diskhorsedudes:

I’ve been seeing some people forgetting/misunderstanding the definitions of some basic terms that are used to talk about gender identity so here’s a post to remind people of what words mean to try to clear up some confusion.

1. Being cis means that you identify 100% completely with the gender you were assigned at birth.

2. Being trans means you don’t 100% identify as the gender you were assigned at birth.

3. Being non-binary means your gender identity does not fit the boy/girl binary of our society. Non-binary people can be partially boy, partially girl, some mixture of the two, neither of the two, etc. There’s tons of ways to be nb and none of those ways are wrong. Sometimes it involves name changes, hormones, pronoun changes, clothing and hair changes, and surgery. Sometimes it only involves some of those things. Sometimes it involves none of those things. All nb people are valid no matter what.

4. Some nb people don’t identify as trans and some do. The ones that don’t identify as trans may do so because they don’t feel the need to medically or socially transition and to use the trans label may imply that these are things they want in their perspective. This is totally fine. Nb people don’t have to label themselves as trans if they don’t want to and that should be respected. Whether or not a nb person decides to use the trans label can also change over time. I discovered I was nb 5 years ago but didn’t start identifying as trans until about 2 years ago when my dysphoria started getting really bad. Different things factor into why and when a nb person decides to call themselves trans or not.

5. If a nb person does not identify as trans, this does not make them cis. Nb people don’t have to force themselves to “pick a side” in this false trans/cis dichotomy. Being nb is its own thing in and of itself and sometimes it aligns with being trans for some people and sometimes it doesn’t, but it doesn’t ever align with being cis. Besides, nb people literally cannot be cis because they don’t 100% identify as their agab and to act like nb people can be cis implies that they have privilege over trans and other nb people, which is not true. Truscum, which are notorious for going on crusades to invalidate nb indentities, would have a field day over the notion that nb people can be cis. It will give them and other types of REGs more fodder for their desire to falsely claim we oppress them so they can have an excuse to exclude us from the lgbtq and queer communities, which puts us in danger.

At the end of the day, anyone can identify however they want but we also need to make sure we are using these words correctly so we don’t confuse people, spread misinformation, imply that we are not oppressed or marginalized, or accidentally give tools to those that wish to kick us out of the community and harm us. I can’t stop a nb person from calling themselves cis and misusing words but if they do, they need to understand the implications it could have for other nb people and make sure that they let others know that they should not ever go around calling other nb people that don’t use the trans label cis as that would be harmful and extremely invalidating to a ton of people.