Feminism in News and Popular Media

[femmeInterrupted]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

Brilliant. The term 'cis' annoys the f**k out of me for all the above mentioned reasons, plus a few more. My first point is briefly touched upon in the above article, but isn't given nearly enough space. In the overly simplistic version of gender theory that renders a person as either 'cis' or trans, a butch woman would be labeled as 'cis' regardless of whether or not she identifies with butch AS A GENDER! This invisibilises butch women, and that's NOT OK with me.

Second, simplistically reducing the world into two choices of either 'cis' or trans leaves intersex people out altogether, as well as running roughshod over the IDs of Two Spirit Native people. That shouldn't be OK with anyone, and it's certainly not OK with me.

Finally, it creates a permanent division between women who have transitioned and those who have never been trans. One of my closest friends is a trans woman who is infuriated by the term 'cis'. She finished transitioning years ago, and is now a woman. Period. She does NOT wish to append either 'trans' or 'cis' to her or anyone else's identity of woman. She sacrificed a great deal to become a woman, and all she wants is to be recognised as a woman with no qualifications attached.

Cheryl,

I couldn't agree more with your post! Women who have had the experience of transitioning are WOMEN. Calling them Transwomen keeps them othered, and reinforces the hierarchy of 'born' woman/female vs. 'other female/woman. It's completely unacceptable. The Transgender movement ( rather than the movement created by the experiences of intersex and Transsexual people) has caused great harm to women with transsexual experiences and history by its insistence of blurring gender lines. Women with Transsexual histories didn't struggle their whole lives, have expensive and often inaccessible surgeries to come out as some 'other/third/fourth/fifth gender' They transitioned to become what they are, and always were, Women. Before anyone jumps on this as an anti trans-gender post, please don't-- I'm not talking about keeping the gender binary as it is, or suggesting that gender in and of it's self isn't fluid-- but women who are looking for community with women, services for women, health care for women, are interested in being seen, and included as a woman. This is why it's a deeply feminist issue. As always, when you boil it down, it's the voices of women in our most marginalized locations that get silenced and attacked.

"Gender is a socially constructed power hierarchy that must be destroyed, not reinterpreted as consensual, empowering, individualized “gender identities” that are magically divorced from all contextual and historical meaning. Such a framing invisibilizes female and feminine oppression by falsely situating men-born-men and women-born-women as gendered equals relative to trans-identified people. Though possibly unintentional, “cis” now functions as a significant barrier to feminism’s ability to articulate the oppression caused by the socially constructed gender differentiation that enables male/masculine supremacy. Cis is a politically useless concept because fails to illuminate the mechanics of gendered oppression. In fact, it has only served to make things more confusing."

Love. It.