Cisgender

Perry Zurn is Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University. He is the author of How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University, published by Duke University Press, as well as Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry and the co-author of Curious Minds: The Power of Connection.

"With humor and tenderness, Perry Zurn challenges readers to revisit the complexity of a maligned, misunderstood, and undertheorized term. Reaching across and beyond trans and queer community spaces, Zurn offers conceptual and historical breadth to explore the lives of gender variant and conforming peoples, systems of power, and the many possibilities for connection betwixt, between, and alongside one another in shared struggle." –Andrea J. Pitts, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo"This is the definitive book on the genealogies, uses, and panics that inform and animate the circulation of the term cis-. With engrossing prose and an expansive archive, Cisgender offers readers the opportunity to reflect on what was, what is, and what could have been. A must-read for anyone interested in gender and politics!"—C. Riley Snorton, co-author of A Black Queer History of the United States"Perry Zurn’s Cisgender gives voice to that important moment in a minority discourse where the discourse turns back to critique the dominant frame that minoritizes it. But it does far more than that – it deconstructs the cis/trans binary, in a welcome way, to open new conceptual worlds within and between both terms. May it launch many productive conversations." —Susan Stryker, author of, Transgender History

• Acknowledgments viiDis/Orienting 11. “Cis Isn't a Slur. It’s Latin!” 172. A Faerie Punk Counterhistory of Cis 333. Cis Soup: An Early Stew of Meanings 514. Cis Privilege Knapsacks 695. Cis Goes Mainstream—At Some Cost 876. Cisnormativity and Coloniality 1057. On the Sexedness and Whiteness of Cisness 1258. Cripping Cis: What Disability Demands 1439. Why Cis Works 16110. When Cis Doesn’t Work 177Coda 195Glossary of Cis Terms 205Notes 213Bibliography 241Index