This is swell!
just a quick break down of what cis means - if anything is incorrect hit me up
(via genderqueer)
I find it annoying and misinformed. But I also see the good in it. I don’t think it in any way suggests that transmen are somehow fake. In fact, I think its purpose is to suggest that transmen are just as much real men as “bio” men. By saying “biological” I think that people are merely saying that that trans and bio are different ways of being men, and thus they are trying to say that they are not assuming we are any less men.
It has the same purpose as cis or cisgender or cissexual, and thus I appreciate the person’s intentions.
But yes, I think it is an unfortunate way of signifying cismen, because there is a LOT about transmen that is biologically male.
Also “biomale” sounds silly to me haha
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(via ihatethismess)
(via skirtonfire)
(via transpride)
(via blackenedbutterfly)
Excerpts of Julia’s answer as to why the term ‘cis’ is used: “I began writing Whipping Girl in 2005, before I had heard of the “cis” terminology. A major focus of the book was to debunk many of the myths and misconceptions people have about transsexuals. Initially, I was kind of scattershot in my approach: In one chapter, I would critique the way the term “passing” is used in reference to transsexuals. In another chapter I would critique the use of the terms “bio boy” and “genetic girl” to describe non-trans men and women. In yet another chapter, I would critique the way that transsexuals are always depicted as imitating or impersonating “real” (read: non-trans) women and men. And so on. After a while, it became obvious to me that all of these phenomena were stemming from the same presumption: that transsexual gender identities and sex embodiments are inherently less natural and less legitimate than those of nontranssexual people. “ and “Fifty years ago, homosexuality was almost universally seen as unnatural, immoral, illegitimate, etc. Back then, people regularly talked about “homosexuals,” but nobody ever talked about “heterosexuals.” In a sense, there were no “heterosexuals”—everyone who wasn’t engaged in same-sex behavior was simply considered “normal.” Their sexualities were unmarked and taken for granted. The whole post is really rad, including the comments, and was written by Julia Serano about her book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. So go check it out! I feel like some of the younger, budding feminists I’ve been meeting (some of which are following me on tumblr :p) would be interested. I wish I had read that post a long time ago.. when I was 16 or so, my friend Aubrey lent me this book called She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan. I was really confused when she told me it was about a trans woman. My immediate thoughts were, why can’t someone just be happy in their own body, and why would a woman ever to become a man? (I mean, those were my main questions about transgenderedness as a whole, not the book.) Super fucking naive, basically. Even while reading the book, I was looking for a reason that it was just ‘too much’ to change sexes. Oddly or not, this led me to: hey! Fuck the gender binary! Which is nearly as naive in some ways because it alienates almost everyone once again: trans people because they are switching genders, which itself implies a gender distinction and binary, and feminine women and masculine men (cis or not) because they accurately represent their gender in societal norms. By the end of the year that Aubrey had lent me the book, I had moved on to: wait, it’s not the gender binary, it’s people’s (my) bigotry and denial of gender fluidity that creates a scary place in society for trans people (really, for anyone who is visibly outside of the gender binary). As a side note, I also just bought Whipping Girl.
If you were lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) during this time period, there was almost no way for you to convince the rest of society that you were unfairly marginalized. In society’s eyes, nobody was oppressing you, it was simply your fault or problem that you were “abnormal.” In fact, it was quite common for LGB people to buy into this presumption of abnormality themselves, as there was simply no other obvious way to view their predicament.
But then gay rights activists began challenging this notion. They pointed out that all people have sexualities (not just homosexuals). The so-called “normal” people weren’t really “normal” per se, but rather they were “heterosexual.” And the activists pointed out that heterosexuals weren’t necessarily any better or more righteous than homosexuals. It was just that heterosexism—the belief that same-sex attraction and relationships are less natural and legitimate than heterosexual ones—is institutionalized within society and functions to unfairly marginalize those who engage in same-sex relationships.”
