User:KayeAKelley/Cisgender

History
The term cisgender was coined in 1994 in a Usenet newsgroup about transgender topics. On that newsgroup, Dana Defosse, then a graduate student, sought a way to refer to non-transgender people that avoided marginalizing transgender people or implying that transgender people were an other. Correspondingly, some trans* activists argued that using terms such as 'man' or 'woman' reinforced cisnormativity, and that instead using the prefix 'cis' similarly to the way 'trans' is used would counteract the cisnormative connotations within language. (Ex. 'cis-man' or 'trans-man') While intended to be a positive descriptor to distinguish between trans* and non-trans* identity, the term has been met with criticisms in more recent years. Three decades after she coined the term, in a personal essay, Defosse said she didn't intend the word as an insult. She says she doesn't believe the word cisgender "caused problems – it only revealed them."