So, I’ve been half-watching the mudslide of transphobia that has been coming out of the feminist blogosphere in the last few weeks. I hope to engage in the conversations very soon because it is a part of my responsibility as a cis-person, but I have been mostly a reader and not a contributor yet.
However, I will say this.
If you’re a non-trans person who sees a post on transphobia that has been coming out of a blog you frequently read or comment on, do everyone a favour and engage with the content of the post. If you find yourself wanting to ask what cisgendered means (of course you do, that’s what all the angry people are calling you, right, and you MUST KNOW NOW), I have a very good way you can avoid doing that. Trust me, it is one of the best collection of Trans 101 answers you will find.
Simply click here you will finally find all the resources you need to avoid further putting your foot in your mouth and derailing conversation to satiate your curiosities. Use it well. Use it often. Apply it to other discussions in anti-oppression.
I don’t understand why those people don’t just put “cisgender” into Google, it’s not as though there aren’t tons of results!! The first couple times it wasn’t terribly annoying but I’m so over it now.
My thoughts exactly!
Even if the OP just uses “cis” (which I know I do a lot) it is easy to find. if you google cis + transgender you get some decent links.
I remember one thread, on Bound Not Gagged, where the OP linked to my post on definitions (& clicking on cis led to it); one of the very first comments was “what does ‘cis’ mean?”
By asking the question what is cisgender in a space that is dedicated to exploring trans issues it allows them to refocus the conversation on them and assert a form of power.
Absolutely. It’s about making the conversation about yourself, all while not actually talking about yourself and your privilege.
Not googling “cisgender” falls into the whole expectation that people of the oppressed group have a responsibility to educate you.
Yes, and it shows no desire to actually be educated if the oppressor doesn’t take any initiative to self-educate.
RIGHT?! I’ve always wondered this with pretty much all topics like this. Because that’s exactly what I did the first time I heard the terms trans, intersexed, cis, rape culture, rape myth, the list goes on and on. Basically, any word or term I want to double-check gets googled. Whenever people don’t do that, I’m just like WTF?!
But why ask google when I can ask a Real Life oppressed person?!
cos the derailer isn’t there to learn. they are there to demand that the oppressed person justify their existence.
Yes, this.
I really hate the people who sit on a feminist blog talking about high-level feminist concepts and turn around to call “cisgender” unbearably esoteric or academic.
There were some annoying comments about how feminism is inherently white, cis, middle-class, too. Not in the critical sense, but in the sense of “This is what feminism is, so you have to try to meet us half-way.”
It’s only unbearably academic if it’s something they didn’t learn!
I’m strangely surprised that someone would say that outright (‘meet us half-way’ in whatever way they said it) but not at all surprised that it’s during a discussion about transphobic feminism.
Well, it was a sort of navel-gazing comment about how feminism is white, middle-class so those women who don’t fit into that have to show how their lives relate to feminism… I haven’t gone back to look or quote, but I’ll check later.
And yeah, exactly – it’s treated as this exceptional weird unknowable word because they don’t care. They just want to impose their labels on trans people and can’t bear for trans people to decenter their position with any kind of reciprocation.
I find I just link to a search from Let Me Google That For You: http://lmgtfy.com/
It’s snarky but gently so and pushes folks to educate themselves.
And if someone gets huffy, they were derailing, not genuinely curious.
Yes, that’s what I do. I linked to it in the post.
Ha! That’s a great site!!
Just two very long sentences in response to the gender issues here expressed.
If gender roles are largely a cultural construct, both social and political, designed overall and in general around the globe to keep women as an underclass to global male dominance — and I believe this is in fact the global function of gender roles, see images at http://thelongestwar.wordpress.com/ — and if I hope that all inherently oppressed people achieve greater freedom on this planet — as a practitioner of energy and other “alternative” healing, any re-construction of gender roles by use of surgery or other painful medical “treatment” seems ill-advised from the standpoint of the overall sexual politics in which we all live.
In other words, and with all respect due, surely you can appreciate that most people with a concern for social justice would put any discussion of relative degrees of “privilege” revolving around the relatively few people choosing physical re-construction of gender roles (from male to female or from female to male) — which sidesteps the continuing and chronic global onslaught of violence by men against women as women — in the category of straining at gnats while swallowing camels.
You’re conflating gender roles with gender identity. Gender roles are culturally and socially constructed – gender identity is how a person identifies themselves.
I find it dismissive that you think transgendered people are a relatively small and unimportant population that social justice seekers should ignore for the sake of a larger picture of violence against women by men. In fact, it sounds like you’re insinuating that transitioning genders has nothing to do with gendered violence, when actually, it has everything to do with gendered violence. Trans people face high amounts of violence simply for being trans. It’s not a different onslaught of violence. It’s the same one, and it surely is not straining gnats while swallowing camels.
sorry my eyes glazed over in the middle of your first run on sentence.
i know you think you’re so fantastic being a dude who’s running a feminist blog and whatever, but keep in mind that your ass is still the privileged one so maybe you should shut the fuck up and refrain from writing incoherent shit on posts that you clearly know nothing about. you are the still the most privileged person in this discussion, so don’t tell us about whose fucking privilege to care about and whose to ignore.
fuckin A.
They will love you at the UN.
diplomacy — it’s what for dinner every goddamn night at the Black household, hahahahaha.
Is there any degree to which it is acceptable to ask questions of an oppressed group and their terminology (or the terminology of the conversation)? It has always been my experience that in conversation with a person I’m comfortable with (as in, beyond casual acquaintance) or when “googling” is not an option, asking is acceptable. In google-accessible situations, is it never ok?
There are some things that can’t be googled. I just feel extremely uncomfortable now with discussing things because I am left feeling that I’m either offensive or not understanding completely.
There is absolutely a degree of acceptability because there is no hard line. It’s all contextual. Whether we are online or offline, when we are participating in conversations about oppression, especially when we are in the position of the oppressor/privileged, we have to be constantly vigilant of the context that conversation is occurring in.
If we enter into a place where a discussion is happening about a particular subject – again, say, police violence against transpeople – it would not be appropriate to suddenly interject with “what do you mean by cisgender?” if that is not supposed to be the point of the conversation. That’s what this post was about – feminists whose transphobia was challenged, and all they could respond with (repeatedly) was “what’s cisgender mean?”
In other offline contexts, it might be okay, if it’s not a word you’re familiar with. If it’s a casual conversation, you can ask what the other person means in a way that signifies you want to know it so that you can understand more, not because you want to make the conversation about that particular term.
Although, I’m of the opinion that online, if you’re able to ask what ‘cisgender’ means or ‘people of colour’ means, you’re able to search it without disrupting a conversation in a blog post or a forum thread.