So, here’s the thing, cis people who have a problem with “cis.” I am going to politely request that you get over it.

Because we do need a label to describe people who are cis gendered, and “cis” is a really good label to use because it is value neutral. “Not trans” carries a whiff of a suggestion that there’s something wrong with being trans, just as “not disabled,” again, suggests that there is something wrong with being a person with disabilities. “Normal,” “real,” “regular,” biological,” “natural,” and so on also carry negative connotations, because that means that trans people are “abnormal,” “not real,” “irregular,” “not biological,” and “not natural.” I would hope that people can see that being called “not real” would be offensive to someone who is trans.

Cis is not being used to divide or separate people. It’s being used as an adjective, to distinguish people with a particular type of gender, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We have a whole family of words to describe people through various characteristics. Just as I have no problem with being called a “white person” because, uhm, I’m racially white and a person, cis folks shouldn’t be upset by being called “cis people.”

Labels: bodies, disability, feminism, gender