Tuesday, April 10, 2007

There's a terminology thread over on Feministe about the word "cisgendered" (as in, conforming to the gender binary - not trans, not genderqueer, etc). The thing about cisgendered is that it provides a way to reference non-queer genders without assuming normality on the part of, well, the cisgendered (i.e., "normal gendered" or "non-trans").

Piny points out that the disabled community doesn't have this sort of word - we have "non-disabled" and we have "able-bodied" (or TAB, which is similar). Go read the post - it's much better expressed there. There are subgroups, granted, that have their own terms - autistic vs. neurotypical, d/Deaf vs. hearing, LP vs. BP, but there doesn't seem to be a broader term.

I nominate "cisabled". I googled a bit, and I can't find a single usage that isn't a typo of disabled - I'm surprised that no one has ever used it before. (And no, I don't think it is any more likely to be useful than any other analogous neologisms - how often do you hear people say "cisgendered" outside of a gender politics context? But I think the very existence of terms like these can useful in its own way. I will stop now before my grammar falls completely to pieces.).

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