Is Cisgender a Slur?
Cisgender is a term that we use for folks whose gender identity aligns with their sex assigned effort. So if you were born and the doctor said, “It's a boy,” and then you grew up, and you identify as a man, you're probably cisgender. The primary function of the term is to have a counterpoint to the term transgender. So we know that within the category of women, we have transgender women, and then the other women are what we call cisgender women. That's an oversimplification, but we know that within these greater categories, there are a lot of subcategories.
The prefix cis actually has a Latin root that means “on the same side as.” The prefix trans, on the other hand, means “across, through, or on another side.” The pushback that we hear against the term cisgender is usually from people who don't feel like they have to use extra words to describe their gender. It's people who want to think of themselves as “normal” and don't see how that designation would be degrading to trans people. (Or they do realize it and they want it that way.) The reality is, being able to say that you're a man or that you're a woman and not have people question it is a privilege that most trans people don't have. The problem is when we don't have a word like cisgender, people like to say things like “women and trans women,” or “men and trans men.”
We see a similar conversation in all different aspects of identity. Usually, the group that holds the most privilege is also the group that feels like they don't need a certain term to describe their identity, even though they're usually pretty insistent on the other groups using those labels. We see this with race, ability, size, etc. This almost always leads to the conversation of why we need to have labels. And it's really funny to me whenever people ask that, because they don't actually mean it. You don't actually want to live in a world where there aren't labels to describe people. You just want to live in a world where you’re comfortable with the labels you’re hearing. There are plenty of people who self identify in a lot of ways. And I'm not even just thinking about race and gender and ability and those things, but I'm thinking about, Swifties and Barbs, there's so many labels that we do use to talk about things that we identify with. Also, whenever anybody brings up the labels conversation, I'm just like grocery shopping must be a nightmare for you…
So, no, using a label to describe privilege that you have is not a slur. But I understand if the only time you're hearing the term cisgender is when a trans person is frustrated or talking about discrimination, it might start to sound like a bad word to you. But my question there is, why are you only listening to trans people when we're frustrated? Are you listening to trans people in other circumstances? Are you learning why we're frustrated and where that comes from?
For me, I think about slurs the way that I think about the rules of comedy.
…That sounds wrong, but the idea of punching up or punching down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I only consider it a slur if you're punching down. I don't consider it a slur when it's something that we call a privileged class. Maybe I'm wrong, but I only consider something a slur when it's being used against a marginalized person from somebody who holds more power or privilege.
Just because you don't like a word doesn't mean that it's a slur. I don't like being called “ma'am,” but I don't consider that a slur. It’s just a word I don’t like being called. The things that I consider slurs are words that are used against me from people who are in positions of privilege. And cisgender doesn't qualify. Cisgender is just a descriptor. And you wouldn't think of cisgender as an insult if you didn't think of being transgender as an insult.
