Moving Beyond “Bio Boys” and “Genetic Girls”
The first step we must take toward dismantling cissexual privilege is to purge those words and concepts from our vocabularies that foster the idea that cissexual genders are inherently more authentic than those of transsexuals. A good place to start is with the common tendency to refer to cissexuals as “genetic” or “biological” males and females. Despite its frequent occurrence, the use of the word “genetic” seems particularly strange to me, since we are unable to readily see other people’s sex chromosomes. In fact, since so few people ever have their chromosomes examined, one could argue that the vast majority of people have a genetic sex that has yet to be determined. In the rare cases where people do have their chromosomes checked out (such as sex testing at the Olympics or in infertility clinics), a person’s genetic sex not matching their assigned sex occurs far more often than most people would ever fathom.3
The use of the word “biological” (and its abbreviation “bio”) is just as impractical as the word “genetic.” Whenever I hear someone refer to cissexuals as being “biological” women and men I usually interject that, despite the fact that I am a transsexual, I am not inorganic or nonbiological in any way. If I press people to further define what they mean by “biological,” they’ll often say that the word refers to people who have a fully functioning reproductive system for their sex. Well, if that’s the case, then what about people who are infertile or who have their reproductive organs removed as the result of some medical condition? Are those people not “biological” men and women? People often insist that “biological” refers to someone’s genitals, but I would ask them how many people’s genitals they have ever seen up close. Ten? Twenty? A hundred? And in the vast majority of instances where we meet somebody who is fully dressed (and therefore their genitals are hidden), how do we know whether to refer to them as “she” or “he”? The truth is, when we see other people and classify them as either female or male, the only biological cues we typically have to go on are secondary sex characteristics, which are themselves the products of sex hormones. That being the case, as someone who has had estrogen in her system for five years now, shouldn’t I be considered a “biological” woman?
When you break it down like this, it becomes obvious that the words “biological” and “genetic” are merely stand-ins for the word that people really want to use: “natural.” Most cissexuals want to believe that their maleness or femaleness is “natural” in the same way that most heterosexuals want to believe that their sexual orientation is “natural.” In fact, if you look at the entire spectrum of social and class issues, you will see a trend of people trying to “naturalize” their privileges in some way—whether it be wealthy people who try to justify the huge gap between rich and poor by appropriating Darwin’s theory of natural selection, or white people who make claims that they are smarter or more successful than people of color because of their biology or their genes. When it comes to gender, “natural” is the ultimate trump card because it takes the relevant issues—privilege and prejudice—off the table and frames the very real and legitimate perspectives of sexual minorities as “unnatural” or “artificial,” and therefore unworthy of any serious consideration.
This is why I prefer the term cissexual. It denotes the only relevant difference between that population and those of us who are transsexual: Cissexuals have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned.