Keynote Address
Cultural cisgenderism: Consequences of
the imperceptible
Natacha Kennedy
At the 2012 POWS Annual Conference, Natacha Kennedy delivered a powerful and challenging keynote
on cultural cisgenderism. Her talk is reproduced here.
Introduction: An inadequate metaphor
THE FILM COMEDY I Was A Male War
Bride (Hawks, 1949) depicted a newly married
Frenchman played by Cary Grant attempting to
accompany his American wife to the US at the end
of World War Two. However, the US congress had
only foreseen that American soldiers would be
men and would be likely to marry European
women. When an American servicewoman
falls in love with a French soldier her efforts
to ensure he can accompany her to America
result in a huge, and in this instance, quite
comic struggle with both bureaucracy and
cultural expectations. As an illustration of
the nature of cultural cisgenderism, it illustrates
a similar kind of problem but in terms
of extent is not nearly an adequate
metaphor, yet it does represent an illustration
of the difficulties faced by transgender
people in a culture simply not constituted to
account for our existence. The consequences
of the War Brides Act 1945 are not,
however, even remotely comparable with the
very serious, and sometimes deadly,
consequences of cultural cisgenderism.
Nonetheless, as a metaphor it is probably the
closest available, a point that in itself suggests
that cisgenderism is a concept that will not be
easy for many to understand.
Situating cultural cisgenderism
This paper intends to draw on and develop
the research by Ansara and Hegarty (2012),
which demonstrated how a group of
psychology researchers have developed a
culture of cisgenderism in what they identify
as an ‘invisible college’. They characterised
this type of cisgenderism as:
‘…a prejudicial ideology, rather than an
individual attitude, that is systemic,
multilevel
and reflected in authoritative
cultural discourses. […] Cisgenderism
problematises the categorical distinction
itself between classes of people as either
‘trans‐gender’ or ‘cisgender’ (or as
‘gender variant’ or unmarked) […]
We consider cisgenderism to be a form
of ‘othering’ that takes people
categorised as ‘transgender’ as ‘the
effect to be explained.’ (p.5)
The distinction this paper intends to draw is
between the type of cisgenderism Ansara
and Hegarty describe, which appears to function
within a particular esoteric domain, and
cisgenderism within society as a whole. To do
this I will need to refer to two sociological
concepts, that of institutionalisation and that
of discursive saturation (Dowling, 2009).
In essence institutionalisation refers to
the extent to which a practice is regular
and widespread; a highly institutionalised
practice is one that occurs in a similar way
each time, whereas a weakly institutionalised
practice occurs differently each time or is less
regular in the way it is manifested. It is this
that serves to distinguish cisgenderism from
transphobia, since transphobia represents an
individual attitude rather than a cultural
process or ideology and as such can be
characterised as weakly institutionalised.
This will be explored in a little more detail below.
Discursive saturation basically refers to
the extent to which the principles of an
activity may be expressed in language. A
highly discursively saturated practice is
dependent primarily, if not almost exclusively,
on language for its functioning; an
example of this would be mathematics. A
weakly discursively saturated practice
requires little or no language for it to function,
for example, street football. It is this
distinction that is crucial to the way cultural
cisgenderism functions.
As is shown in the relational space in
Figure 1 below, the main differences between
professional cisgenderism and cultural
cisgenderism are the relative levels of discursive
saturation.
Psychology of Women Section Review – Vol. 15 No. 2 – Autumn 2013 3
© The British Psychological Society ISSN 1466–3724
Professional cisgenderism, in
Ansara and Hegarty’s analysis, is relatively
highly discursively saturated; the discourse of
the invisible college was revealed, by detailed
textual analysis, to represent an ‘authoritative
cultural discourse’. So how is that different
from the culture of cisgenderism outside the
practice of psychology?
In this case cultural cisgenderism represents
a practice which has a similar level of
institutionalisation but which has a relatively
low level of discursive saturation. This is a
culture or ideology (Geertz, 1973) which is
predominantly tacitly held and communicated.
It represents a systemic erasure and
problematising of trans people, an essentialising
of gender as binary, biologically determined,
fixed at birth, immutable, natural
and externally imposed on the individual.
Of course, something characterised as a
tacit ideology or culture is difficult to
describe or analyse, but occasionally examples
can be found where circumstances result
in people having to explain their actions and
as such put them into words. There follows
one such example.
In Denmark in 2010, the Danish Red Cross was
running, as it still does at the time of writing,
temporary accommodation for asylum‐seekers in
Denmark for the Danish government at the
Sandholm refugee camp, near Copenhagen. They
received a new asylum seeker from Latin America
who was a transgender woman. However, despite
presenting as female and declaring a female
identity they accommodated her in a single
room in a mens’ dormitory. As a result she
was repeatedly raped and eventually fled the
camp after being gang‐raped. When later
questioned about this the head of the Danish
Red Cross asylum services told reporters
the following;
‘Basically a transgender woman is likely
to be placed in a male dormitory but in a
single room. But we would not place her
in a women’s dormitory because that is
definitely for women, where we cannot
permit ourselves to place a man.’
Modkraft, Denmark. August 2012.
My own translation.
Here there is no evidence that the head of
asylum services intended deliberately to
harm the victim by placing her in a
dangerous situation where she would be
raped.
However, it does represent an
example of cultural cisgenderism. It represents
a confusion about gender resulting
from the erasure of trans people in European
culture. The Danish Red Cross, because it is
an organisation existing in Western Europe,
is affected by this cisgenderist culture. The
above quotation reveals many of the features
of cultural cisgenderism described above:
•
•
•
•
•
the systemic erasure and
problematising of trans people;
the essentialising of gender;
the gender binary;
the immutability of gender;
the external imposition of gender.
The problem for the victim is that, in this
Case, the result would almost certainly have
been the same if the head of asylum services
at the Danish Red Cross had been transphobic.
It is likely that in many cases, transphobia
and cisgenderism have the same
results.
In particular it would appear that one of
the most central elements of cultural
cisgenderism is the way it places the
responsibility for determining gender on the
observer rather than the individual. In other
words, in the culture of cisgenderism, gender is
something we do to other people, not something
people do for themselves. This external
imposition of gender can be characterised as
a lifelong process, one which, in most cases,
begins at birth with gender assignation, and
continues throughout life with gender
attributions.
This external imposition of gender can
now be regarded as extended to transgender
people with a bureaucratisation of gender
transition, as transgender and transsexual
people are referred to a psychologist or
psychiatrist to have their new gender externally
confirmed. It is worth comparing this
with the culture in which two‐spirits were
accommodated in native American culture
(Williams 1992) where children who may
identify as a gender other than the one
assigned at birth had access to a symbolic
ritual in which they were in effect, able to
decide their own gender.
Transphobia vs. Cisgenderism
As I mentioned above it is necessary to
distinguish cisgenderism from transphobia. The
relational space situates transphobia in relation
to cisgenderism.
2 Psychology of Women Section Review – Vol. 15 No. 2 – Autumn 2013
Natacha Kennedy
Discursive Saturation
High Discursive Saturation
(DS+)
Low Discursive Saturation
(DS‐)
Institutionalisation
Strong Institutionalisation (I+)
Weak Institutionalisation (I‐)
Professional
Organised
Cisgenderism
Transphobia
Cultural
Reactive
Cisgenderism
Transphobia
Figure 1: Anti‐trans processes.
Since it represents an individual attitude rather
than a culture, it cannot be regarded as strongly
institutionalised, although some transphobes
have become organised and share a highly
institutionalised internal culture of hatred, fear
and hostility, these groups are relatively small
in number. By way of example, within some
religious groups and Trans Exclusionary
Radical Feminists (TERFs) transphobic
cultures exist which represent internally
highly institutionalised transphobic ideologies.
In these cases there exists a discourse of
transphobia, which, in some cases, is
required for the maintenance of their
internal cohesion and in order to attempt to
provide a rationalisation (Stone, 1991;
Kaveney, 1979) for what appears to be little
more than an emotional and irrational fear
and hatred of trans people.
This contrasts with what may be regarded as
reactive transphobia, which exhibits low
discursive saturation, which represents
individuals whose fear, and consequently hatred,
of trans people is openly based on the emotional
and the irrational without drawing on the veneer
of rationalisations. It is likely that this is a
result of the exclusionary nature of cisgenderism
and may often be attributed to portrayals of trans
people in the media. However, in both these cases
transphobia represents an individual attitude
that stems from a fear and hatred of trans people.
It should be made clear that this is not
cisgenderism, indeed TERF transphobia
largely represents a culture which mythologises
a disguised essentialisation of gender,
but only as far as trans people are
concerned, presenting members of this
group with rationalisations for what, in principle
can only be described as shared
emotional responses. As such a self‐perpetuating
culture of hatred based on self‐deception
is maintained.
So cisgenderism is different from transphobia,
in that transphobia represents an individual
irrational hatred and fear (which
in some circumstances may develop into its
own micro culture as a means of justifying
itself) whereas cisgenderism represents a
much wider cultural process which in most
cases is tacitly communicated. It is important
to make this distinction.
Interaction of professional and cultural
cisgenderism
By way of an illustration of how cisgenderism
can function on a variety of levels, I would
now like to present an analysis of one
instance in which cultural cisgenderism
results in unwarranted data and problematic
assumptions, and to suggest that most
research in psychology or neurology relating
to trans people, cannot be reliable unless it
takes account of cultural cisgenderism.
Kraemer et al. (2005) and Landen and
Rasmussen (1997) have suggested that there
is a comorbidity between being transgender
and being on the Autistic Spectrum (AS).
Further studies have noted a higher instance
of AS people who are trans (De Vries et al.,
2010; Jones et al., 2011; Strang et al., 2012)
but have gone no further than noting that a
larger percentage of trans people are also
AS. Although these articles clearly indicate a
correlation, one might read into these
studies an inference that there may be a
causal link.
There are two (related) problems with
these studies and the first of these is that they
fail to account for the effects of cultural
cisgenderism. As a highly institutionalised
culture, cisgenderism’s effects are relatively
constant and uniform in most areas of
society. However, as a culture that exhibits
low discursive saturation cisgenderism is also
tacitly communicated. This means that in
most cases people come to internalise it
without realising they are doing so. It is a set
of beliefs which are usually picked up by
children as a result of their finely tuned and
sensitive social radar.
The work of economist H.A. Simon
(1976) is relevant here; he argued that,
contrary to orthodox characterisations of
human behaviour most people are not in the
position to make objectively rational decisions
about their lives and usually people
Psychology of Women Section Review – Vol. 15 No. 2 – Autumn 2013 5
Cultural Cisgenderism: Consequences of the Imperceptible
make decisions on the basis of inadequate
and incomplete information. Trans children,
like other children, understand that it is
usually likely to be socially unacceptable to
adopt certain behaviour, preferences or
appearance, particularly those that are
outside the social norms of their gendered
community of practice (Paechter, 2007).
The restricted nature of social groupings in
primary and most secondary schools, and
the lack of alternative social groupings available
to those excluded from the school or
class group, means that social exclusion
represents a very real threat to them if they fail to
conform to group norms. As such the decision
by the majority of trans children to
conceal their gender non‐conformity represents
a rational one given the information
available to them at the time. The tendency
of trans children to conceal or suppress their
gender identities (Kennedy, 2012) appears
to arise, to a significant extent, from their
perception of this tacitly expressed culture.
However, there is one group of children
for whom this tacit culture is either undetectable
or unimportant: AS children. In
most cases AS children would probably be
unable to detect this tacit ideology; a process
that results in most trans children
concealing or suppressing their gender identities.
Yet it is also probable that even if they
did realise that it was socially unacceptable,
most would be unlikely to be able to conceal
it or to perceive the need to conceal. This
presents us with an apparent paradox in
which cultural cisgenderism is either not
perceived or not perceived as important by
AS children who are trans, whereas it affects
non‐AS children who are trans to a far more
significant extent.
This results in those trans children who are AS
becoming apparent much more readily than non‐
AS children because of the differential effects of
cultural processes and social relations, in this
case caused by cisgenderism. In effect cultural
cisgenderism, because of its low discursive
saturation, does not affect most AS children
in the same way as it affects non‐AS children. The
second problem would appear to be
that the effects of professional cisgenderism have
functioned in the instances cited above,
to exclude from consideration by those
carrying out the research the possibility that
this cultural process might have an effect on
their data, with the result that a comorbidity
between being trans and being AS is argued
or inferred. In effect cisgenderism has preempted
the researchers from asking the
most elementary question most researchers
need to ask when a particular effect is
observed; ‘What is this an instance of?’
(Dowling, 2009). By situating trans people as
inherently problematic, and through its
function of essentialising gender as
immutable, fixed at birth and binary,
cisgenderism appears to preclude researchers
from perceiving the need even to ask this
question or consider that there might be other
causal links. So we can see how cisgenderism
operates on two levels; within the group of
people who are subjects of study, and by
excluding important variables from consideration
by part of the academic community studying
them.
The apparent attribution of a comorbidity
between gender non‐conformity and
autism/Asperger’s can be thus be attributed
to a function of cisgenderism on two levels;
professional cisgenderism and cultural
cisgenderism. Of course, it is also likely that
this also represents the effect of the
restricted gaze of mainstream or quantitative
psychological research and neurological
research failing to account for social and
cultural influences either on their research
participants or on their own epistemological
assumptions as researchers.
Of course, there are other instances of
the effects of cisgenderism resulting in
researchers obtaining results that are probably
unwarranted. Once again cisgenderism’s
function has precluded asking the
question ‘What is this effect an instance of?’
with the possibility at least acknowledged
that there may be additional causal influences
on the data.
This is significant in the case of the substantial
volume of research suggesting that the majority
of trans or gender‐non‐conforming children do
not grow up to be trans adults (e.g. Drescher &
Byne, 2012; Drummond et al., 2008; Zucker,
1985). Repeated studies have asserted that
anything between 70 per cent and 98 per
cent of trans children do not become trans
adults.
However, this is difficult to argue
when the effects of cultural cisgenderism are
considered. Kennedy (2012) argues that the
overwhelming majority of trans children
conceal or suppress their gender nonconforming
natures. Furthermore Sedgewick’s (1990) essay
‘Epistemology of the Closet’ demonstrated how
difficult it is to come out as lesbian, gay or
bisexual, yet applying the same epistemology of
4 Psychology of Women Section Review – Vol. 15 No. 2 – Autumn 2013
Natacha Kennedy
the closet to trans children the effects of
cisgenderism probably represent a much more
significant hurdle for trans children than
heteronormativity.
For the majority of trans children not
only is the fear of social exclusion evident,
but cisgenderism also results in a lack of
vocabulary being available for them to
understand and communicate their experiences.
This means that those children who
do become apparent and available to
researchers, are very unlikely to be
representative of trans children as a group. It can
be speculated that they may be subject to
selection by at least three filters; becoming
apparent to their parents, their parents not
being happy to give their child the unconditional
love they need to seek ‘treatment’ and
subsequently being sufficiently determined
to have a cisgender or heterosexual child to
wish to subject them to psychologically coercive
pressure to conform to the gender originally
assigned to them at birth.
Of course, cultural cisgenderism should
be regarded as part of society’s perception of
gender as largely essential. Messner’s (2000)
observations of the way socially constructed
gender differences in young children were
attributed as essential by adults suggests that
the majority perception of gender as essential
persists quite strongly, indeed even trans
people who campaign for trans human
rights appear to consider essentialism as one
of the core reasons for the existence of trans
people:
‘There are probably many reasons for
the increase in prevalence, including
the increased dumping of environmental
pollutants known as endocrine
disruptors…’1
Dana Beyer, Executive Director of
Gender Rights Maryland, 7 July 2013.
The effects of cisgenderism, and in particular
one of its constituent elements, essentialism,
represent one of the many further hurdles
for trans children and young trans people to
overcome in addition to the problems that
Sedgewick argues LGB people are likely to
face in coming out.
Of course, the above quotation suggests that trans
people are also affected by cisgenderism, even as
adults, and so, as children, it is likely to be much
more difficult to become intelligible to oneself
given the veiled nature of this process.
However, it is also important to consider the
effects of the cultural feedback loop
created by the influence of professional
cisgenderism on cultural cisgenderism. The
perception given by this research, that, in
most cases gender non‐conforming behaviour
in children is considered a ‘phase’
suggests that the misconceptions propagated
by some psychologists and neurologists are
likely to form part of the wider cisgenderist
culture and as such could be argued to
represent a threat to the well‐being of most
trans children through its contribution to
the maintenance of cultural cisgenderist
ideology in wider society.
It is also particularly important to reiterate
that cisgenderism is a culture/ideology
that affects everyone. It affects the perceptions
of trans people by others, and it
disproportionately appears to affect trans
children and young trans people. However,
Butler’s characterisation of femininity as ‘the
forcible citation of a norm.’ (Butler 1990)
represents an indication that cisgenderism also
affects those who do not identify as transgender,
but which also acts to introduce a systemic
element of coercion into the way women
have to behave. Cisgenderism takes this
further by arguing that this element of
‘forcibility’ is present for all genders not
merely for feminine ones. Furthermore
cisgenderism’s binary gendered coercive
functioning results in those whose gender is
different from that assigned at birth
becoming delegitimised, unintelligible to
others and to themselves and often
systematically prevented from expressing their
genders in any way at all. It is important to
recognise that cultural cisgenderism is something
that affects everyone both in terms of
coercive restrictions on their own behaviour
and appearance, and coercive misgendering
and delegitimisation of those whose genders
are not conventionally consistent with those
attributed at birth.
It is imperative, therefore, that professional
communities, whether teachers, psychologists,
doctors or others, acknowledge
professional cisgenderism within their
communities of practice and start to challenge
its negative influence. The culture of
cisgenderism within the wider community
represents a more profound issue, and one, which
cannot be so easily addressed. However,
identifying cultural cisgenderism as a weakly
discursively saturated culture/ideology may
represent a means by which to resolve this
issue. Weak discursive saturation represents one
of its most significant characteristics so
Psychology of Women Section Review – Vol. 15 No. 2 – Autumn 2013 7
Cultural Cisgenderism: Consequences of the Imperceptible
the obvious question to raise would be
whether or not it can exist as a relatively
strongly discursively saturated practice. In
other words if cisgenderism becomes an issue
that is talked about more widely, will that in
itself result in it becoming less of a problem?
In any case the concept of cisgenderism and
how it affects both transgender people and
cisgender people needs to be more widely
discussed, and instances of cisgenderism
more clearly identified, in particular where
they result in specific problems or disadvantages
for individual trans people or groups of
trans people. In a school context for example
it is not sufficient for teachers to act to
prevent transphobic bullying; one of the
issues that is starting to be considered more.
Schools need to consider how cisgenderism
affects their treatment of trans children.
Recent examples of cisgenderism in
schools in the UK have included the
following:
• Lining up children in separate girl‐boy
lines.
• Refusing to allow trans girls to use the
toilets of their choice or forcing them to
use a toilet adapted for people with
disabilities.
• Teachers refusing to address
transgender children by the name of
their acquired gender, even when it is
their legal name.
• Headteachers refusing to discuss, with
the legal representatives of the parents,
allowing transgender children the right
to express their gender in school.
• Trans children who are bullied not being
supported adequately by the school.
• Trans children who come out as trans
being regarded as the problem.
• Schools refusing to recognise trans
children’s human rights under the UN
Convention of the Rights of the Child.
• Parents of other children abusing trans
children and the issue not being taken
up by the school.
Separate school uniforms for girls and
boys preventing trans children from
dressing in their real gender.
• Schools trying to remove from the
school roll trans children who no longer
come to school because of bullying.
• Schools treating trans children
significantly differently from other
children of their gender.
• Schools attempting to force trans
children to present and behave in the
manner of a different gender.
•
•
•
Schools not adhering to the spirit and/or
the letter of the Equality Act 2010.
Schools not having equality and
diversity policies that include gender
reassignment.
Schools providing staff training on
lesbian, gay and bisexual issues but not
trans issues.2
All of the above examples of trans children
being treated less favourably represent
examples of discrimination against trans
children that have occurred in primary or
secondary schools in the UK. Of course, it is
possible that some of this represents direct
transphobia on the part of senior staff in
schools. However, it would appear that trans
children occupy one of two default positions
in relation to school. Firstly, the circumstances
of the majority of trans children are that they are
non‐apparent, and no‐one in the school is aware
that they are trans.
Because they are unable to be themselves
and feel a strong sense of guilt and possibly
self‐hatred because they are trans this is
unlikely to be a good situation to be in from
an educational perspective and is likely to
result in their underperformance in school.
Secondly, the circumstances of those who are
openly trans is that they are likely to be
unable to remain in school because of a
combination of cisgenderism and transphobia.
Either way the UK education system
would seem to be failing trans children on a
huge scale. This failure is compounded by a
lack of recognition that this failure is occurring,
and that action needs to be taken to
remedy it.
Trans children, as with all children, are
supposedly protected by the UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child (United Nations
1989), to which the UK is a signatory, yet
their human rights are routinely denied, in
particular Principles, 1, 2, 9 and 10. As an
indirect result of these breaches, principle 7
(the right to an education) would also
appear to be regularly breached. If this were
occurring to any other groups there would
be a huge outcry.
Conclusion
The weakly discursively saturated nature of
cultural cisgenderism results in it being a
culture or ideology that is difficult to recognise.
This in turn renders it hard to understand
its effects. However, it would seem that
cisgenderism affects young trans people and
trans children to a greater extent than most
others in that it prevents the majority of
6 Psychology of Women Section Review – Vol. 15 No. 2 – Autumn 2013
Natacha Kennedy
them from becoming intelligible to themselves
and to those around them. The
strongly institutionalised nature of cisgenderism
combines with this to make it difficult
for most people to understand that things
they have considered to be taken from
granted and to be naturally occurring are in
fact socially constructed and harmful or
exclusionary for trans people, even though
there is no direct or overt intention to be
transphobic or to harm trans people. Just as
Cary Grant had to struggle against a system
not designed for his individual circumstances,
but which clearly was not intended
to discriminate against heterosexual couples
and prevent them from getting married, so
cisgenderism represents a system against
which trans people, especially trans children,
have to struggle. The difference is that the
sexist nature of the War Brides Act is easily
exposed and relatively harmless. This is not
the case for cisgenderism. It’s influence is
very widespread, difficult to identify and its
consequences can, and very often do, blight
the entire lives of trans people, or worse.
1 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana‐beyer/gender‐
transition‐in‐children_b_3530335.html
2 Unfortunately it is not possible to reveal the exact details
of these occurrences without breaching the individual
children’s rights to privacy, however, they have all
occurred between 2008 and 2013 in schools in the UK.
Correspondence
Natacha Kennedy
Goldsmiths, University of London.
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New York: Plenum Press.
Psychology of Women Section Review – Vol. 15 No. 2 – Autumn 2013
Natacha Kennedy