Evin Taylor's Questionnaire

What kind of privileges do you have?

         The term “cisgender” was created by transgender activists in the 1990s to distinguish between cisgender and transgender individuals (Groth, 2020). According to Evin Taylor in her questionnaire, Cisgender Privilege, “Cisgender people are those whose gender identity, role, or expression is considered to match their assigned gender by societal standards” (p. 80). Those that do not identity as cisgender, namely transgender, face discrimination on almost all aspects of their life. The purpose of the questionnaire was not meant for those who identify as cisgender to recognized their privilege but to also recognize what non-cisgender people have experienced of fear of experiencing.

I came across this questionnaire during my first semester at UCF in the fall when I took a course on gender studies. It would actually be one of the very first reading assignments we had in the course. When you first see it, you see that it’s actually quite a short article with only four paragraphs and a list of 50 questions on it but this did not change the impact when answering the questions. During our quiz, we were asked to write the top three questions that stood out to us the most. Oddly enough, asking to pick just three questions was actually a lot more difficult because so many of the questions were quite impactful. After this quiz, I brought it back for a midterm project where I created a quilt pattern design using three different reading assignments. In this project, I did my best to depicted the three questions that stood out to me, which were:

8. Can you be confident that your health care providers will not ask to see your genitals when                treating you for a sore throat?

20. Do other people consider your lifestyle a mental illness?

29. Can you be sure that your children will not be harassed at school because of your                              gender? 

        Not once did I feel my doctors wouldn’t take my health seriously, fear that they would think I was suffering from a mental illness, or fear that my possible future children could be picked on because of my gender. I’m never living in this constant fear that so many others such as my best friend’s cousin, a non-binary person, has been for the last couple of years of their life. Since they came out to their family, they have struggled to gain their family acceptance and has express concerns about what life will be like after high school. While it seems, they have found a group of supportive friends, I can still see the worry in my best friend when she tells me her cousin. While I’ve never had the chance to meet them in person, as they live in another state, I do hope all the best for them and hope they will one day be able to gain support for family member.

        After I was done with my project, I reread the questionnaire and became so sad over all these questions and couldn’t imagined a person who is living in a state of constant fear. The idea that they fear they could be assaulted just by changing in public changing rooms, could be unable to gain employment, or face complications when trying to adopt a child is heartbreaking as they are trying to live a life just like any other person. I never thought that the questionnaire would come back but I’m happy to see it again as it truly helps people realize what their privileges are by being cisgender and enforces how we need to help the individuals who are being discriminated and suffering for deciding to be true to themselves.

 References

Groth, L. (2020, August 28). What Does it Mean to Be Cisgender? Here's What Experts Say.

Health.com. Retrieved March 1, 2022, from

https://www.health.com/mind-body/lgbtq-health/what-is-cisgender

Shaw, S. M., Lee, J., & Taylor, E. (2020). Cisgender Privilege. In Gendered Voices,

Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings (7th ed., pp. 80–82). essay,

Oxford University Press.