About

White CIS Male is a term used by feminist and LGBTQ bloggers to refer to a heterosexual white man, oftentimes in a derogatory manner. The label was initially adopted by radical advocates of gender equality and the transgender community in the social justice blogosphere in discussing what they perceive as senses of entitlement among straight white men, but over time, it has been also appropriated by some male bloggers to mock social justice warriors and the rise of radicalism in gender identity politics.

Origin

"White Cis Male" can be seen as a label derived from Cisgender (often shortened as Cis), a sociological neologism coined by German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch in his 1991 article "Transsexuals and Our Nosomorphic View" to describe an individual whose gender and personal identity matches the sex he or she was assigned at birth (in contrast to someone who identifies as transgender). During the 1990s and 2000s, the term Cisgender continued to appear in academic papers on gender relations and transphobia, including Peggy McIntosh's 1998 article "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."^[2] Online, the term rose to prominence through its widespread usage by social justice bloggers and LGBTQ activists to combat transphobia on Tumblr in the early 2010s.

Precursor

Prior to the coinage of the label "white cis male," many radical LGBTQ activists and social justice warriors have used "cis scum" as a derogatory label towards the heteronormative male population, along with other phrases like "check your privileges" and "die cis scum", during the onset of gender identity debates on the internet.

Spread

In 2009, a definition was submitted for the term "CIS Male" on Urban Dictionary, reading as follows:

In 2011, an article by the website It's Pronounced METROsexual made an article about CIS privilege^[3], as well as a Yahoo! Answers topic made about CIS Males^[4] and an Advocate.com article made describing the privileges white CIS males were perceived to have^[5]. On September 24th, 2013, a Kongregate forum topic was made asking if "being a white, CIS, heterosexual male is a bad thing"^[6]. On December 25th, 2013, Tumblr's social justice satire blog Social Justice Wario^[8] ran a Q&A post in which the blogger jokingly pledged to illegalize white male cissexuality (shown below). In addition, there are multiple search results relating to the term on Tumblr^[7].

Search Interest

Beginning in late December 2013, the search queries for White CIS Male increased rapidly, reaching a high point in August 2015.

External References