Meanings
plural cislations
- countableuncountabletransgender and social sciencesThe act or process of cislating.
Binary and non-binary more often function as cislations (i.e., their use is often aimed at making trans positionalities more understandable to cisgender people) than as a readable trans dichotomy (see Jourian & Nicolazzo, 2019).
2021 August 5, Joshua M. Paiz, James E. Coda, Intersectional Perspectives on LGBTQ+ Issues in Modern Language Teaching and Learning, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 1633 more examples
2019, Kate Curley, Debunking the false dichotomy: Developing and applying trans quantcrit at the intersection of trans/non-binary identities and religious, secular, and spiritual engagement in college, thesis for Eastern Michigan University What is called the cislation of transness (the perpetuation of cisnormativity in descriptions of trans people) in higher education and RSS research is pervasive (Sumerau, 2017; Sumerau, Cragun, & Mathers, 2016). Historically and contemporarily, cis people have controlled the narrative on trans/NB people’s experiences.
Rather than push for more fluid, dynamic, and intersectional notions of gender expansiveness, the “binary v. nonbinary trans people” fallacy keeps our most simplified and palatable narratives front and center. This is yet another practice of cislation, or the translating of seemingly illegible (i.e., not understandable) genders for cis recognition.
2019 June 4, T.J. Jourian and Z Nicolazzo, "Not Another Gender Binary: A Call For Complexity Over Cis-Readability: Why a nonbinary/binary trans dichotomy is counterproductive to gender liberation", National Center for Institutional Diversity[…] our and our kin’s lives, realities, bodies, and voices, thereby interrupting their cislation. Cislation refers to an analytical practice of presenting trans perspectives in such a way as to make them legible to a dominantly and presumably nontrans readership, but that may in fact […]
2020, Z Nicolazzo, TJ Jourian, “'I'm looking for people who want to do disruption work': Trans* academics and power discourses in academic conferences”, in Gender and Education, 2020
Origin
From replacing the trans- part of translation with cis-; coined by T.J. Jourian.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
cislation. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cislation
“cislation.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cislation. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cislation,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cislation.
Source: cislation on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.