Where did the word “gender” come from?
Detrans voices trace the modern use of “gender” to a deliberate medical invention. In the mid-20th century, doctors who performed surgery on intersex newborns needed a way to justify assigning each infant to one of the two socially recognized categories. They coined “gender” as the social role that could be shaped independently of immutable biological sex.

The very first printed use of the related prefix “cis” in a gender context appeared in 1914, when German physician and sexologist Ernst Burchard used it in a book. Later, clinicians and activists expanded the sex/gender distinction to support the idea that an inner “gender identity” could differ from bodily sex. Earlier trans-identified people called themselves “transsexual,” acknowledging sex as fixed; the shift to “transgender” and the slogan “sex ≠ gender” followed as a strategic move to normalize cross-sex identification.

In short, “gender” began as a medical euphemism for the social role attached to sex, was first labeled “cis” by Burchard in 1914, and was later popularized by clinicians and activists to separate social presentation from biological reality.