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ABOLISH CIS

“Please include a 150 word description of yourself as the author of your article;”

Sioni fenyw. Welsh prole. femme. White. Abled. Aggy/angsty. Tumblrless. [Well..]

_________

olwyn o dân___

*This is a call for the not-cis against the cis.

*Cis is cis-normative or else it is nothing at all.

___It is normative in both senses.

______As norm, the cis pre-dominates, making us the minority [qualitatively as much as quantitatively]. As the normative, it is the coercive cis-morality imposed upon us, making us other, lesser, abject, false.

*To be against the cis-normative is to be against that which [re]produces the cis.

___Cis isn't simply [dis]embodied in individuals – it's a dynamic, a relationship of domination.

______Against its system of birth designations. Against its violent socialisation and policing of these cis-binary gender roles. Against the legal and extra-legal apparatus of state and capital which identifies and records. Against the transphobia, transmisogyny and queer bashing: against cis-domination.

[non]terms of attack___

*Cis [and so not-cis] is a western term used here by a white westerner to locate a western domination. Western cis-normativity is colonially imposed on to non-western, non-white and Indigenous peoples, as others have attacked. Cis-normativity cannot be attacked through imposing western non-cis identities, such as "trans", on to non-westerners. [1]

*In naming the cis [and ourselves as non-cis] we do not [re]produce it: rather, we mark it as a target to be destroyed. Cis-normativity is a social relation, and will be destroyed in [anti]social struggle.

*That isn't to say that its name is totalising [even in a “western context”] or that its articulation is necessary for its destruction. Whilst cis-normativity is a subsuming social relationship, naming it as such is limited to a few "conscious" radicals. Many struggle against the cis, struggle as non-cis, without ever using these terms. The use of these terms here is not a denigration of their struggle.

___Likewise, this [appropriated?] academic language is used begrudgingly.

______Abolishing the cis doesn't need specialised theorists, but for each/all to live [un]spoken poetry.

_________Ac er mai enwau'r Sais sy fa nyn, ma'r gorthrwm a'r brwydr yn annwyl Walia 'fyd.

*As such, not-cis is used here: for all of us beyond the pale of cis. It is not the equivalent of "trans". Trans is both less and more than not-cis. Less in that not everyone who is not-cis identifies/is identified as trans, and more in that trans as an identity amounts to more than just being not-cis.

___If cis is to identify with the gender assigned at your birth, not-cis as an "identity" is a non- identification.

cis abolition is not those gender abolitionists___

*To be sure, there's lots of gender abolitionists. Not-cis erasing communizations [2], anti-feminist cis-manarchists [3], misgenderers using the "they" pronoun for everyone, transphobic TERFs and even TERFy/“truscum” transwomen [4]. In short, shitbags.

*But then the gender abolitionists [or gender nihilists] from a non-cis position, whose rants resonate with anti-assimilation. It's these that are worth talking about here.

assimilation and gender___

*The nihilists put it well. Outside, there's “the” trans flag in front of a cop-shop, hate crime initiatives, homonationalisms' Trans British army captains. Inside, essentialist policing of authenticity, by ourselves [or] of each other, finishing what the law started.

*But assimilation has no clearly bounded subject or agent, and no outside/in. It's a moebius strip drawing tighter. A relationship between the cis and the not-cis. An asymmetric, dominating one, but where the cis pulls us in closer and puts itself inside of us, only making us more distant from ourselves and each other.

___Like madness in the 19th century, the cis in “Britain” at least is more and more like those Quaker reformists, wanting [some of] us to take a seat at its familial table, to sit politely as if we were one of them, carefully watched [and still beaten elsewhere].

______We are talking about more than co-option. It feeds off of us [and spits us out elsewhere]. Not just through simple capitalist accumulation [exploiting our waged and unwaged labour, cis-tourism, commercialising our desires, careerism, spectacle...] but also immediately in moments of struggle [cis-ally saviours, transphobic anti-transphobes...].

*Gender's [/non-gender's] relationship to this doesn't simply fit, even with regard to cis-patriarchy as a whole. Gender in both its narrowest, and widest senses, non-binary/fluid/woman/ man/indeterminate, masculine/femme/butch/camp. Gwisgo lasys sidan ac ymbincio. How these slot [or don't] into cis-normatvity, let alone cis-patriarchy isn't simple, despite the desires of TERFs.

*Maybe our gender nihilists still have more to show, or we have more to show them. [5]

___For sure, we can't say where smashing the cis will take us or our genders [if it will take them]. Masculinity without cis-men or patriarchy, femininity without TERFs or transmisogyny, non- binary without an assigned cis-binary, fluidity without prescribed subjects. "All that's solid melts into air".

______But despite this, and despite all the assimilationist desires, there's still some aggy bite in raging: "if I can't be [trans!]femme, it's not my revolution!".

tactics___

*Maybe a difference in tactics. Tactics because there is still resonance - because whether it's a question of this abolishing gender or abolishing the cis, we're on the same side of the barricades.

___But also because there are some tactics that aren't that lost. Sure [conscious] identities are never totalising or essential or final. But where we have them/where they have us, let's escalate, use them till they brake [or brake them], make them again, re-appropriate, take, sabotage, visible then hidden, against the record or silent or all across their walls. Are our non-cis genders themselves a reproductive labour - can they be a revolutionary care? Weaponise them before we throw them away, before the assimilationist amnesty or hard-repression rears its head.

*Our nihilists leave so much unsaid, the what and the how - for and against whom. So does this text. But it's adamant all the same: through and/or from and/or towards gender, it's tactics which us non-cis accomplices need.

cis-abolition as a tactic____

*So why talk about cis abolition? Because, targeting the cis [especially its concrete content] rather than targeting gender [as an abstract form] seems to resonate with much more rage. It is explosive, against that we hate, rather than seeming to attack those struggling with us. For sure, gender abolition has proved amongst ourselves a tense provocation and opened divides. But the divides it gives rise to aren't between those who are against assimilation from those who are not, between the desires to abolish cis-patriarchy and the desires to live it again and again.

*But attacking the cis, and that which reproduces the cis, might do differently. And they might articulate much more nicely, for what it might be worth. Less ambiguity, for ourselves or for TERFs.

some problematics___

*Targeting cis-domination without reifying its power and without authenticity policing the non-cis?

___Arising from a targeting thats separated from attacking?

*Cisness as [dis]embodied in individuals, but also as a relationship of power?

___Accomplice cis bodies against the cis? Transphobia from trans people? Non-cisness as a process?

______Separate organising? Non-cising spaces?

*Perthynas y Gymraeg i gyffredinoliad negyddol yn Saesneg megis "non-cis"?

*The above with regards to the boundaries or [in]between of the cis and non-cis?

*Escalating anti-assimilation beyond being not-assimilated [we want it all [gone]!]?

tactical clarity___

*Abolish the cis.

*Tân yn “ein” rhywedd...

notes___

[1] Other than this the relations of cis/not-cis to colonialism and race are left empty here, because attempting to articulate from my position might only of left it emptier. For similar reasons, these relations to intersex struggles are also left unsaid, as is so, so much else. As an attack on the cis, and not a positive affirmation or program, I hope that emptiness isn't erasing.

Likewise, the focus here on cis-domination isn't done because transphobia can be abstracted from other dominations. Rather, where [increasingly everywhere] the cis dominates other dominations can't be abstracted from it. We need to talk strategically about attacking cis-normativity.

[2] “Endnotes: The Logic of Gender” https://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-the-logic-of-gender. Not TERFy, but the total silence concerning cis/not-cis is a hardworked accomplishment.

“Communization and the abolition of gender” https://libcom.org/library/communization-abolition-gender#footnote6_tpqs0u5 give the slightest nod in a footnote.

[Sure, if these articles were talking from a cis position and didn't want to speak “for us”, but if so at least articulate that, don't erase the non-cis when talking about something that is directly about the non-cis.]

For an articulation of communization and gender that doesn't erase non-cis struggle, see “LIES Volume I: Identity, Abolition, Communization” http://www.liesjournal.net/.

[3] See for example, “AGAINST THE LOGIC OF SUBMISSION: Beyond Feminism, Beyond Gender” http://www.reocities.com/kk_abacus/vb/wd8fem.html.

[4] See for example, “New Narratives 2014” https://newnarratives2014.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/how-is-gender-harmful-and-what-does-the-idea-of-gender-abolition-mean-to-trans-women/.

[5] Cis abolition is not essentially gender abolitionist, or essentially not. It doesn't see gender as essentially oppressive, or as essential otherwise. See, even if essentialisms don't tie us down in one place, we always dance with or against them [at least in this way of talking]. Nihilists just dance with them in the negative ["the real movement to abolish the present state of things", "against the existent" etc.]. Here it is cis which must be cleared aside.

#gender nihilism #trans #cymraeg #abolish cis

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