What do those words mean?
Vox breathlessly tells us that an American dictionary has added two new Socially Approved words.
Big news for LGBTQ folks: On Wednesday, Merriam-Webster announced that it added the words “cisgender” and “genderqueer” to its unabridged dictionary.
What do those words mean? Here are Merriam-Webster’s definitions:
- Cisgender: of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth.
- Genderqueer: of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity cannot be categorized as solely male or female.
But what does “gender identity” mean?
I don’t call myself nonbinary or genderfluid or genderqueer, nor do I claim to be a trans man. On the other hand I do point out that I perhaps am in some sense nonbinary or genderfluid or genderqueer, but also that so are most people, or even all people, since nobody can fit all the stereotypes for any one gender 100 percent of the time.
But I don’t call myself a trans man. Is that all it take to be “cis”? If that’s all it takes, then I’m cis…but the trouble with that is that the way “cis” is used in discourse, that’s absolutely not all it takes. “Cis” is used in discourse to mean “conforming to one’s assigned gender” at best, and “totally fine with all the stereotypes about one’s assigned gender” at worst. Neither of those remotely applies to me…and again, that’s true of most people.
So what does “gender identity” mean? Does it mean just not calling yourself trans? Or is it much thicker than that, meaning a whole bunch of related things, not all of which are compatible with each other?
Usually, it means the second – and that’s the problem. I have no issue with agreeing that I don’t call myself trans anything, but I have a lot of issues with claims that I have a “gender identity” and that it can be meaningfully summed up with the word “woman.”
Vox goes on to draw a fatuous conclusion from the new definitions:
The additions reflect how society is expanding its discussions over gender identity, gender expression, and transgender issues: As conversations about gender broaden, the vocabulary used in these conversations is set to change, too.
I don’t think the conversations about gender do broaden, most of them; I think they narrow. I think way too many people are making a cult of “gender identity” and that that reverses the healthy trend set off by the return of feminism in the 1970s to make “gender identity” less important instead of more so.
Webster-Merriam makes a sub-par dictionary. Also, words (maybe I should say adjectives and nouns) don’t broaden anything except the width of a dictionary in pages. They constrict and create limits that make it easier for people to utter stupidities like “gender identity” as if it referred to a reality and as if it were conventionally meaningful. And it’s not. So annoying. If I were in charge of all dictionaries, as my childhood career plans called for, the editors of W-M would be put to work elsewhere.
I vote to put you in charge of all dictionaries.
I’ve reason to believe I’m skating on thin ice, but I’ll take a stab at this.
Firstly, gender identity is already in some dictionaries, like here:
What does it mean?
Consider there was an earlier post about white males objecting to a certain video game because it randomly assigned race and sex, and they could find themselves having to play a black woman or something like that. (Let’s leave race out of it for now.) Ophelia observed that a dearth of female characters is something women have to put up with all the time and they just get used to it (or resigned to it).
But why should some people feel more of a “connection” to a male character, and others to a female character? Is it because of stereotypes? As far as I’m aware, in this game the gameplay is exactly the same whatever sex you’re assigned — it’s not like if you’re assigned female you have to wear high heels and makeup and can’t read maps; or if you’re assigned male you have to like sports and beer. Despite everything else being the same, still people feel more comfortable being represented as either a male or female character. That, to me, is gender identity. That’s what it means. It’s the thing in your noggin that makes you feel that a male character is a person like you, or a female character is a person like you, even in the absence of stereotyping.
Now it turns out, for some small fraction of the population, that despite “parental rearing practices and societal influences” due to being assigned male at birth they identify with a female character, or vice versa. It’s rare, but it’s a thing. And these are people who do not fit the Merriam-Webster definition of cisgender.
I suggest that if you were assigned female at birth and make both of the following claims:
– I don’t feel “like a woman”. I feel like a person. Womanhood is something that was thrust upon me and I never related to it.
– I would like to see more female characters in video games and movies, because they are characters I can relate to.
… you are contradicting yourself.
“Feeling like a woman” in the gender identity sense is feeling that female characters are people like you (in a way that male characters are not), even if they don’t conform to stereotypes.
You’re not contradicting yourself if you think that few if any women have the kind of “gender identity” that’s at issue. Women have a lot in common, but that’s not the same as having a “gender identity,” at least not necessarily.
Also, notice that I didn’t say, in the earlier post you linked to, that “I would like to see more female characters in video games and movies, because they are characters I can relate to.” That’s actually not why I would like to see more female characters in video games and movies. (I don’t even play video games.) It’s much more to do with representation and visibility and not being forgotten all the time.
And this whole business about feeling more comfortable “being represented as either a male or female character” misses the whole point, which is that men are totally habituated to being “represented” and women are not. I don’t think we even know who is more comfortable being what, but it’s bizarre that men always get the option and women almost never do – or that women almost always get the option of switching and men almost never do.
Also, when you mean “woman,” could you please not substitute the jargon “assigned female at birth”?
Silentbob, that message @3 makes it sound as though you are going out of your way to avoid the very simple fact that women are severely underrepresented, well, pretty much everywhere, just so you can lament a ridiculous straw man contradiction about why women might want to be more equitably represented. Why do that? How does that illuminate anything said in the OP?
Ophelia, suppose you woke up one day, and everyone spoke as if you were a man. They used male pronouns to refer to you, and if you attempted to correct them or remind them that only the previous day they referred to you with female pronouns they would either ignore you or deny your claim. How do you respond to such a situation and how do you feel about it?
Do you insist anyway on being a woman? Do you play along but feel angry or resentful or other negative feeling? Do you just shrug and play along? Or perhaps you might be truly neutral about it? Or perhaps you play along enthusiastically and have a blast?
When I was in high school, I used my mother’s copy of M-W that she still had from when she was in college. When I went to college I bought my own copy. Hers was the 7th edition; mine was the 9th.
One difference I noticed was that the 9th edition was strongly committed to describing the language as it is actually used. The 7th edition sometimes indulged in describing the language as its editors thought it ought to be used.
Anat #7, although Ms. Benson is well able to speak for herself, I will still point out that crashing someone’s blog and demanding that they respond to (supposedly “gotcha” but actually vacuous) thought experiments is imperious and obnoxious.
Ophelia said it more succinctly, but here’s my take on Silentbob’s conundrum.
My feeling of being a woman is based on having a certain anatomy. I have no sense of feminine essence that is unconnected to my body and, most of the time, ‘woman’ is a microscopic aspect of who I feel myself to be. However, I recognise that people with my anatomical features are (among other things) underrepresented in (again, among other things) video games. Seeing that imbalance brings my sense of shared womanhood into relief, and I’d like to see it redressed. I’m happy to play male video game characters – I sometimes choose to play one even when it’s possible to play a female character – but playable female characters, having the same general look as me, add an extra layer of relatability. I see no contradiction there.
For what it’s worth, I’d also love to see better non-stereotypical representation of people of colour, gay/bi people and trans people, both as protagonists and peripheral characters.
@Anat #7
I’m not Ophelia, but–how is this scenario supposed to resemble the experience of trans or genderqueer people, Anat? They don’t wake up one day to find everybody using different pronouns than those they used the day before.
Personally I “identify as” a woman because I’m biologically female, and having been female and classed as a woman my whole life I’d be pretty bemused if everyone I know started referring to me as “he” for no apparent reason. I fail to see what that has to do with a supposed inherent, internal, and ill-defined sense of gender identity.
Anat, suppose you woke up one day, and everyone spoke as if you were a rabbit. What would you do then?
OK Ophelia and others here, I am not demanding an answer, I find the scenario somewhat helpful in trying to imagine what trans people feel and I am wondering about my own answer to this scenario myself. I apologize for not being clear on this.
I have been misgendered often as a child, less often as an adolescent, probably never as an adult. My response was often either angry correction or pretending they meant someone else. My kid, long before he determined he was trans, on occasions when someone thought he was a boy – felt he was being inexplicably flattered. On the other hand I was never a particularly feminine person and I find most female-coded things unappealing, in contrast with the kid.
I’ve been “misgendered” a couple of times that I can think of. One was indeed in a restroom, and yes that did feel awkward, and yes it did piss me off a little…I think mostly because it seemed so clueless to think I was a man just because I was wearing jeans and had short hair. The other time was outright hostile, but that was a bunch of drunk guys in a park, so it was unpleasant but not very meaningful.
The first one especially was a long time ago. Would it make me uncomfortable now? I don’t know – it might. I tend not to like it when strangers accuse me of being inappropriate in some way.
Anat, I don’t see how your question illimunates ‘wot trans people feel.’ In that scenario, I’m pretty sure the only thing most people would feel is annoyance. Not because they have some sort of connection or need to be addressed with certain words, but more out of feeling that they were the target of a prank. No one likes being deliberately excluded from a joke… and given the usual connotations of misgendering someone, it is not a friendly one at that.
@3 SilentBob
I would suggest that it is not a contradiction to say:
– I only feel “like a woman” in terms of having female biology and in the way I have been treated from birth by others, not in any innate “I feel womanly/feminine” way.
– I would like to see more balanced representation of female characters in media because it combats sexism, which affects all females, aka women and girls.
I would also suggest that the reason male gamers might get pissed off over games that randomly assign gender would be that they think women are lesser. Female gamers might be pissed off because they usually always get stuck playing the default (white) male, and get sick of the lack of representation.
Also, gamers’ characters are often digital representations of themselves within the game, so they may like their avatar to look as much like how they look/want to look as possible.
What it seems to come down to is, I think, that if you have an opinion on what your gender is and you care that others agree with you then that is your gender identity. If being perceived as a member of some other gender doesn’t bother you, maybe even makes you think – hey, wouldn’t that be cool? then either you don’t have a (strong?) gender identity or your gender identity might be different than you thought so far.
I don’t have a strong gender identity (if any) but I know what sex my body is. Being addressed as male would not be upsetting because it would conflict with my sense of self; it would be puzzling because it would be pretty obviously inaccurate.
As far as I can tell, gender identity – as promulgated by the latest generation of activists – is much more concerned with how you relate to notions of masculinity and femininity than with how you relate to your body. If that’s correct, then having a gender identity is not the same as knowing and accepting your sex.
I get that there are those for whom gender is a large component of their identity, and they should be treated with dignity. But there are those of us for whom it is insignificant, and for whom the question “What gender are you?” is as meaningful as “What star sign are you?”
Anat @ 17 – I think you mean sex there, not gender. That’s why I put scare quotes on “misgendered.”
I do not relate to most female characters, and I think the problem with that is most female characters are written to conform to stereotypes about women and no non-cardboard person would relate to them.
I want to see more female characters in better roles so that:
1. Girls who don’t want to be stereotyped can have same sex role models instead of male role models (which leads to them wondering about gender identity or proclaiming the Aren’t Like Other Girls)
2. Boys can see that girls are humans like them and not some kind of sexy talking animal.
3. So that females get decent opportunities. I once wanted to go into acting, but after a certain number of scripts, I realized I would never be right for the parts.
4. How can a society even pretend to equality when a group that is 50% of the population is only seen like 17% of the time?
There’s probably other reasons, too, but I’m tired and those were the first to spring to mind.
If I woke up tomorrow with my body changed, I would be a man and think it odd if people didn’t think I was one. If I woke up tomorrow and my body didn’t change and yet everyone spoke of me as a man, I would think it very odd but I’d love the hell out of having male privilege. If I woke up tomorrow and was a man and was treated like a man, I’d be fine with it. If I wake up tomorrow as a woman and am treated as a woman– the only likely scenario, in reality, I WILL BE PISSED, because PATRIARCHY DOES NOT TREAT WOMEN WELL.
So maybe feminism should still be our fucking focus.