What are cis and trans alternate types of? I don’t think it’s “gender identity” because wouldn’t that just be man, woman or nonbinary regardless of whether they’re cis or trans? Cis/trans just being a qualifier?
If the answer is “I am cis” or “I am trans”, what is the question?
Edit: Someone came up with the term “gender congruity” and (after looking up the definition of “congruity”) I think this describes what I’m talking about perfectly.
Please note I’m typing this as a trans man. Being “cis” or “trans” stems from someone’s gender.
Basically, do you identify as your birth gender (not sex, gender and sex are different)? If the answer is yes, you are “cis”. If the answer is no, like I my case, I was born female, I identify as a male, then you are are trans.
I hope this answers your question.
Shouldn’t it be that you identify with your birth sex? If gender is a social construct you don’t have a gender at birth. When the doctor says “It’s a boy” they’re referring to the genitalia you have, not assigning you a social position.
No, gender is a social construct and the doctor is assigning a gender to you when you are born based on what he sees as your genital configuration. This is then used to determine nearly everything about you through the social framework of gender.
What colors you’re allowed to like, what games you can play, what names you can have, what words are acceptable to refer to you with, who you’re allowed to be friends with, what foods your supposed to like, what clothes you’re allowed to wear, how people should speak to you, how people should praise you, how people should scold you, whether or not misogyny should be applied to you, and so on and so forth.
Those things are determined based on the gender you are assigned at birth. Those things are enforced across all society at all social levels and in all settings. Parents are the first people to enforce gender onto their children, intentionally or not. Then every single other adult and child they meet or interact with throughout their childhood will continue to enforce gender upon them until they themselves become adults and repeat the cycle with their own kids. Media perpetuates gender, government laws enforce gender, education systems are filled with people who systematically enforce gender upon children.
Thats what we mean when we say gender is a social construct. And you’re assigned one at birth.
No, sex is a biological characteristic and the doctor is describing your phenotypic sex based on observable characteristics. This really isn’t that complicated. There are two* combinations of chromosomes that determine sex, so there are two sexes. This is basic biology and has absolutely fuckall to do with gender as a social construct.
* Really there are around a half dozen sex chromosome combinations because they occasionally get duplicated. Functionally there are two because all of the combinations except 1 have a y chromosome and are male
Nope. They don’t even check your chromosomes when you’re born. There are also many possible genital configurations at birth. Odd that we don’t treat every one of those possibilities uniquely and instead force them to get surgery so the doctor can assign a gender to them. You’d think if it was all basic biology we would just have a unique gender for every one wouldn’t you?
There are also many, many more possible configurations of your chromosomes than half a dozen lol. You can also have XY and be assigned female at birth. And vice versa.
Your doctor is assigning you a gender. Thats what he’s doing. He calls you either a boy or a girl based on your genital configuration and then as I said in my previous comment that assigned gender goes on to affect every single aspect of your life for the rest of your life.
You don’t seem to know what we’re even talking about. Sex is not binary and is not enshrined in biology. If we wanted to talk about biology, if the point was biology, if the doctor assigning genders to babies primary concern was biology, then he would assign a unique gender to every single possible genital configuration at birth. All of them would be unique. Instead he’s assigning you a gender so that society can treat you a certain way. It’s that simple.
30 different genital configurations? Do you happen to have a good resource I can learn more from?
I have a feeling trying to search for it is going to give me a lot of not helpful information.
There are many more than 30, since chimerism is possible in humans there are an essentially endless number of possible ways your genitals could look at birth. I’d recommend looking into intersex disorders if you’re curious.
I appreciate it, I’ll do some research. Thank you!
Nothing in biology is exactly identical between individuums. A common eye color is brown, although there are as many shades of brown as there are people.
It is just practical and how language, or even perception works, that we tend to categorize similarities, and strongly favor common occurrances over outliers.
Maybe you two aren’t even disagreeing?
I’d say the doctor tries to assign the new born into male or female according to biological sex, and gender is inferred from that.
Yes, that’s what I mean. A two-step process. First, biological expression is assessed. Next, based on #1, social gender is inferred.
Youre right, we do just use language to describe things in a convenient manner that is not actually universally true. Do you think language just springs out of the ground or something? Humans make it. We make it socially. One might say we socially construct these concepts.
Biological sex is not a thing. There are people with dicks and people with vaginas and people with neither and people with both and people with stuff that isn’t even classifiable in terms of the terms dick and vagina. Why is there not a sex for each possible genital configuration? Why not one for each possible chromosomal configuration? Because sex is a concept we as humans created that does not map 1 to 1 with biological reality. Biological sex is not a thing, there is biology and then there is the human made concept of sex. They are 2 different things.
Your doctor assigns you a gender at birth. In most countries he is legally required to mark down one at the time of your birth. That gender is used for all the reasons I listed in a previous comment. Your mother then picks you up and affirms that gender assessment. From then on your gender is assigned until you yourself revoke it.
Is this some type of competition to see who can know the least about biology? Because you’re definitely acting like it’s a competition to know the least about biology. I think the walrus is still edging you out slightly. Maybe up your game a bit.
We do have a unique gender for everyone, we just don’t have words for each specific position on the spectrum because it’s so variable. That’s why we have umbrella terms like nonbinary or gender fluid.
Sex is binary. It is “enshrined in biology”. There are exactly two sexes. Female (x only) and male (x and y). The doctor classifies your phenotypic sex (what genitalia you have) at birth because it’s the same as your genotypic sex (whether you have a y chromosome) 99.99% (before you waste your time claiming it’s AkShEwAlLy 99.98%, Google hyperbole) of the time. You can be a genotype male and present as a phenotype female. Your sex in this case is male, but your doctor would have filled out your birth certificate as female.
You just do not have any idea what you are talking about about but seem unwilling to let that stop you. It’s that simple.
Tell me you don’t understand biology and genetics without telling me you don’t understand biology and genetics. You’ve succeeded.
Also biology hates binaries. Nature hates binaries. They’re exceedingly rare.
Use a stupid meme to cover up your lack of point or even basic understanding without using a stupid meme to cover up your lack of point or even basic understanding.
Sexing in humans isn’t phenotypic though. It is chromosomal.
It’s both. Phenotyping sex is the common method of determining it because it’s really easy and it’s accurate enough in 99% of cases.
Sexing through genotyping is 100% accurate, but it’s time consuming, comparatively expensive, and only relevant in a tiny handful of cases.
Phenotype doesn’t determine sex. It’s a function of it. You literally agreed with me on this.
I’m terribly sorry that I’ve had to dumb down my point so far for people to understand it that you now think it’s yours.
Good day.
If your point is that phenotype at all defines sex, you are objectively wrong. It is a function of sex. If your point is that phenotype is a reliable indicator of sexing in humans, you are also objectively wrong.
You might not believe in the social construct at birth, but the social construct believes in you. Children are treated differently based on assigned gender from birth.
Now that I think about it, you’re right. If you’re a male, you get swaddled and handed to your mother, but if you’re female, you get swaddled and handed to your mother.
I’m sorry what? That is not a thing
You’re right. No one has ever swaddled a baby, certainly not often enough that we have a specific word for it. It stands to reason no one has ever handed a baby to their mother either.
I’m like 80% certain that you’re trolling and no one could be this thick, but just in case: I’m talking about the sex of the baby determining which parent the baby is handed to. That is what is not a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_and_figurative_language
Since we’re just linking wikipedia articles that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Explain to me how being killed at birth depending on sex is not a valid response to your completely incorrect and ignorant statement that babies are treated the same irrespective of sex.
Explain to me how you saw a link covering literal and figurative language and still decided to ask such an ignorant question.
So now you are just being a coward and claiming that you were just speaking figuratively while desperately trying to derail a conversation you were too ignorant to participate in?
Ok, I accept your concession.
And either way, your mother starts treating you differently based on apparent sex.
https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2005-02259-007
When does your mother start treating you differently based on sex?
Depending on the country, really really early. e.g. - in India its illegal to disclose the sex of the fetus to the parents/family because of high female infanticide.
In-laws, the father, and many times even the mother will want a son to carry on the family name instead of a daughter who will be married off to some other family (with the cost of marriage and dowry). And it was quiet common for the fetus to be aborted if it was female. The situation has improved a bit today, but gerl children are still treated very poorly is many parts of the country.
Of course, girls here are treated a million times better than trans folk here. 90% of them (hijra community) are beggars on the streets/trains.
So not at birth then?
Typically before you even leave the womb, these days.
So not at birth?
Sex is also a social construct btw.
No it’s not. Unless you’re suggesting you collectively thought my dick into existence.
Genitals aren’t sex though. They are part of what society uses to create the category of sex. But sex is no more real than gender or race.
Society does not create sex. Society creates gender. Gender is a social construct. Sex is an expression of your sex chromosomes. The genitalia you have at birth weren’t decided upon arbitrarily by everyone in the room, they’re a direct consequence of whether you have or lack a y chromosome.
Money is a social construct. That doesn’t mean coins and dollar bills don’t exist. Sex is made up by society. Genitals are a physical thing. But they’re not the same thing. Just like coins and money are not the same thing.
You’re confusing sex and gender. Sex is a function of biology. It is binary. There are two sexes, and which sex you are is wholly determined by presence or absence of a y chromosome.
Gender is a social construct.
This is the entire reason that the term transgender is used now instead of transsexual.
Also, your whole analogy is shit. The concept of money didn’t spring into existence because people already had coins. The coins spring forth from the concept of money. By your logic, we only have genitals because society got together and decided that we should all have a sex.
That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard in my life, and Ive read several tweets from Donald Trump.
Sex is not binary, or intersex people wouldn’t exist.
You can also have XY chromosomes and be assigned female at birth.
And transsexual as a term has not gone out of usage universally. It’s got nothing to do with sex and gender both being socially created constructs. It’s preferential, and some people still use it.
Do you think sex didn’t exist before 1912? It seems like you are confusing sex with the rough approximation of the shape of a chromosome and oversimplifying how those chromosomes relates to phenotype.
Trans people change their sex, not their gender. Trans men are men before they start taking T and trans women are women before they start taking E. What changes is their sex. Personally, I hope we see transgender replaced with something soon. Transsexual is fine as a subcategory of transgender people (or a category with lots of overlap with transgender people).
Social constructs don’t all originate in the same way. If you want an example more like sex, you can look at the social construct of race. Race is not skin color, but the social construct is related to things like skin color. Just because race is a social construct doesn’t mean skin color came after race.
I understand what they are, I’m asking if there is a name for the category of characteristic that they both belong to.
I’m not entirely sure there is a word for it. If not, maybe there should be.
You’re not getting an answer to your question because the question, as stated, is incomprehensible. You’re asking for a “category of characteristic” that a pair of antonym adjectives “belong to”? That doesn’t make sense. They apply to a whole host of characteristics, because they’re not describing a specific characteristic, but how a characteristic relates to the whole. Just like “homo” and “hetero”; homozygous, heterogenous, homocystine, and heterophony are all words that use the “homo” or “hetero” prefix to describe how those words relate to other concepts in their category. It’s the same with “cis” and “trans”. The prefixes don’t “belong” to a category of characteristics, they explicitly exist outside of the characteristics of the words their modifying.
That’s the best I can do with the way you’ve chosen to phrase your question, and I admit it’s a reach, but your question is gibberish.
Male, female or nonbinary are a person’s gender.
White, black, asian (nonexclusively) are a person’s race.
Right, left are a person’s handedness.
Gay, straight, bi are a person’s sexual orientation.
Cis, trans are a person’s ________.
We could call it “gender metadata” ;p
I’m not actually sure if there’s a real term for this. If nothing else, “trans status” works but there should be a better term I think ^.^
Maybe “genderdivergence”?
There is no such category. Being cisgender or being transgender describes the relationship between 2 variables. The first being your assigned gender. The second being your gender identity. Cisgender means there is an equivalence of those 2 variables. Transgender means there is not an equivalence of those 2 variables.
The reason we use the term trans which means roughly “other side” to describe this is because you cannot know you are transgender at birth. Your gender identity is assumed to be cisgender, it is assumed to be the same as the gender you are assigned. So when you reveal your gender identity to in fact be something different you are moving to another side of gender. At least in literal usage of the terms cis and trans.
I’m a little confused as to why you’d say there’s no such category.
Maybe “correspondence between” would be a better term?
Cisgender means that at birth your doctor said “this baby is H gender” and you now currently say “I am H gender”.
Transgender means that at birth your doctor said “this baby is H gender” and you now currently say “I am not H gender”.
The terms refer to the relationship between the gender the doctor assigned you at birth and what your actual gender is.
“Relationships between gender identity and birth sex.”
The additional explanation actually confused me. Let’s compare the two sentences:
A) Basically, do you identify as your birth gender?
B) Basically, do you identify as your birth sex?
I assume biological sex can be identified by looking at your body as a new born baby, and gender is usually inferred accordingly. So I would assume new borns are being assigned a gender which mathes their biology, although they probably don’t have any opinions themselves on the topic.
Anyways, what’s the difference between A and B? I feel you felt it was important to point it out, and I just can’t see any.