Category: gender

Cisgender, transgender and native English prefixes

Wikipedia’s list of English prefixes categorize trans- and cis- differently.

Trans- is “native”. That is, it comes to us through Medieval French and has been fully integrated (linguists would call it productive) into modern English.

Cis- in “neo-Classical.” Meaning, it was lifted from Classical Latin into the modern age thanks to science, and now forms words like cislunar and cisgender.

So, based on this incredibly complicated, complex analysis I decree that being transgender is more natural and native to anglophones than being cisgender is. Amen.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/third-gender-muxes_n_1949638.html

Also interesting. A 5 min video. Muxe, a third gender group in southern Mexico.

Changing Ones: Third and fourth genders in native North America

I really cannot recommend this book enough. True, even I sort of reached my limit when the author talked about the Mohave fecal fetus in third-gender folks. But it is chalk-full of awesome quotes: “… Because of its ubiquity worldwide gender non-conformity appears to have been part of the proto-human cultural complex.” What an awesome sentence is that!

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