Cisgender (Disorienting a Category)

In Cisgender, Perry Zurn turns an incisive yet playful eye toward the “norm” against which transgender gets defined. A cisgender person is informally understood as someone who doctors called male or female at birth, became a boy or girl, and finally lived as a man or woman—without fuss. It’s this “without fuss” that anchors the cis/trans binary as it has come to be understood and belies the complex relationship all people have with gender. How did this category arise? And what else might it do? Cisgender is the first book to trace the story of how cis entered contemporary gender lexicons. Utilizing unplumbed archives and fresh interviews, Zurn offers a critical history of the term from the 1990s to the present, deftly defamiliarizing and reimagining cis at the same time. This unique examination of cisgender is a must-read for all readers invested in trans life and the futures of gender.