Cisnormativity
In health care, cisnormative attitudes and systems have diverse negative effects on transgender patients, including pathologization, erasure, and distrust towards healthcare practicioners.
The combination of the two, termed hetero-cis-normativity or cisheteronormativity,[a] represents the societally dominant view that sex, gender, and sexual orientation are all congruent.
[3] The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies states that cisnormativity is "the presumption that most people do, or should, conform to the norms about gender assignment in their society".
She argues that cisgender people "indiscriminately project" their experience of gender identity onto all others, "transforming cissexuality into a human attribute that is taken for granted".
[5]: 164–165 A related concept is that of cisgenderism (also known as cissexism), defined by Erica Lennon and Brian J. Millster writing for Transgender Studies Quarterly as "the cultural and systemic ideology that denies, denigrates, or pathologizes self-identified gender identities that do not align with assigned gender at birth as well as resulting behavior, expression, and community".
[6] Cisgenderism was proposed as an alternative concept to transphobia, with the intention of drawing focus to a systemic ideology, rather than an individual "phobia".
[7][8][9] Academic literature identifies cisnormativity as intersectional with endosexism, sexism, heterosexism, bisexual erasure, classism, racism, ageism, and nationalism.
[14] In 2012, sociologist Meredith Worthen coined the term hetero-cis-normativity[b] for this phenomenon: I identify hetero-cis-normativity as a system of norms, privilege, and oppression that organizes social power around sexual identity and gender identity whereby heterosexual cisgender people are situated above all others and thus, LGBTQ people are in a place of systemic disadvantage.
[3] Serano suggests cisnormativity as the foremost cause of trans erasure, whereby the experiences of transgender people are made invisible in the public eye.
[10] The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies cites as examples of cisnormativity in legislation laws mandating mental health diagnoses to receive gender-affirming treatments or to have one's gender legally recognized, and laws requiring a trans person to be sterilized before they can change their legal gender.
Schools often divide students into binary genders, and perpetuate the idea that boys and girls have respective sets of mutually exclusive "attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires".
School policies may erase transgender people, for example by administrative procedures, uniform rules, toilet layouts and curricula.
[19] The kinds of cisnormative violence experienced by transgender students include verbal and physical abuse and sexual harassment.
[20] These factors have been linked to worsened emotional and psychological health, lowered ability to participate at school,[19] as well as increased stress among transgender students.
[25] Cisnormativity also causes trans erasure in health care context, such that medical institutions are unready to treat transgender patients.
