Cisgender means that your gender identity matches the sex you were assigned at birth.

Simple definition

If you were labeled “female” when you were born and you feel and live as a woman, or labeled “male” at birth and you feel and live as a man, you are cisgender. The word is often shortened to “cis.”

How it’s used

  • It describes gender identity, not who you are attracted to (that’s sexual orientation).
  • A cisgender person can be straight, gay, bi, etc.
  • It is basically the counterpart to “transgender,” which is when someone’s gender identity does not match their assigned sex at birth.

A bit of background

  • The term comes from the Latin prefix “cis‑,” meaning “on this side of,” the opposite of “trans‑,” meaning “across” or “on the other side of.”
  • It started appearing in academic and community discussions in the 1990s and entered mainstream dictionaries in the 2010s as conversations about gender became more visible.

Why the word exists

Having the word “cisgender” makes it clear that everyone has a gender identity, not just transgender people. Instead of saying “normal people and trans people,” which suggests trans people are abnormal, we can say “cis people and trans people” as two descriptive, neutral categories.

One way to remember it:
“Cisgender” = your gender identity is on the same side as your birth- assigned sex;
“Transgender” = your gender identity has moved across from your birth- assigned sex.

TL;DR: Cisgender describes people whose inner sense of being a man, woman, or another gender aligns with the sex they were labeled with at birth.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.