Cishet and Q permutations

Benjamin Barrett gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
Mon Jun 9 22:01:50 UTC 2014


Wiktionary does not have the term "cishet" which appeared in a Dan Savage column a couple of days ago:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/06/07/about-that-hate-crime-i-committed-at-university-of-chicago

I'd never seen it before. It sounded like a friendly use of the term "goy" to me, but I have no idea.

Urban Dictionary dates it to last year: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cishet

It seems to be at least somewhat negative (http://shutthefuckupstraightpeople.tumblr.com/usefulterms). Is there a neutral term for people whose sexual preference is opposite from their gender and sex (i.e., a straight woman whose gender is female, or a straight man whose gender is male)?

Since there are three variables here (sexual preference, sex and gender), a permutation table would yield eight possibilities to specify all three variables, and then I think 12 possibilities to specify just two variables--is that right?

Adding bisexuality, intersexuality and third and fourth genders adds significantly to those permutations--though I don't know if we recognize third and fourth genders in modern English culture, so terms along those lines might be of more interest to anthropologists and historians. Transexuality, pretransexuality and transexuality in progress plus the gender terms add to the permutations even more. (AFAIK, pansexuality does not add anything but a generalizing perspective.)

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

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