person than the cis prefix."^[18]

Serano also uses the related term "cissexism", "which is the belief that transsexuals' identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals."^[19] While having been used by trans activists for some time,^[20][21] the term "cisgender privilege" has recently appeared in the academic literature and is defined there as the "set of unearned advantages that individuals who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth accrue solely due to having a cisgender identity."^[22]

Further reading[link]

• Gorton R, Buth J, and Spade D. Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men: A Guide For Health Care Providers Lyon-Martin Women's Health Services. San Francisco, CA. 2005. p (10,22) ISBN 0-9773250-0-8
• Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the Body New York: Basic Books.

See also[link]

Look up cisgender in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Gender taxonomy
• Heteronormativity
• List of transgender-related topics

References[link]

External links[link]

• Transsexual Roadmap Transgendered Glossary. 1996-2005.
• Dean of Students Transgender FAQ. University of Texas at Austin.
• From Metrosexual to the Uber-Complex: Multiple Identities of Gender and Sexuality^{[dead link]} Intersections of Identity conference. Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Paul Robeson Campus Center

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John Aravosis (born 27 November 1963) is an American Democratic political consultant, writer, gay activist and blogger. Aravosis, an attorney who lives in Washington, D.C., is the founder of AMERICAblog and a co-founder of StopDrLaura.com.

Aravosis is a lawyer and worked on Capitol Hill as a foreign policy adviser for Ted Stevens, a Republican senator in the late 1980s and early 1990s before becoming a Democrat. He subsequently worked at the World Bank, the Children's Defense Fund, and then started his own political Internet consulting business in 1997 and AMERICAblog, a liberal news blog dealing in politics (because, according to its masthead, "a great nation deserves the truth"),^[1] in 2004. He has also written as a stringer for The Economist and Radar^{[citation needed]}. He has a joint law degree and masters in foreign service from Georgetown,^[2] where he studied under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

In June 2009, The Advocate listed AMERICAblog on its list of top fifteen gay blogs.^[3] The blogs were not ranked.

Activism[link]

In 1998, Aravosis defended U.S. sailor Timothy R. McVeigh (not to be confused with the terrorist Timothy McVeigh), who was being kicked out of the military because he had engaged in homosexual activity. Nine days before McVeigh was to be discharged, Aravosis came to his defense and launched an online campaign that got McVeigh and his case on ABC News' World News Tonight, Time, Newsweek and beyond.^[4] The publicity Aravosis generated for McVeigh in this pro bono campaign got a lawyer interested in helping the sailor, and he won his case against the military and was able to get an honorable discharge and reportedly large settlement with AOL.^[5]

In 2000, Aravosis and a small group of friends launched StopDrLaura.com, the first-ever successful boycott of a TV show.^[6] StopDrLaura, a one-year long pro bono campaign, got 170 of Dr. Laura Schlessinger's television advertisers to pull their endorsements after Dr. Laura called gays and lesbians "biological errors", compared gay men to pedophiles,^[7] and routinely denigrated women^{[citation needed]} and abortion.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Aravosis launched a campaign against vice presidential daughter Mary Cheney in 2004 for accepting a US$100,000 a year job running the vice president's re-election campaign. ^[12] Aravosis' website, dearmary.com, was immediately profiled in Newsweek and the Washington Post, and his image of Mary on a milk carton "Have you seen me?" was reproduced widely.^[13]

Aravosis outed Jeff Gannon as "a conservative operative and as an alleged male prostitute" while Gannon (real name James Guckert) was working as a White House reporter for the Talon News.^[14] }}

In response to complaints from the religious groups, Microsoft pulled its support for a Washington state gay rights bill and then said it was rethinking its support for civil rights nationwide.^[15] Aravosis launched a campaign to highlight Microsoft's change of heart.

Aravosis took on the Ford Motor Company when, in response to a boycott from a conservative organization, Ford was pulling its support for gay advertising and gay organizations.^[16] Ford maintained that it was re-structuring its advertising for business reasons unrelated to any social agenda, and, indeed, Ford continued to buy advertising space in gay media for its Volvo division.^[17] Aravosis launched a campaign on his blog to get Ford to recommit itself to the gay market, even though Volvo pulled advertisements, Ford never left the gay market.^[18]

Aravosis started hosting his own Internet television show, DemsTV. As of February 2006, DemsTV became PoliticsTV, restructured its programming, and added many specials.^[19]

References[link]

• The Advocate. "The Top 15 Gay(ish) Blogs." 9 June 2009. (accessed June 14, 2009).

Notes[link]

1. ^ Quoted in The Advocate 2009.
2. ^ John Aravosis bio at Wired Strategies
3. ^ The Advocate (2009-06-08). "The Top 15 Gay(ish) Blogs". Retrieved 2009-06-18.
4. ^ Wired Strategies - Master Chief Timothy R. McVeigh
5. ^ McVeigh
6. ^ StopDrLaura.com
7. ^ News & Politics
8. ^ AlterNet: Stopping Dr. Laura
9. ^ E! News - GLAAD Not Happy with Dr. Laura
10. ^ Adubato, Steve PhD (2000-03-16). "Dr. Laura is Dangerous ". Caucusnj.org. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
11. ^ Schlessinger, Laura (1999-04-19). "Legal abortion not the salvation that feminists claim", Jewish World Review. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
12. ^ Sean Bugg (26 February 2004). "Hailing Mary: Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter becomes target in gay marriage debate". Metro Weekly. http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=885. Retrieved 2008-03-16. 
13. ^ Wolfe, Elizabeth (2004-02-19). "Mary Cheney's View on Gay Marriage Sought ". Washington Post. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
14. ^ Mary Ann Akers, Roll Call, April 5, 2005.
15. ^ Kaushik, Sandeep (April 2005). "Microsoft Caves on Gay Rights". The Stranger. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
16. ^ Sean Bugg (8 December 2005). "Roll Over: Ford puts itself at the center of the latest battle over gays and corporate America". Metro Weekly. http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=1875. Retrieved 2008-03-16. 
17. ^ CNN (2005-12-06). "Ford can't please anybody". CNNMoney.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
18. ^ Daily Kos: Ford makes the right decision
19. ^ Gupta, Shankar (2006-03-07). "Left-Wing PoliticsTV.com Debuts Online". Online Media Daily. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.

External links[link]

• AMERICAblog
• Aravosis questions transgendered inclusion in the gay movement on Salon
• Politics TV
• StopDrLaura.com
• Democrats.com (On Aravosis's advocacy)
• DailyKos.com (Markos on Aravosis's blogging)
• Geek Philosophy (Aravosis named "Geek of the Week")
• Vanity Fair on Aravosis's role in Jeff Gannon story