Distinguishing Gender by Utility to Humans

Long before I posted video content on YouTube or TikTok, I wrote an article explaining my distaste for the words "trans" and "transgender." The former is beyond accurate comprehension and the second is inaccurate beyond comprehensive science.

Sex and gender are unrelated scientifically, and the two should be not related semantically. Most of the misunderstanding (including recent Executive Orders) surrounding sex and gender stem from human misuse of scientific terms.

Gender is a process of individual expression of physicality, cognition, and behavior within context of a social environment. Each of us develops gender, and there is no reason to categorize it further.

Except…

A comment on a YouTube video accused me not only of using the word "cisgender," but intending its use as a slur.

(To be clear, the comment also implied I had personally offended women across time and space as well as endangered children simply by existing. However, I want to focus only on the use of "cisgender" and not the hysteria exhibited by some YouTube viewers.)

Since I published my treatise against "trans," I regularly field questions about why I continue to use the word. Admittedly, I don't like it, and I use it for one purpose only: differentiating the background from which one's gender develops assists those who haven't thought very hard about it.

That is, the words "cisgender" and "transgender" provide details on the utility of one's gender to the rest of humanity.

Early human experience with stone

Early humans survived by creating tools from the environment around them. During the Stone Age, a fragment of flint or obsidian attached to a tree branch could enable relatively weak humans to endure harsh climates.

But Stone Age humans likely distinguished only basic concepts such as "water," "plant," and "stone" in their environment. It was not until about 5000 BCE that humans discovered some stones would react in fire to smelt a new substance - metal.

As humans learned more about this new substance, they discovered stones that smelted different metals, including copper, tin, lead, iron, and gold.

What was originally named only "stone" received the new moniker "metal ore" as humans learned to distinguish it. But the differentiation did not stop there. "Metal ore" was insufficient to cover the diversity of metals and the use early humans derived from them.

Human understanding of "stone" evolved to include "metal ore," which evolved to include "copper ore," "iron ore," and "gold ore" based on the utility each particular metal provided to humans.

All metal ore is still stone. But humans found value in naming them specifically as they built new weapons, cooking utensils, mirrors, and jewelry from the metals they smelted.

Human history - especially within science and engineering - necessarily evolves language as we learn more about the Universe and how to utilize its gifts.

Early biologist experience with gender

Biology dawned as a science by cataloging species and their activities, including patterns of reproduction. A thorough discussion deriving the meanings both of "sex" and "gender" purely from early observations of Nature can be found in this video.

Obviously, simple catalogs gave way to more complicated study, especially of humans. Although one word - "gender" - is sufficient to describe how an individual organism expresses species sex characteristics, human behavior consistently pushes the boundaries of scientific understanding.

When boundaries shift, language evolves. As the evolution from "stone" to "gold ore" described growing understanding of smelting, the words "cisgender" and "transgender" describe growing understanding of human behavior.

All humans develop gender. But there is benefit in evolving one word into two. Using two words makes observation of different expressions of gender explicit, like observation of different metal ores.

To be clear, I would prefer all humans simply accept gender identity - the current complex of the physical, cognitive, and behavioral in context of the current social environment - as the province only of the person expressing it.

There is, however, one instance of human behavior I believe justifies bifurcation into "cisgender" and "transgender" - the search for physical intimacy.

Utility in "cis" and "trans"

Imagine a woman who wants to enjoy physical intimacy with another person. If that woman wants intimacy within the confines of a specific physical configuration - perhaps vaginal intercourse - she must find a person who fits her needs.

Now imagine that woman wants to have children. Producing one type of gamete, she must find a person who creates the opposite gamete in order to reproduce successfully.

In the case of reproduction, the decision could be limited to the two human sexes - male and female. The woman simply must find a person of the opposite sex to hers.

But notice an important detail was omitted. Is the woman cisgender or transgender? If transgender, has she received gender-affirming surgery? The answers to these questions affect both discussions - whether engaging in vaginal intercourse or reproduction.

This situation - the search for physical intimacy - is the only time the woman needs to know more details about another person's physicality. She must determine first if that person would consent to physical intimacy with her, then inquire about specific physical configuration.

Otherwise, there is no reason to know anything about the person sitting next to you on the bus, reading books to your children, or peeing in the stall next to you. That information provides no value unless you're trying to get nasty with them.

Again, I dream of a day when all people simply accept each other's gender identity and act out of consent and respect. In the meantime, however, the words "cisgender" and "transgender" help answer very specific questions inherent in relationships.

They answer the question of utility one human provides in physical intimacy with another.

Is "cisgender" a slur?

To return to the spit-flecked fury of my YouTube comment, we can now answer whether the word "cisgender" could ever be used as a slur:

Nope.

A chunk of gold ore is still a stone. A cisgender person is still a human. There is no difference - scientifically or semantically. The two are empirical examples of set theory, nothing more.

But the opinion that "cisgender" was developed by gender theorists simply to slur those of you out there who chose not to be gender theorists implies fundamentalism far deeper than gender.

Perhaps you fear the idea that gender is developed, not inherited, and therefore capable of fluidity. When every human must develop who they are throughout life, no person can claim to be "normal." Perhaps you fear losing the designation of being special by being mundane.

Perhaps you fear the idea that science is a process of discovery, and therefore never finished. As the tool of science, language necessarily evolves with it. Perhaps you fear being left behind by progress and embrace destroying its products, as a true Luddite.

But I suspect most people offended by use of the word "cisgender" simply want to be offended. They want to wear their recreational outrage as a badge of pride.

We must leave them to it - that is one Pride movement sensible people must avoid.