I’m not a fan of the cis-trans binary as a style of categorization and thinking for a lot of reasons. But as a historian? One big one: It has never actually been an operative distinction— not even right now! (thread)

The medical model of transvestism and, later, transsexuality, did not make a grand cis-trans distinction. Trans people were rather a minor class of “deviance” and everyone else was grouped as “normal,” not cis.

Why does this matter? Because trans medicalization is not about separating the human population into two forms of gender. It is about normalizing the abnormal as in making trans people binary and straight. (Luckily, trans people are too smart to fall for that)

What’s more, since sex and gender differentiation function as key axes of modern racial theories or the body, to just go cis v trans erases the centrality of race to the categories at hand.

Even now, using “cis” as if it refers to a meaningful, knowable difference runs very little but performative faith in the efficacy of taxonomy. (And often punishes gender variant people for being illegible by its rules, esp of color)

I prefer to say that the normative categories sex and gender NEED trans as their foil for coherence. But the situation is not analogous to the homo/hetero binary; no such cis/trans binary emerged in the late 19th, early 20th centuries.

I will add, though, that I think cisnormativity is a nice concept—thinking of a broader system of gendered power with a cis norm that subjects us all (unevenly). But I’d just as soon call that “gender,” full stop.