Cis Sense and the Habit of Gender Assignment

This article offers an account of cis sense in order to draw attention to the relation between meaning-making and cisnormativity. By drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of institution and phenomenological considerations of habit, it is argued that cis sense is a mode of perception that institutes and sediments an individual and social habit of the third-person conferral of gender that occludes gender variance and creates the social conditions necessary for transphobia. This consideration of cis sense challenges the mainstream conception of cis as an identity category, highlighting instead that it is a habitual disposition, and gestures to the significance of trans sense as an alternative institution of gendered meaning.