Hello, all you amazing readers!
I have a request from my transfans.
Will you please... or ask someone in your community to... create a glossary of terms the transgender community has created to describe everyone else.
Seriously. I'm not joking.
If the trans community really, really wants the non-trans community to fully embrace all of the wonderful qualities you all have as human beings, then you really have to consider that when the rest of us are called something that we don't understand, it kinda puts us off.
"Cishet"?
"Cisgender"? Thanks to GLAAD, we can look this on up.
I'm really, really not kidding my friends. Words are symbols. Words bring groups together and they can keep them apart. When someone writes something, for example, about the trans-experience in a non-trans oriented publication, do you expect to engender (pardon the pun) understanding or camaraderie when you use a term that only other transfolk understand?
It's like two people from different countries trying to forge a peace agreement when neither of them speak the same language nor do either have an interpreter.
Besides, "cishet" sounds like asshat to me. :-)
This is just a suggestion, beautiful people. But perhaps y'all should consider it somewhat seriously, since you know for a fact that I'm totally on your side. You know?
And by the way...
YAY SCOTUS!
1 comment:
cis-het is shorthand for cisgender heterosexual. In general its use that I've seen is primarily in the context of describing the ignorance or display of privilege exhibited by the subject. In that way it can be considered somewhat derogatory. Urban dictionary is actually a good source on this one. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cishet&defid=7025527
As far as a wider glossary of terms. http://transwhat.org/glossary/ seems to be rather good. There of course with any community, linguistic offshoots happen which can be hard to follow though.
Murbella
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