In Cisgender, Perry Zurn turns an incisive yet playful eye toward the “norm” against which transgender gets defined. A cisgender person is informally understood as someone who doctors called male or female at birth, became a boy or girl, and finally lived as a man or woman – without fuss. It’s this “without fuss” that anchors the cis/trans binary as it has come to be understood and belies the complex relationship all people have with gender. How did this category arise? And what else might it do? Cisgender is the first book to trace the story of how cis entered contemporary gender lexicons. Utilizing unplumbed archives and fresh interviews, Zurn offers a critical history of the term from the 1990s to the present, deftly defamiliarizing and reimagining cis at the same time. This unique examination of cisgender is a must-read for all readers invested in trans life and the futures of gender.
Acknowledgments vii Dis/Orienting 1 1. “Cis Isn't a Slur. It’s Latin!” 17 2. A Faerie Punk Counterhistory of Cis 33 3. Cis Soup: An Early Stew of Meanings 51 4. Cis Privilege Knapsacks 69 5. Cis Goes Mainstream—At Some Cost 87 6. Cisnormativity and Coloniality 105 7. On the Sexedness and Whiteness of Cisness 125 8. Cripping Cis: What Disability Demands 143 9. Why Cis Works 161 10. When Cis Doesn’t Work 177 Coda 195 Glossary of Cis Terms 205 Notes 213 Bibliography 241 Index 267
Perry Zurn is Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University. He is the author of How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University, published by Duke University Press, as well as Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry and the co-author of Curious Minds: The Power of Connection.
"This is the definitive book on the genealogies, uses, and panics that inform and animate the circulation of the term cis-. With engrossing prose and an expansive archive, Cisgender offers readers the opportunity to reflect on what was, what is, and what could have been. A must-read for anyone interested in gender and politics!"—C. Riley Snorton, co-author of A Black Queer History of the United States
"Perry Zurn’s Cisgender gives voice to that important moment in a minority discourse where the discourse turns back to critique the dominant frame that minoritizes it. But it does far more than that – it deconstructs the cis/trans binary, in a welcome way, to open new conceptual worlds within and between both terms. May it launch many productive conversations." —Susan Stryker, author of, Transgender History