Cisgendered is a nonsense word. Helen Boyd is actually correct, though for the wrong reasons. It's not that the term is 'loaded', its that it is pleonastic - adding cis to gendered serves no purpose but to be a redundancy.

The public conversation in this country is dominated by whack jobs like this Helen Boyd. Fine with our government, which prefers a citizenry distracted by non-issues like this rather than paying attention to government hypocrisy, kleptocracy, hyper-regulation, corruption, and incompetence.

Yes OMG thank you

So we are 'assigned' genders at birth? So all that crap I learned in biology class is a lie?

I think cisgendered and cissexual (which I had never heard before) are interesting words that can be used in certain contexts to start a conversation, provide an element of enlightenment, help shift a perspective, working a bit to equalize two groups of people with more in common than might be understood.

Of course, the way it actually works on the net is as a yellow star to diminish and disrespect, trump and bully.

"...an individual's self-perception of their gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth."

Assigned? You mean when the nurse looked at my genitalia and said, "It's a boy." That's really less an "assignment" and more an interpretation.

Conan, to defend these folks, there have been a number of cases where the interpretations were very poor, and in the case of intersexed babies, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex) a lot of time, they are actual assignments, as in consult with parents, "conspire" to treat intersexed baby as an X or as a Y.

There was also the case of at least one botched circumcision that resulted in an assigned sex as female and a much later suicide.

I think it's reasonable for people born intersexed to complain of doctors and a society that didn't know how to deal with them.

In the case of people who were not intersex but later realize they are transgender, I think any complaints of being assigned a sex at birth is much less reasonable.

If somebody told me she was cisgendered, I would wonder if she had a Cisco router up her nether regions.

If somebody told me she was cisgendered, I would wonder if she had a Cisco router up her nether regions. -- mpetrie98 at November 28, 2013 2:32 PM

Actually I would probably be finding a way out of the conversation, and a way to leave the area quickly.

"Actually I would probably be finding a way out of the conversation, and a way to leave the area quickly."

I agree. Where did people get the idea that these once private matters are now fodder for public conversation? From Oprah?

✔ Jim Simon 9:03 AM

Why are the ones who conjure these precious new catch phrases for trivial sexual enthusiam always such un-worldly ninnybuns? If they're so erotically attuned, why haven't they been able to go out into the world and find something interesting to share?

The only place where I've ever seen the "cis-" formation is in chemistry, where the prefixes "cis-" and "trans-" are used to describe certain organic chemical isomers. So it looks like what happened here is that someone took the word "transgender", which uses the "trans-" prefix which is very common in English, and they noted that "trans-" had an antonym in organic chemistry of "cis-", and decided to borrow it. Trouble is, "cis-" doesn't have a meaning in common English. So if you say "cisgendered" to someone, then unless they have studied organic chemistry, they are unlikely to grasp what thw word means. Which defeats the purpose of using the prefix.

Now, this sort of borrowing goes on in the English language all the time. However, when adademics do it so self-consciously, it usually winds up being ignored or rejected by the general public. Which I suspect is the idea. The academy is reverting to a pre-Renaissance mystery guild, filled with secret language and rituals -- all intended to cover up the fact that they don't really know or do anything special.

I agree. Where did people get the idea that these once private matters are now fodder for public conversation? From Oprah?

Posted by: Jim Simon at November 28, 2013 7:36 PM

I blame Marvin Gaye. His song Cissexual healing started the trend. Or so I've been cis-told.

So it looks like what happened here is that someone took the word "transgender", which uses the "trans-" prefix which is very common in English, and they noted that "trans-" had an antonym in organic chemistry of "cis-", and decided to borrow it. Trouble is, "cis-" doesn't have a meaning in common English.

The politically correct want us to use "cisgednered" because if "transgendered" has an opposite in "cisgendered" it does away with the presumption that "transgendered" is not the norm - "transgendered" then becomes merely one variant on a spectrum of norms in sexual preference and identity.

> I blame Marvin Gaye.

Dood, don't… He-comes-apart,-bay-by.

Also, What's Going On was the American Sgt. Pepper.