What To Do If You Are Flat Like A Ken Doll

Response to: On suffixes, and considering the term Transsexed

i-am-the-lighthouse:

Don’t cissexed and cisgendered mean the same thing? It’s just about biological sex and gender identity being aligned, so how is cissexed different to cisgendered (if at all)?

The difference between cisgendered and cissexed depends greatly on your theory of gender. To someone who interprets gender as having a whole lot to do with one’s relationship with one’s body, they’re probably approximately the same because, as you said, gender and body seem to be aligned.

To me, gender has very little to do with my relationship with my body and there is no particular way in which my gender, no matter what it is, could be misaligned with my body, no matter what it is. Personally, I find that the idea that body and gender are either aligned or misaligned depending on your gender/body combination is an indirect way of saying that men must have penises and flat chests and women must have vaginas and protuberant chests because it says that if I am man-identified, I obviously have or want/intend to have those things that are traditionally associated with manhood.

While I’d never specifically thought about it, I suppose that I am a cissexed, transgendered person because I have no intention, desire, or need to change the sexed parts of my body in a permanent way.

In summary:
cissexed refers to folks with no intention or desire to changed the sexed parts of their body in a permanent way either through hormones or surgery or both.
cisgendered refers to folks who interpret the things that are true of them as being generally gendered in the way they’ve always been told their body is gendered.

People can be cissexed and transgendered, as I am, or cisgendered and transsexed, or transgendered and transsexed, or cisgendered and cissexed.

In the same way as many transsexed individuals use the term to mean both that they are transsexed and transgendered, many cisgendered people (and people talking about cisgendered people) use cisgendered to mean that they are both cisegendered and cissexed.

Does this clarify?

(via flapjackstate)

Source: boygirlboigrrrl