So, I was watching Glee and in one of the recent episodes, Principal Figgins calls Unique (a transgendered student) a young, cisgendered woman. What does cisgendered mean? Is it offensive?
This guest speaker lady in my History class calls herself cisgender. She says it means to look and feel like a woman, or to look and feel like a man. It's not offensive at all.
Oh I see, so he made a mistake? because Unique is a male student who dresses as female but sees the crossdressing so convincing Figgins thought he was actually a girl?
Cisgender is basically the opposite of transgender. It means that the gender assignment given to you at birth is the same one you feel you are. And it's never "cisgendered" like in the past tense because its not a verb, it's a an adjective just like it's rude to say "transgendered".
Cis- means same, trans- means opposite. I learned those from organic chemistry, though I'm sure they have roots somewhere else...
It did come from org. chem. according to the person who told me about the term. (reconstruction) Cis is when the functional groups are on the same side --> gender identity is congruent with biological sex
There are cis people who claim to find the term offensive, especially in the TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminism) community. They should be treated with the same disdain we'd treat a straight person who objected to the term "straight" and wanted to be called "normal" instead.
