Monday, September 30, 2013

Identy, Identiy (for Identity, Identify)

Rah rah "cis" boom bah! The word cis has entered the LGBTQLFTSQIA (as Dan Savage would put it) lexicon. It refers to people whose biologically assigned gender (i.e., male or female) more or less lines up with the way they actually see themselves. It's the opposite of trans (as in transsexual or transgender). Although the letter C will not be joining the current "alphabet soup" of alternative gender identities that evolved from the 1970s "gay rights" movement, one can certainly be both cis and gay. You could say that "my sis is cis, but my bro is no," for example, without revealing anything about their sexual orientations per se. You don't have to identify your own identity right here and now, but anyone who's a cataloger should home in on today's typos and reassign them a proper spelling. There were four cases of Identy in OhioLINK, and 269 in WorldCat. Identiy was found 18 times in the former and 231 times in the latter.

(Polish cheerleaders, 19 February 2009, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

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