Cisgender........and.....Transgender,

These two terms are opposites.

Transgender, or “trans*” as it’s commonly called, is an umbrellaterm used to describe a person who does not identify with the sex assigned to them. Basically, this person may appear to be male or female and have all the physical traits of that sex, but does not mentally or emotionally identify as such.

Some transgender individuals choose to change their looks using clothes, hair styles, makeup or other bodily alterations to make their outward appearance better match their personal gender identity. Taking hormones to is another method in which trans* individuals may participate in order to aid their body in accentuating some of the physical characteristics of the gender they identify with. Others may choose to seek medical gender-reassignment procedures to surgically change their features for a more permanent change. It takes a lot to make this kind of change including approval from multiple people and a mental health evaluation. Gender-reassignment can be extremely costly as it is rarely covered by insurance.

Cisgender, a much less commonly used term, is used to describe a person whose gender identity aligns with their assigned biological sex. For instance, a person who is assigned a male sex at birth and identifies himself as a man, or a person who is assigned a female sex at birth and identifies herself as a woman.