Cissexual Gender Entitlement
For most cissexuals, the fact that they feel comfortable inhabiting their own physical sex, and that other people confirm this sense of naturalness by appropriately gendering them, allows them to develop a sense of entitlement regarding their own gender: They feel entitled to call themselves a woman or a man. This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, because many of these same cissexuals also assume that they are infallible in their ability to assign genders to other people, they can develop an overactive sense of cissexual gender entitlement. This goes beyond a sense of self-ownership regarding their own gender, and broaches territory in which they consider themselves to be the ultimate arbiters of which people are allowed to call themselves women or men. Once again, most cissexuals are unaware of their gender entitlement, because (1) the processes that enable it (i.e., gendering and cissexual assumption) are invisible to them, and (2) so long as they are cissexual and relatively gender-normative, they have likely not been inconvenienced by the gender entitlement of others. Because gender-entitled cissexuals assume that they have the ability and authority to accurately determine who is a woman and who is a man, they in effect grant a privilege—cissexual privilege—to those people whom they appropriately gender. To illustrate this point, imagine that I’m approached by someone who appears male to me (i.e., I gender them male). If they were to introduce themselves as “Mr. Jones,” I would probably extend them cissexual privilege—that is, I would respect their male identity and extend to them all of the privileges associated with their identified sex. I might call them “sir,” grant them permission into a male-only space, find it appropriate when they tell me they’re married to a woman, etc. However, if I were gender-entitled, there might be some instances in which I’d refuse to extend them the privileges associated with their identified sex. For instance, if the person introduced themselves as “Ms. Jones,” but I chose to view the gender I’d initially perceived them as (i.e., male) to be more authentic or legitimate than their female identity, then I would be denying them cissexual privilege. Similarly, if I were to learn that “Mr. Jones” was transsexual and had been born female, and if that knowledge led me to re-gender him as female rather than male, I would again be denying him (in this case) cissexual privilege.
An excellent example of how gender entitlement produces cissexual privilege, and how that privilege can be used to undermine transsexual genders, can be found in the following Germaine Greer quote:
No one ever asked women if they recognized sex-change males as belonging to their sex or considered whether being obliged to accept MTF transsexuals as women was at all damaging to their identity or self-esteem.1
The immediate sense that one gets after reading this quote (besides nausea) is Greer’s severe sense of gender entitlement. Despite the fact that she knows that transsexual women identify as female, Greer refers to us instead as “sex-change males,” demonstrating that she feels entitled to gender us in whatever way she feels is appropriate. Similarly, because of her cissexual assumption (i.e., her belief that cissexuality is “natural” and goes without saying), she doesn’t bother defining exactly what she means when she uses the word “women”; in her mind, it’s a given that she is referring only to cissexual women. Greer grants these women cissexual privilege when she suggests that they (along with her) are equally entitled to be consulted about whether transsexual women should belong to their sex or not. It is particularly telling that Greer uses the word “asked” in this context. After all, nobody in our society ever asks for permission to belong to one gender or another; rather, we just are who we are and other people make assumptions about our gender accordingly. Thus, when Greer uses the words “asked” and “obliged,” she is not talking about whether trans women should be allowed to be female, but whether or not our femaleness should be respected and legitimized to the same extent as cissexual women’s femaleness. By applying different standards of legitimacy to people’s identified and lived genders based on whether they are cissexual or transsexual, Greer is producing and exercising cissexual privilege.