I've got a new channel trailer for 2024 (it's live, you can see it if you want) and someone just decided to helpfully comment on it that I don't need to say I'm cis, because 'it's like saying I'm non-epileptic.'
So if you're the person who said that, I want you to understand that I've hidden your messages from my channel and you should really think a lot harder about what you're going to say, if that's coming from a well-intentioned space, because otherwise it sounds like you just said something that's both kinda ableist and kinda transphobic.
I tell people I'm cis. Part of why I do that is because it's non-obvious information. Another reason to do it is that I get misidentified, and I don't want people who are looking for 'trans creators' to mistakenly pick me. But also the real reason I say I'm cis on my channel is that the kind of people who complain about me mentioning an entirely neutral detail about myself are good at self-selecting into the 'ignoring this fuckin' weirdo' category.
(which is not the original headline, but it's how the author lists it on her website)
Its core argument is that there are some styles, some attributes, some performances of gender that do not get individualized. They are simply what one expects from someone of that gender. They go without saying. And there are others that do get individualized—that get attributed to the individual, or at least noted as an exception. And the essay gives names to these categories: “unmarked” and “marked”.
“cis” is currently, generally, unmarked. Most people don't mention it, and people notice when you do mention it. Some people even get bothered by mentioning it. But maybe that's worth changing.
THE TERM "MARKED" IS a staple of linguistic theory. It refers to the way language alters the base meaning of a word by adding a linguistic particle that has no meaning on its own. The unmarked form of a word carries the meaning that goes without saying -- what you think of when you're not thinking anything special.
Each of the women at the conference had to make decisions about hair, clothing, makeup and accessories, and each decision carried meaning. Every style available to us was marked. The men in our group had made decisions, too, but the range from which they chose was incomparably narrower. Men can choose styles that are marked, but they don't have to, and in this group none did. Unlike the women, they had the option of being unmarked.
I don't endorse the 1993 essay's binary view of gender, of course, though one could substitute “masculine” and “feminine” and much of it still works. I would also note that it still holds when you add non-binary people (hi) to the equation: Openly queer, gender-norm-breaking styles are also marked.
So I think the core idea still holds: There are attributes that are marked, and attributes that are unmarked — the latter being those that go without saying, the ones that you simply expect and do not attribute to the individual.
To be cis, in our society, is an unmarked attribute. It is expected; it is not attributed to some individual choice, nor is the individual considered an exception for being so.
To be trans, on the other hand, is to be marked. Transness is exceptional. Transness is named. Some of us have seen gender pop-up menus (directly or in screenshots) that have options such as “Man, Woman, Trans Man, Trans Woman”.
Marked trans, unmarked cis.
This has all been very descriptive, so let me shift to a prescriptive mode:
What if we changed that?
Cis people can call themselves cis, just as (some) trans people call themselves trans.
I can think of two benefits immediately, and a third as a possible consequence:
- First, of course, it challenges the unmarkedness of being cis. It calls out the assumption and transmutes it into an explicit statement.
- Second, it normalizes the term cis or cisgender as a term people use to describe themselves, and from there each other (if someone describes himself as a cis man, it's fair for someone else to describe him the same way).
- That, in turn, helps undermine the bigots' lie of “cis is a slur”, which is only believable to people who've never heard the word otherwise. The more we use cis/cisgender as a normal word, clearly with no ill intent, the less believable it is that non-queer people are describing themselves with a slur.
The purpose bigots have for trying to redefine cis as a slur is to reinforce this specific marked/unmarked dichotomy—like the rando in @TalenLee's mentions, enforcing that cisness (unmarked) is the default assumption, and forcing trans people (marked) to stick out.
We can break that dichotomy and resist the bigots' efforts by normalizing “cis” as an explicit attribute.
If you're cis, you can help.
