#cisexness

[beyond-mogai-pride-flags]

Cisbinary Flag

Cisbinary: a conformant term describing someone who is cis* (cisgender/cissex/cisvestic/cismodal) experiencing a binary gender (aptobinary/xorgender).

Inclusive of cisqueer (neocis, cis femache), neobinary (bonusbinary, ambinary/mesobinary, yesbinary), and AGAB nonconforming (ANC) people (plus more).

Counterpart: transbinary.

[agp]

there is a general transmisogynist tendency to explain transmisogyny or trans womanhood as a product of essentialist (often biological but also social) difference. this is a reiteration of the cisexism dominant in patriarchy.

the production of 'biological truths' by birth assignment is biopolitical and does not necessarily say anything specific about a body beyond the fact that it has been coercively assigned a sex. in the case of those designated male, it says that this body is now expected to become a boy, then a man. this threat is backed by both social and medical institutions with the duty to intervene if this body (/mind) derives from the ideal (racialized) male form.

by treating the socially constructed ideal male as natural, passively becoming a purebred american heterosexual, deviation from the norm becomes the intervention, the artificial. like a defective component - always in relation to what it ought to be, as if this was something it always already was, but failed to properly maintain, affirm, or celebrate in its deviance - but still fundamentally that component regardless. a worn out gear is still a broken gear, even if its a coaster now.

so the difference in assignment between cis and trans women becomes not fundamentally a difference in duty, expectation, or treatment, but a difference in essence which produces variation in duty, expectation, and treatment. many feminists can recognize that this essence cant be prediscursive, apolitical and natural, but must be (re)produced. 'male socialization' thus becomes a term of abuse not to discuss the construction of manhood but as a way to maintain this particular gender essentialism about the necessary success of socialization while serving as a reification of 'male biology' and a cover for the correctness of assignment. male-socialized as indicative a state of being rather than a history, similarly to how cisexists employ asab terminology to express their cisexism.

at the end of the day, cisexism demands essential manhood somewhere in every victim of its assignment to justify itself. whether we situate it in biology or socialization doesnt significantly change the transmisogyny at play because both are used to mischaracterize us as necessarily men

[yesplsnothankyou]

I was talking to my mom at Costco and I told her that my partner's brother just had a baby with his wife. And she asked:

mom: is it a boy or a girl?

me: I don't know, it can't tell us yet, it was just born.

mom: oh come on, now. What was it born as?

me: if you're asking what genitals the baby has, I don't know and that's not really my business.

mom: okay, well what's the baby's name?

me: I don't remember if they picked one yet, or if I was told, i don't remember it.

mom: well it doesn't sound like you're very interested in this child at all. Don't you care about having a new family member?

me: Well it's a baby. I'll be much more interested in them once they have a personality and we can talk to each other.

It's literally insane how cishet people feel SO entitled to knowing what parts a brand new human has, like they need to know immediately so they can know how to treat them and start conditioning them young.

[pep-the-artemis]

Just learnt the phrase cisexism... How it different to normal sexism?

[mogai-angels]

Altersex cisex woman pride flag

[Flag ID: a 7 stripes flag going from a lilac stripe, a mint green stripe, a baby blue stripe, a white stripe, a light pink stripe, a slightly red dark grey stripe and a black stripe. End ID.]

Altersex cissex woman/Altersexual cissexual woman/Alteradic cissex woman. a term for those who identify as both altersex and cissex and a woman.

[your-bigender-big-brother]

confused anon I guess

I guess that's where I'm confused, when you list these changes, do you mean *taking* these changes? Like getting transition related surgery, taking hrt, telling people to refer to you differently, etc?

Like what if someone stops taking hormones, and that's what makes them look more like their gender, is that transitioning? Or what if people "mistake" someone for a different gender (than what they were presenting as / thought they were), and they simply stop correcting people because they were right, is that social transitioning? What if someone gets surgery for cis people, like it's not considered a surgery trans people get, and everyone involved (doctors patient whatever) treat it as a cis thing, is that transitioning?

Is transitioning only a trans thing? Or can exclusively cis people transitioning too (without using any trans identity, so combos like transex cisgender or cisex transgender aren't included in this meaning). (Many people would say I don't count as cis / are only trans, but there's always so little in common between me and trans experiences, and the same people don't mind pointing it out...) The definition you listed is more vague, so I guess it's easier to understand. I'm still kind of confused. I'm thinking it could just be a concept that only works in specific trans contexts, and just ignore it in relation to everything else. There wouldn't happen to exist a secret 3rd thing would there?/meme reference

Hello again, confused anon. Sorry for taking so long to respond.

Yes, actually making the changes I listed in the previous ask is considered transitioning. Taking hormones, getting surgery, coming out with a new name and pronouns - these are a few of many forms of transitioning.

I would say that any method used to confirm or solidify one's gender would be transitioning. Stopping hormones could be a form of transitioning. I'm not sure about not correcting people. I suppose that could be a subtle way to transition, but I hadn't really thought of it before. Any surgery that is meant to make someone feel more like the gender they are would be transitioning. I'm really not sure what kind of surgery would only be for cis people but would be gender affirming for a trans person otherwise, because that affirmation doesn't change just because the doctor thinks it's not a gender-affirming procedure.

Transitioning is not only for trans people. I don't really know what cis people get up to in this regard, because I don't really understand all the inner workings of the cis experience, but I would assume they could transition as well. I mean, cis guys go to the gym and get ripped and then feel more secure in their manhood that way. Some cis guy prefer to subvert gendered expectations and decide to be a less "manly" man, but they still remain a cis man just the same.

I'm not sure what advice I could give to you but there's always a secret third option in any proposed dichotomy. Not everyone falls into only trans or only cis. But transitioning is not required to fall into any of these broader categories.

Hopefully that was helpful in some way. I'm not the best at this sort of topic.

- 💙💚

[agp]

@wasted-electricity where do i start? how do i know what else you believe people are born with or is inevitable? do you believe variation in race and culture comes from deterministic biology? variation in sexuality? do you believe cis men and women were born boys and girls? that sickness and health allude to some innate quality in an individual rather than describing social phenomena? in my experience people would much rather describe their relation to these things as passive.

so say you live in a society that actively punishes deviance from cisexist and transphobic norms, from the notion that boys will naturally and passively become men and girls will naturally and passively become women, from bioessentialism. you just cant go around reminding people that theyre actively punishing deviance and performing gender. that none of this is passive. instead youre somewhat cornered into conceding to biological determinism and making it more trans-friendly. "cis men and women are born boys and girls, and trans men and women were not born boys and girls, nor girls and boys (respectively), therefore some other thing". its expanding the political horizon of bioessentialism and allowing it to formulate and identify new forms of determinism.

i think that ultimately trans identity is a feature of a cisexist and transphobic society much like how being born this way is a narrative that emerged from a history of engaging with biological determinism as a dominant ideology. its a product of negotiations. i wouldnt need to call myself trans if no one cared. for example some women display their natural hair color while others get theirs dyed. we dont impose the use of nouns to classify people into "naturals" and "artificials" because we dont care like that. we still use "natural blonde" as an adjective but no one is going around pigeonholing the rest of society to uphold deterministic notions about "blondes"... (or do they? and to what degree? and how common are these people?)

i know part of what youre asking is also "what motivates people to transition?", and you might feel like im tricking my way out of addressing this. but again, the reason were forced to address this in the first place is because were such a curiosity in the realm of cisexism, as proof that maybe something is wrong with cisexist biological determinism - that not all boys become men and not all girls become women. we have to explain ourselves not as exceptions to the rules but as proof of more rules. and even that is never sufficient to quench the thirst for a "why".

what makes us different is fundamentally their insistence on our difference. the burden of responsibility is on us to maintain the biological determinism theyve internalized after our mere existence took it for a spin. were the ones who have to explain ourselves

[mogai-angels]

Altersex cisex man pride flag

[Flag ID: a 7 stripes flag going from a lilac stripe, a mint green stripe, a baby blue stripe, a white stripe, a light blue stripe, a slightly red dark grey stripe and a black stripe. End ID.]

Altersex cissex man/Altersexual cissexual man/Alteradic cissex man. a term for those who identify as both altersex and cissex and a man.

tagging : @varsex-pride

[thegreatwerewolfobjectifier]

There’s no way to be an ally to all trans people and keep the idea that “We Are Made Better Than Them” gender system. Both binary and nonbinary trans people occasionally fall into villainizing other genders or gender itself or everyone except whoever they have decided is an acceptable target. Cis people are also quite prone to this, it is the basis of both cisexism and sexism generally.

Tribalism can be quite seductive when one is hurt, it can feel very safe and difficult to question, even in very queer spaces it can thrive to a toxic degree. But these ideas of Just Us and Never Them can be questioned, understood, and gently removed from your thinking in compassion, if you commit to doing so. To be good queer family means protecting yourself as an individual yes, but it also means learning about and from your fellows too. I believe in trusting your experience but I also believe as a queer I only know some of these things first hand and have to be allied with the queers different from me.

Sometimes the answer is in fact annoyingly back to basics:

Cis is not better, nor is it bad.

Trans is not better, nor is it bad

Feminine is not better, nor is it bad

Masculine is not better, nor is it bad

Androgyny is not better, nor is it bad

Agender is not better, nor is it bad

Woman is not better, nor is it bad

Man is not better, nor is it bad

Multi gender identities are not better, nor are they bad

Etc etc

These all are modes of human, they matter because they matter to us. There is good in all modes of gender identity and gender expression as human behaviors. There are bad actors in every identity, because no identity in of itself prevents bad behavior.

Bio essentialism is the name of the mode of thinking that leads to inherent goodness being tied to some physical trait or essential born with “essence” It is never actually evidence based and is a profoundly emotive belief that is common place even in activist circles, still.

There is no evil gender guys. And when you treat trans men or certain trans masculine people like we’re evil gender light um, we can tell.

I know we've talked about all the ways, "I hate all men EXCEPT trans men", is generally painting us not reeaallllyyy men which is fucked up, but it's also a nerve wracking position to find yourself in. Yes, I am incredibly hostile to people very much like you, but you're my exception. Who knows what will cause me to take that Exception card away from you, and when. Are you really not the enemy? Are you? Are you? Haha just checking no pressure do as I say.

In some ways, I can really understand wanting men who are safer and more understanding but like, this is scary to be on the other end of. It's controlling and you have power over me. I'm literally transgender.

[giving-into]

tbh its almost not worth going on queer nsft tumblr bc of how stressful it is ??? so many posts have DNIs like wlw only or fems only, and so on. and like... I'm a queer person. my gender and sexuality are so fluid i barely worry about them. but every post i have to think "am i allowed to like this post? i come off kinda masc sometimes" or "will this person accept me as wlw?" and it's exhausting. i feel like at every turn im being told to either assign myself labels that don't fit quite right or get off queer nsft tumblr.

i notice misandry and transandrophobia a lot more now the more masculine i seem because of T. people considering me predatory instead of safe, which was actually my greatest fear when i started hrt. people saying "women and non-binary people" and wondering what they mean. maybe they're polysexual. maybe they're bio essentialist t erfs [turfs]. do they think enben, (non-binary people), are just "women-lite"? do they hate men? how do they feel about enben AMAB? what about enben who aren't androgynous? would they even accept me as non-binary because i've been on T for 4 years?

i know people have boundaries, and thats super important! but i wonder what motivates those boundaries, what logic underlies them. are they saying what they really mean?

[varsex-pride]

Isogenital/Isosex Flag

Isossex/isogenital, abssex/absex/absgenital or metagenital/metasex: not being cissex/cisgenital nor transsex/transgenital; conceptualizing your sex as neither trans or cis. 

Also named isosexed, isossexed, isosexual(ity) [specious], isosexus, isosexuous/isosexous, isossexo, isosexe, isogonadal, metagonadal, absgonadal, isogenic, isogenetic [hyponyms].

Iso- comes from isomers, suggested/coined/signified/created by anon via @bigendering​ describing those who are uncomfortable with calling themselves trans but aren’t cis either. 

It’s interpreted as “neither” as opposed to utrinque “both”. However, iso etymologically means “equal”.

[arco-pluris]

Hey we're out of the loop, whats a TEHM ?

trans exclusionary homosexual male, a term for suptilic cmlcm (cisgender man loving cisgender men), cissexist vincian/todamoric/toramoric.

it’s TE (transgender exclusionary) just as TERF/TEF

[vindictar]

i wish my version of a character was someone's definitive version of that character. like. esp my trans characters cause i put a lot of thought and feeling into developing those characters and it just kinds sucks to know that a cis version of that character is always going to be more appreciated and get more attention.

[thewritingpossum]

i’m forcing myself to do some researches for my paper and i was already kinda meh about the article i’m currently reading for acting like there’s three genders (male, female and transgender) which is uh....not great and then they went and described Flickr/Photobucket as yet another social media used by The Youth tm so hmm...Don’t think I’m gonna end up using this shit for my paper...

[agp]

the equating of nonbinary identity with trans identitity on nonbinary terms is at worst transphobic and at best a strategic mistake in this society. we are assigned various genders at birth and come to claim various genders throughout our lives. in colonial western patriarchal society we are universally assigned a binary set of genders. because of this we do not have cis nonbinary people in the sense that they were neither assigned male nor female. colonial institutions of education and healthcare on turtle island and abroad ensure our assignment into gendered categories that allign with cisexism to render us intelligible to its logic.

therefore, within this colonial society, access to claiming various genders is informed, policed, and privileged through, among other things, birth assignment, and since this same society limits assignment to a particular binary, it does not recognize other assignments nor the notion of a cisgender nonbinary person within its bounds. to be cisgender and nonbinary would imply being assigned nonbinary and as such unintelligible to the binary logic of cisexism, and this, conveniently, is said to never happen.

cis and trans can be their own stand alone things if you want them to be. but theyre disarmed as political tools when theyre divorced from the gendered colonial institutions that govern us and the flows they engender are thus hidden from us. to 'be' cis or trans here and now is simply to have a differing relationship between a gender you claim and whether it was assigned to you at birth - a relationship defined by the violence of the institutions that produce our differences. transmisogyny in this society particularly targets those coercively assigned male at birth specifically because it only recognizes binary assignment and provides those coerced 'the other way' with a particular form of exemption from this violence by that act.

im a nonbinary woman. there are various other nonbinary people with various relationships to womanhood. some have a relationship that is transgender like myself because i was assigned male at birth and this is how cisexism understands me. others have a relationship that is cisgender, and while many continue to identify with and perform womanhood at various times, many will categorically reject this categorization for various reasons.

some will point to the earlier notion of 'cis nonbinary' to insist thats what being cis and nonbinary is, and thats not what they are. some will point to their relationship to womanhood as one of compultion and compromise to say its not the same if its a mask. some will point to their own lack of womanhood to say there is no womanhood to describe as cisgender. they are all correct, but none of these are reasons to reject the notion of nonbinary people having a differing relationship to womanhood informed by cisexism and transmisogyny.

the reason we reject this language is because of the shame it carries in our communities. it is shameful to be associated with cis people and trans women in our communities. it is encouraged to silence trans women when we challenge anyone on anything but especially cisexism, and it is especially those who are transmisogyny-exempt who refuse to consider us. it is encouraged not to call people cis because it is an insult. it is encouraged not to listen to us because its just as insulting.

well i think its insulting to me as a trans person every time a cafab nonbinary person who lives part of their life in the closet as a nonbinary person needs to use the language of trans people to describe their personal distance from their birth assignment. thats not what cis and trans mean. me rejecting the manhood that was coerced onto me does not change the nature of that coerction or the meaning it holds in a cisexist society. my relationship to manhood is cisgender and theres nothing i can do about that. im just not a man. if i was also man that shouldnt change my trans womanhood. transness is about your relationship to the genders your claim and has nothing to do with whether you identify with the one you were initially forced into. that distance is irrelevant.

and its made impossible to have respectful public discourse about my relationship with manhood as a trans woman because of the weight these institutions carry. yeah frankly i wish i could say trans women have a form of conditional cis privilege relative to maleness. but i need ten paragraphs of this shit to pad it up to feel less likely to be retaliated against.

the most insulting and ignorant version of this shutdown is honestly the simplest to understand as a product of cisexism: 'nonbinary people just use whatever pronouns they were assigned when they compromise and i dont know why you would do this to yourself'

[agp]

but to be assigned a sex at birth IS an experience. it is also an act. to abstract away the performativity of the act in a manner where any reference to the act immediately becomes a reference to the successful production of the category of sex is to concede to the success of cisexism. we cant talk about the relationship between being coercively assigned a particular sex at birth and living in a cisexist (and, more fundamentally, transmisogynistic) society because that must mean we are talking about biology and being essentialist.

but yeah just call them the penis people if thats what youre trying to say

Reminder that y'all should just say what you mean instead of "AFAB" or "AMAB".

If you are referring to penises, say penis.

If you are referring to having a period, say the word period.

If you are referring to being raised female or male, say that.

If you are referring to the ability to get pregnant, say that.

And so on, and so on, and so on.

The terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" do not tell you anything about a person's reproductive, hormonal, or chromosomal profiles. It does not tell you what body parts they have. It does not tell you anything about their life experiences or what gender they were raised as.

Using "AFAB" and "AMAB" as if they are synonymous with [perisex] "female" and "male" excludes intersex and trans people. Using the terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" in this way is only recreating the sex binary of female and male but masking it as more progressive when it really isn't. Just say what you really mean.

There are trans people who have the same equipment as a cis person of the "opposite" assigned sex. There are intersex people who were assigned a sex at birth while having completely different internal reproductive organs or hormones, or who were raised as a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth.

There is no such thing as "AFAB" or "AMAB" experiences. AGAB language only describes what you were assigned at birth. It says nothing about your body or your life experiences.

I know that people tend to shy away from using direct language when talking about anything related to sex (even as it relates to biology and not anything actually sexual) but using the actual terms for these things isn't bad. It's extremely counterproductive to movements to view sex as a fluid and broad category when you use AFAB and AMAB as if they are anything more than a sex designation given at birth.