Understand what the neologism cisgender is meant to convey. It’s not a minor detail—it’s a significant matter.
Queer activists tell us that a trans woman is a type of woman. What, then, is another type of woman? A “ciswoman.”
Cisgender first appeared in academic and activist circles in the 1990s and gained wider recognition in the 2000s. It was coined to describe people whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were “assigned” at birth. The term provides a linguistic parallel to transgender without implying that being cisgender is the default or “normal” way of being.
In the early twentieth century, German physician Ernst Burchard, an associate of Magnus Hirschfeld, coined the term “cisvestitism” to describe individuals who presented themselves in a manner consistent with their gender. German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch (who studied under neo-Marxists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) used the prefixes “cis” and “trans” in the context of gender identity in the early 1990s—building on the concept of gender identity, a construct introduced into psychiatry by sexologist Robert Stoller in the 1960s. In English-language discourse, the term “cisgender” was coined in 1994 by Dana Defosse, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. From there, the construction quickly spread among feminist and LGBTQ+ academic circles.
In reality, adding the prefix cis- to “woman” is redundant. A woman is, by definition, an adult female human. There is no other kind. Yet tautology is part of the ideological purpose behind the term. The goal of promoting “cisgender” is to normalize the concept of a trans woman as a type of woman by affirming the premise, thereby persuading people to accept the claim that a trans woman is not a man, even if exclusively he is.
This is the propaganda function of the neologism: legitimizing transgenderism and the construct of the “trans woman” through specialized language. George Orwell would recognize it as newspeak—the deliberate reworking of language for ideological purposes (as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where 2 + 2 = 5 because the Party says so).
Activists often insist that objections to cisgender are overreactions. They claim it merely describes someone who identifies as a woman. But identity is not a matter of what one thinks; it is a matter of what one is. People can imagine themselves in all sorts of ways: some think they are dogs, for instance. If they truly believe this, it is a psychiatric condition.
Consider this analogy: a cat raised among dogs may act like a dog. Its owner may say, “She thinks she’s a dog.” But the cat remains a cat. There’s no such thing as a “cis-cat.” The same principle applies to humans: a trans woman is not a woman in the exclusive and objective sense; he is a man.
Or take a squirrel raised by cats that “purrs.” The squirrel imitates feline behavior and produces sounds reminiscent of purring. But any reasonable observer knows it is still a squirrel. It cannot become a cat simply through imitation or socialization. There is no such thing as a “trans-cat.” You don’t need to be a biologist to recognize that.
Objecting to cisgender is not overreacting; it’s a rational response to an ideological effort that uses language to destabilize clear thinking and promote falsehoods. Promoting the neologism is essentially encouraging people to lie—to themselves and to others. If normalizing deception is acceptable, nothing else would be objectionable.
This is the broader objective of queer rhetoric. It is not only about transgenderism or redefining womanhood. The larger project is a kind of transhumanism: preparing people to accept their own dehumanization. By insisting on certain language, activists manipulate people into estranging themselves from objective reality and the truth of their identity. They seek to disrupt natural cognition, to distance humans from their animality.
This is precisely what must be resisted.
Remember about a decade ago when a white woman named Rachel Dolezal identified as black? She claimed to be “transracial.” Using queer logic, this means that someone identifying with the race they were “assigned” at birth would be “cisracial.” Why hasn’t this neologism caught on? Perhaps because rigid racial categories are functional to progressive politics in a way the gender binary isn’t?
freedom and reason 