Cisnormativity

Gingerbread Person. This is an anthropomorphic drawing of a gingerbread-style cut-out. This is used to illustrate the four discrete experiences of every person, whether trans or cis.

• The purple oval signifies neurological sex. Julia Serano refers to this as “subconscious sex”. These describe the same feature. Neurological sex is fixed in utero. People with a transsexual body have a neurological sex which is not on the same side as their morphological sex; people with a cissexual body do have these on the same side.
• The blue zone down below in the lower torso signifies morphological sex. This is the sex with which bodies are politicized, judged, valued, and conditionally treated. Morphological sex is not limited to genitals (and for reasons to be made clearer at a later time, is considered a bit differently than the gonads), but also to effects of endocrinology — whether endogenous (internally generated) or exogenous (externally administered). People with a cissexual body are born with a morphological sex and a neurological sex which are on the same side (hence, “cis-”). People with a transsexual body are born with a morphological sex and a neurological sex on different sides (generally so before one intervenes in their body’s morphology, hence “trans-”). These congenital conditions — whether cis or trans — are not elective.
• The red heart signifies sexual orientation. This signifies to which general set of gendered and/or physical features one generally finds attraction.
• The green border/box signifies the social language of gender. This is highly negotiable, lacks fixity, and is positional to one’s articulation and the world surrounding them. Everyone articulates dialectal articulations of gender, within which there are countless accents. Cisgender and transgender All people communicate themselves through this language.