OED on terminology for sexuality and gender

[redbird]

Language Log linked to an OED post on that dictionary's "release notes" for updated entries on words to do with gender and sexuality. The post title says "formal language" but the discussion includes "trans*" and "cis," which don't feel formal to me, as well as "heterosexual" and the changing meanings of "bisexual" over time and in different contexts.

The author notes that the editors made extensive use of the Digital Transgender Archive. The earliest citations the OED could find for agender and cisgender were on Usenet. (On the other hand, the earliest usage they found for "transgendered" was from the TV magazine section of the Des Moines Sunday Register.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

"trans*" is deprecated. "cis" is...not informal?

[redbird]

Hm. I think of "cis" as informal, because if I'm feeling formal I'd say "cisgender."

[alexseanchai]

Formal – informal isn't the right metric, I think. "Cisgender" feels academic to me. "Cis" is outside the ivory tower.

[thnidu]

I think you'll find that levels of acceptance and of formality can differ from one group or subculture to another. True, I have not seen "trans*" for rather a while, but simply "trans", with "transsexual" and "transgender", as well as "transitioning", used when more precision is desired. But "cis", like unpunctuated "trans", is alive and well. Maybe not in research and other formal writing, but certainly in the contexts where I see and hear this terminology. These contexts are accepting of non-binary gender and sex.

I'm a cis het male, but many of my friends, both in realspace and online, are outside the binary norm that has been taken for granted for so long. And when some members of my congregation, many of them friends of mine, formed a GLTBQ group for socializing as well as considering and studying GLTBQ-specific matters, I asked if a cis het ally might participate and got an enthusiastic "Yes". I've been very happily at many of the group's events since then.