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Cisgender

'Cisgender' — often shortened to 'cis' — is a term from gender studies used for people whose self-reported 'gender identity' coincides with the sex observed at birth. It is a contested term: critics point out that it presupposes what it claims to describe — namely, that everyone has a 'gender identity', distinct from the body.

Origin and etymology

The prefix 'cis-' comes from Latin and means 'on this side of', as opposed to 'trans-' ('on the other side'). The term was built up in gender studies from the 1990s as a counterpart to 'transgender'. The first documentation in an English-language source is by Volkmar Sigusch (1991, German-speaking area) and Carl Buijs/Dana Defosse (1990s, English-speaking). In chemistry, cis and trans have long been used to describe molecular structures; the transfer to people is a metaphor that was widely picked up in academic and activist literature.

A contested term

The term cis is not neutral. It presupposes the broader framework of 'gender-identity theory': the assumption that every human has an inner 'gender', which happens to coincide or not with the body. For anyone who does not endorse that theoretical edifice — for instance because 'man' and 'woman' are simply words for the two biological sexes — 'cisgender' is an unnecessary and even misleading addition: one is simply a man or a woman, not 'cis' anything.

The feminist author Kathleen Stock (Material Girls, 2021) and others point out that uniformly applying the label 'cis' to everyone who is not trans implicitly commits people to a contested ideological framework. Many women resist being called a 'cis woman' because the addition suggests that 'woman' no longer simply denotes a bodily category, but is merely one of the possible 'genders'. That has practical consequences for sex-based rights and provisions.

Cis privilege?

In activist and academic circles, people sometimes speak of 'cis privilege': the supposed advantage that people who do not identify as transgender do not have to go through dysphoria or transition. Critics raise important caveats. First, the term implies that 'being normal' (body and self-image coinciding) is a form of privilege — a framing that runs counter to the fact that this is simply the human condition for the overwhelming majority of people. Second, the concept denies that 'cis' people too — and women, lesbians, boys with unconventional interests in particular — can suffer under strict gender norms.

How to use the term?

Anyone who can agree with the assumptions of 'gender-identity theory' can use the term cisgender as a descriptive designation. Anyone who does not share those assumptions is not obliged to label themselves that way — just as one is not obliged to accept every theoretical label others devise. In the Dutch media a recurring discussion is going on about precisely this point.

Related terms from the transgender spectrum

The term cisgender contrasts directly with transgender. Among transgender people a further distinction is made on the basis of transition direction: transmasculine and FTM (female to male), transfeminine and MTF (male to female). For birth sex the acronyms AMAB and AFAB are used.