Cislation

2019, Kate Curley, Debunking the false dichotomy: Developing and applying trans quantcrit at the intersection of trans/non-binary identities and religious, secular, and spiritual engagement in college, thesis for Eastern Michigan University What is called the cislation of transness (the perpetuation of cisnormativity in descriptions of trans people) in higher education and RSS research is pervasive (Sumerau, 2017; Sumerau, Cragun, & Mathers, 2016). Historically and contemporarily, cis people have controlled the narrative on trans/NB people’s experiences.

Rather than push for more fluid, dynamic, and intersectional notions of gender expansiveness, the “binary v. nonbinary trans people” fallacy keeps our most simplified and palatable narratives front and center. This is yet another practice of cislation, or the translating of seemingly illegible (i.e., not understandable) genders for cis recognition.

[…] our and our kin’s lives, realities, bodies, and voices, thereby interrupting their cislation. Cislation refers to an analytical practice of presenting trans perspectives in such a way as to make them legible to a dominantly and presumably nontrans readership, but that may in fact […]

Binary and non-binary more often function as cislations (i.e., their use is often aimed at making trans positionalities more understandable to cisgender people) than as a readable trans dichotomy (see Jourian & Nicolazzo, 2019).