1 min readMay 13, 2019
- Clearly you haven’t met any academics. “Over analysis” is what we do for a living (and in the eye of the beholder). :-)
- Your construction “male people and…non-male people” exemplifies the problem words like “cisgender” aim to address: some people masquerade as abstract universal citizens (specifically: straight, white, able-bodied, cisgender men) against which everyone else is marked out as ‘other.’ Naming all those “male people,” using the kind of adjectives typically used to demarcate their ‘others,’ works to ‘mark’ them linguistically as a means to dislodge them from the social and cultural center.
- You are correct. I do not make a strong argument for why the term “cisgender” is “inappropriate.” This was neither the topic nor the central aim of my piece.
- Despite your implication, this academic does not have a problem with the word cisgender. In fact, I support the use of of all de-centering language as an act of power that helps bring about a more equitable society.
