canonball

hey folks, just so you know, i’m crossposting this from my blog .

A central question that I have as I delve into theory is the concept of “academic language.” As I mentioned in my previous two posts, academic language is divisive and convoluted. But I think there is another piece of the puzzle into which I really want to dig deeper—what does it mean to write a theorist, a branch of theory, or a whole community off as being too academic?

A few weeks ago, queenemily over at Questioning Transphobia wrote two great posts about how “cisgender” is dismissed as an academic term, rendering the calling out of cisgender privilege easily deflectable. queenemily noted that “cis” comes from internet listservs and discussion boards from the 90s. The folks in my community who I talked about it with have said that it comes out of a chemistry term, cis-trans isomerism which I can’t verify but is a neat connection. Here’s the wikipedia article on cisgender as well.

I think it’s important to note that cisgender didn’t necessarily come straight from the academy, or from the pages of Judith Butler. I don’t think that doesn’t mean there isn’t some sort of academic connection to it, though—internet access in the 90s was still scarce, so the folks who may have been actively creating cis might have been academics after all, or at least folks privileged enough to have consistent ...