Cis: a female exploration. This is a thread designed to build a bridge not dig a trench. Please read along, by all means add your experiences.
First the accepted definition in gender politics "on the side of" denoting a somewhat comfortable match between ones sexed body & gender
First the accepted definition in gender politics "on the side of" denoting a somewhat comfortable match between ones sexed body & gender
This is developing to a "it just means *not* trans" stance to include women who are uncomfortable with gender &/or uncomfortable with their sexed body under the "cis woman" umbrella.
And there is also a growing movent of trans is transformational, it's change and growth. Cis isn't about on the same side or comfort/discomfort with body or gender. Cis is just you didn't have to change.
Linked to this understanding of transformation of becoming and of not having to change is the mass misreading of Beauvoir because a sentence stripped of context is not ever going to be useful as truth.
See: "But of course transwomen are women, even Beuovoir said one is not born a woman". No human who has ever walked this earth was born a woman. Not one. The becoming is a process for all women. Yes "cis women" become.
But what about the radicals and "women born women" can we not please? That is in response to trans women while rejecting cis. No one literally means one is born, comes from the vagina or lifted through a surgeons incision fully formed as a woman. They're women born female.
And as a woman born female I am uniquely placed to explain this journey of becoming which is my own. It is of course one of change. But also one of matrilineal strength and connection.
The egg that formed me, sat within my mother, before her birth, in the womb of my grandmother. Just as the eggs within my daughter sat within my womb before she was born. This is female. It's not a hole to be fucked. It's not a heel to be worn. It is the matrilineal line.
That doesn't mean I didn't have to undergo change to become a woman. A woman is what society creates. And it is created around the basis of female personhood and the reproductive capacity female personhood represents. It is about our *perceived* reproductive capacity.
To be clear, the loss of my womb if that were to happen doesn't deny me womanhood. Fibroids. Endometriosis. Crippling infertility. Child free by circumstance or by choice. Menopause. None of this excludes females from womanhood. It's perception.
Now clearly there are lines along the female persons journey where this perception changes. Hence girl - woman of child bearing age - post menopausal woman. And the lines are fuzzy and shift.
Being female is constant change. Gender is never on the same side as sex because the gender assigned to females is as fluid the blood which flows out of me monthly.
The gender assigned to me as a female child shifted from "baby", neutral & free on to "girl", rigidly held in preparation. Girlhood is preparation. We talk about preparing a child for sexual exploitation.
Gender for females during girlhood is part of this. Ultimately it is the preparation of females for adult sexual exploitation. Once they are women. And not all survived girlhood without experiencing the sexual exploitation we are taught is our lot.
Where does girlhood end and womanhood begin? Ask men. Because it is men through history who have controlled this change for female persons. 9. 12. 14. 16. 18. 21.
For females everything shifts and we have to try to absorb change.
For females everything shifts and we have to try to absorb change.
When a girl first bleeds.
When a girl first grows hair.
When a girl is "legal".
When a girl passes from father to husband.
When she becomes a mother.
It's ever changing.
When a girl first grows hair.
When a girl is "legal".
When a girl passes from father to husband.
When she becomes a mother.
It's ever changing.
Ultimately when you can no longer fit the trope of virgin you become mother, whore or hag. And there you stay. Changing monthly. Cycles of changes. Years of cycles.
And then your gender shifts once more. Crone. You no longer have a reproductive capacity that men perceive (although you may actually be capable of bearing children) therefore your womanhood had changed again.
There is nothing static about female personhood. Nothing about being a virgin, a whore, a mother, a hag, a crone sits on the same side as my sex on a way I feel no discomfort with. This is cis womanhood and cis does not cover it.
@threadreaderapp please unroll
