Cis Privilege is Real

Saying that being cis-gender – i.e. having a gender identity that corresponds with the sex/gender one was assigned at birth – comes with privileges need not mean erasing the lived experiences, real challenges, and specific struggles of cis-gendered people (and especially of those cis-gender people who are otherwise disadvantaged and marginalised in other dimensions). It can even be compatible with recognising that there are specific areas where some cis people can face distinctly harsher challenges. Indeed, it can be compatible with recognising that certain struggles are rooted in one’s biological sex (or at least in the way in which certain biological factors are treated within a given social system). For cis women and other people who can get pregnant this is true, for instance, with respect to their reproductive rights and autonomy. In a nutshell: saying that cis privilege is real does not mean that all cis people are overall privileged – far from it.

It also need not come with a fetishization, or over-emphasis, on what being cis means. Many people (gender critical feminists most vocally, of course, but not only them) feel that they just do not have a gender identity, period – and thus reject the idea that not being trans automatically means being cis. One can, they would say, not be trans and not care or think about one’s gender identity at all, or indeed not have one. The cis/trans distinction, however, can be read in a less polarising way – you can be cis without having any thoughts about what your gender identity is. Being cis might mean simply not needing to make a point that your gender is different from the one you were assigned at birth – which includes not having a gender at all. It can be read, quite literally, as the being “on this side”: you don’t need to thematise your gender much, and that might include not caring about it. You are cis because you can afford that, whether the topic of gender identity is a big thing for you at all (under this understanding, being non-binary, genderqueer or agender requires a much more pro-active and vocal rejection of the gender you were assigned at birth – not caring about your gender idnetity, in other words, is not enough to make you agender).

With all that aside, can we please say that cis privilege is real – that it is a thing? Let me just share with you two ways in which I have recently experienced it (there are more, of course)

1. When the Imane Khelif drama exploded last Summer during the Paris Olympic Games, JK Rowling was among the public figures jumping on the bandwagon of those who questioned Khelif’s biological sex. After matters were clarified, Rowling doubled down, posting on X that “‘Someone with a DSD cannot help the way they were born but they can choose not to cheat; they can choose not to take medals from women; they can choose not to cause injury.” In other words: we allow you to exist, but don’t you dare demanding to fulfil your ambitions, to excel at something. That is not unlike a male society telling cis women, “we allow you to have equal civil rights; we might even allow you to have a job; but don’t you dare demanding full equality of opportunities to excel, especially if that requires a readjustment of caring obligations, or a readjustment of the labour market to accommodate the fact that workers have such caring obligations.” Now, I am of course not saying that this kind of attitude is never displayed towards cis women – but when it is, it usually causes pretty universal outrage. Most of the time, I can exist secure in the knowledge that most people around me will not think that, by expecting to fulfil my potential just like men, I am asking for too much. If you are not cis – or even, in Khelif’s case, if you are perceived as not being cis – that is apparently not automatically the case. Of course, Rowling’s language was not quite as crass – but the message, I think, it’s pretty clear: if you are different, it is your job to reduce your ambitions so as not to create trouble for others. This does not mean that we should not have a conversation about fairness in sport, and that this can lead to tough choices and exclusions in some cases. But the presumption should be that a woman like Khelif should have the right to fulfil her aspiration to excel, in a sport she loves and is good at – just like the aspiration of an ambitious woman to have a successful career. The language in that tweet, instead, delivered the message that the burden to not make a fuss was entirely on her. Well, if the trope of the “difficult woman” is sexist and misogynistic, then this kind of message should be seen as something similar.
2. Cis people routinely experience being turned on by the sheer fact of feeling attractive, sexy, and comfortable in their own skin. In a society where attractiveness is often connected to thinness, people who successfully lose weight and feel more attractive as a result routinely report feeling sexy, and feeling more sexual as a result – indeed, they experience being turned on by their own bodies, because they finally feel at home in them (I am not thereby suggesting that it is only natural for thin people, or for people who have lost weight, to feel this way). It can go as far as buying seductive lingerie, putting it on when alone, and fantasising in front of a mirror. This, or something like this, is a common experience for many cis women – nobody call this phenomenon autogynephilia and say that these women have a weird fetish.