How Not to be Defensive When Accused of Transphobia (A Guide For Cis People)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

http://www.questioningtransphobia.com/?p=2632

3) Take the criticism seriously. Do not dismiss it out of hand, especially if the criticism comes from a trans person. Trans people tend to be more aware of transphobia than most cis people are. This is because transphobic attitudes are often a matter of life and death – the ability to find a job, get housing, not get murdered, that sort of thing. Trans people do not find great enjoyment in randomly accusing people of transphobia, and would rather not have to bring it up. On the other hand, please do not appeal to other trans people to justify your words.

4) Don’t Make It About You. The best thing to do is apologize for what you said and move on. Resist your desire to shift the conversation into a lecture on How Against Transphobia You Are or How Accusations of Transphobia Are Just Silencing Tactics to Shut You Up The subject of the conversation is probably not the many trans people you know, and your deep and abiding acceptance of their life choices.

Here is why I think this article belongs here, because not all women are cis-gendered and if we claim to support women's rights, then we need to seriously support transgendered women and their rights. not just the rights of cis gender women. We can't support people if we don't create safe spaces for them.

[msongs]

1. so what is a cis person? nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. a cis gendered person is one whose sex at birth

matches their gender identity. so a non-trans gendered person

[Irishonly]

4. I have a link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender

I hadn't heard the term until recently. It is wiki but it gives you a little background in the first couple of paragraphs

[Kali]

7. I learned cis/trans in chemistry back in the dark ages

isomers of the same molecule, from wiki:

The terms cis and trans are from Latin, in which cis means "on the same side" and trans means "on the other side" or "across".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis-trans_isomerism


in terms of gender:

Cisgender (play /ˈsɪsdʒɛndər/) (or cisgendered) is an adjective used in the context of gender issues and counselling to refer to a class of gender identities formed by a match between an individual's gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one's sex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender


it is relatively recent (same source):

Internet use

The word cisgender has been used on the internet since at least 1994, when it appeared in the alt.transgendered Usenet group in a post by Dana Leland Defosse.[4] Defosse does not define the term and seems to assume that readers are already familiar with it. This may also have been independently coined a year later: Donna Lynn Matthews, the charter maintainer of the alt.support.crossdressing usenet group, attributed the word to Carl Buijs, a transsexual man from the Netherlands, claiming that Buijs coined the word in 1995.[5] In April 1996, Buijs said in a Usenet posting, "As for the origin, I just made it up. I just kept running into the problem of what to call non-trans people in various discussions, and one day it just hit me: non-trans equals cis. Therefore, cisgendered."[6][7]

While sexologist Volkmar Sigusch used the term "cissexual" (or "zissexuelle" in German) in a 1991 article,[8] "cisgender" may have been coined independently.
[edit] Literary use

The term has more recently been used in publications, such as a 2006 article in the Journal of Lesbian Studies[9] and Julia Serano's 2007 book Whipping Girl.[10] Serano also uses the related terms cissexual, which she defines as "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned" (p. 12), and cissexism, "which is the belief that transsexuals' identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals."[11] While having been used by trans activists for some time,[12][13] the term cisgender privilege has recently appeared in the academic literature and is defined there as the "set of unearned advantages that individuals who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth accrue solely due to having a cisgender identity."[14]

[Irishonly]

3. Great article

I think you are correct posting it here.

[Starry Messenger]

5. k&r

I feel strongly about this too.

[yardwork]

6. Thanks for posting this. Very helpful!

I didn't understand much about transgender people until recently. Once I started learning how badly transgender people are treated, and how much they are abused (physically and emotionally) by so many other people - including, sadly, many gay people - I became radicalized.

[MadrasT]

8. Great article.

I think the advice listed in items 2 through 6 could also apply to a lot of other situations where folks are accusing other folks of other types of bias. I am thinking about things like racism, sexism, ethnic situations, homophobia, all kinds of situations. And item 1 could be reworded to fit whatever the topic up for discussion is. It all seems like really good advice for anyone who finds themselves accused of any kind of bigotry.

Thanks.

[Gormy Cuss]

9. Item 7 applies to a lot of other situations too.

7) Let Occasional Unfair Accusations Roll Off Your Back

We want to defend ourselves vigorously against unfair accusations but sometimes it IS better to let it go and move on.

[MadrasT]

10. Yes, it does for sure!

For some reason, I thought "2 through 7", and typed "2 through 6"! Oops. Thanks!