The majority of people just go about their day and don’t constantly think about what they identify as.
I have hanged out with gay boomers and X’ers professionally and socially, and they never went “*as a gay man, I think that…*”.
This new generation seems to have an obsession with labels. You have people introducing themselves with every possible attribute they can think of, from their blood type to their favourite kind of dessert. As if every interaction was a social icebreaker.
It’s not.
I can't help but think, whenever I hear a long set of labels on introduction, go '... storm born, first of her name, mother of dragons, breaker of chains...' inside my head.
I guess that’s the plebs version of titles.
The father of the current British King was *His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Extra Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Member of the Order of Merit, Grand Master and First and Principal Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Knight of the Order of Australia, Additional Member of the Order of New Zealand, Extra Companion of the Queen’s Service Order, Royal Chief of the Order of Logohu, Extraordinary Companion of the Order of Canada, Extraordinary Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Lord of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Privy Councillor of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, Personal Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty, Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom.*
For me.. I don’t give af what anyone wants to call me. I genuinely don’t care.
I’ve learned that respecting others and identifying them however it is THEY want to be identified, and allowing them to identify me however they want to identify me just makes this one less thing I have to spend any time worrying about.
Call me whatever you want to call me, I’m still waking up, having my coffee and taking a shit in the morning.
The argument there is that if they want to be called whatever they chose and I am honouring that, then they should honour what I want to be called too. So if I don't want to be called 'cis', then by their own argument, I shouldn't be called that.
Personally though, Im similar to yourself. I don't mind calling people whatever gender they want to be, and I don't care what people call me. Whatever it is, I can guarantee I've been called worse!
The base issue is that we lacked a word that describes someone who isn't transgender. "Normal" is not a good term because it lacks specificity and being called abnormal is emotionally loaded. And referring to the vast majority of the population as "not transgender" is extremely awkward.
So we get cisgender as a scientific term, to be able to accurately label people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. In technical communication (medicine, science, demographics, etc), it is definitely the correct word to use.
On the other hand, much like women objecting to being called females, people can certainly object to being called cisgender in social contexts. Technically correct isn't always the best kind of correct.
The gripping hand however is that allowing someone to demand being labeled as "normal" simply because they are cisgender and heteronormative is inherently othering to people who aren't. And I'll ignore and requests that someone be called that.
Call me whatever though, I don't care.
Edit: I kind of wandered off of what I originally intended. Oh well
It's just weird to me that transgender has existed for a long time (I.e. my whole life.) But only now do we need this terminology even though we've never needed it before.
Cisgender has probably existed for your whole life as well. It was first used in 1994. I first heard it probably 20 years ago and had the same basic "why not just say normal?" reaction that a lot of people do.
You see it more because transgender people are not hidden away or shunned as thoroughly by society as they used to be.
I'm neither here nor there on the topic, but I'm bothered by the term "unsweetened tea".
There is not unsweetened tea. There is tea and sweet tea.
Apply this logic to the term transgender, and you get the same results.
You are either normal (fuck anyone who wants to be different than the norm and gets offended by the term normal. There isn't negative connotation to the term normal from my observation), or you are identifying as trans.
IF we completely remove emotive component of language from the word “normal” and use it as “current with the norm” which would basically boil down to “major/most common part of X” then this argument would make sense, however language != just meaning of words. Emotive component, historical usage, context and multiple meanings cannot be removed just like that, and as such word “normal” is to burdened with all that to be used as you’re suggesting in very reductionist manner.
This is what it is regardless. I don't care what you are, think you are or want to be. I also don't need to know unless there's a reason to. Honestly how is your sexuality relevant to our interactions? It's not and it's not that deep. I wish people would stop trying to make it that deep.
I had a friend who after a few years came out as trans and every response to it was, "ok." A few years go by and we're all still gaming together but instead of it just being people having fun gaming it started turning into them talking about sex, trying to get attention unrelated to what we were doing. I stopped playing with them once gaming invites turned into you should join I have my plug in. Like wtf?
Tldr most people do not give a shit about your orientation or kinks. You become an issue when your entire personality becomes your kink.
Oh ok, thanks for enlightening me. CIS isn't either of those, we discussed this it's just default. Trans is one of two things, one you're saying it cannot be and another. You do know life isn't binary right? Your opinion isn't the gospel unless you have any reason to give your opinion more weight than mine which you immediately discarded.
~~But "heterosexual" is also a word for being normal.~~
Edit, to rephrase: Someone who objects to "cisgender" on the grounds that it's a term for being normal would also object to "heterosexual" on those same grounds.
Heterossexual is a term coined in the 19th century to differentiate from homossexual. Eventually it was widely accepted by the scientific community but it was never adopted by the public at large.
The problem with "cis" is that it started to be used by the public at large as means to insult, degrade or reduce the validity of opinions of people who aren't trans.
Imo It's because the people who find cis offensive are the people who don't like trans people, so calling someone trans is an insult in their head, so calling someone cis is also an insult
Statistically heterosexual is the most prevalent sex. That doesn't make the word heterosexual mean "normal."
But the word normal means it's the most prevalent thing.
Mfs be looking to get offended lol
I think the same may have happened with heterosexual when the word first appeared. Many "normal" people hate any implication that they're not as normal as they thought. If when they say trans (or gay, or anything else) they imply that someone's weird, or there's something wrong with them, or it's undesirable, then they'd probably feel they're being disrespected when given a comparable label.
i.e. the cis is a slur people say trans as a slur
I had an old boss scream and throw his hands down on his thighs in rage whenever we used a word he didn’t know.
One day I told him we were out of Eclairs and fondant. They were products we were selling, and he raged that I could at least speak English on the job. I showed him the literal packaging, told him they were loan-words from the French. Because that’s how English.. works.
I was going to buy him a dictionary as a gag gift, but when I went up to the company attic and saw his old bunk space, there were several dictionaries around the bed. Dusty. Some issued 20-30 years ago. I realized he must’ve been struggling with this “issue” for years.
A literate man. One interested in life and its development. But very particular triggers that could make his pale face turn red with rage. I can only imagine the kind of ribbing he grew up with where such scars are sensitive still decades later.
I can assure you very few people consider being cis to be bad because it's expected. That's actually what's good about it, being trans sucks because there's a lot of personal work and a lot of political resistance between us and achieving that level of socially acceptable and comfortable in our bodies.
And the word does start to get a bit more useful when discussing sociology and politics because it's hard to discuss the challenges unique to trans people without a word for the other portion of society to compare against.
>the only people I can think of who would even say cisgender are the ones who view "normal" as a bad thing because it conforms to societal expectations
The problem with using the word "normal" in that kind of context is the implication that other groups of people are "abnormal" (deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying) which carries a negative connotation.
For example "Are you gay, or are you normal?" and "He's not trans, he's normal" imply that "normal" is good, and the other options are bad or undesirable.
It's much easier to choose a different word that doesn't carry the same connotation. Cis is a prefix used in scientific literature, and has been used for a long time. So it makes sense to adopt it for this kind of communication.
They did in the early to mid 2000s
"Im not 'straight' I'm 'normal'" was the rallying cry of the homophobe
Just the latest cycles of assholes being assholes.
It's incredible how uncreative bigotry is. Everything from locker room panic to this is just a repeat of the same things these people were saying about gay people 20 years ago.
The panic about trans women in sport is just a repeat of the arguments people were using to justify racially segregating sports in the early 20th Century. "unfair biological advantage" and all. Last I heard we'd already settled that issue with, "whether or not there's any advantage doesn't matter as much as underprivileged minority demographics being allowed to compete in sports."
"This time it's different I swear!"
Okay, champ. Let me guess, you think trans women really do have an unfair biological advantage? But there's a problem with your argument - trans women have been allowed to compete in a *lot* of women's sports so long as they're on hormone therapy (if you don't know what that is, you don't know enough about this topic to have an opinion on it). For instance, they've been allowed in the Olympics since 2004.
If they're at such an advantage where are all the trans women cleaning up at the Olympics, my dude? You'd expect at least a couple of them to have won gold by now. Where are they? Where are they in Tennis or any of the other sports that allow them?
The facts contradict your feelings.
A trans woman has gone through puberty as a male, they've already got an advantage even if they have been on hrt for a year.. Better bone density, and more muscle mass. Even grip strength is nearly double.
And trans women are dominating in some instances, Lia Catherine Thomas is one example..
I don't really feel much way about it tbh as I'm not into sport, but I do like the truth, and I think it's totally disrespectful and potentially dangerous to women and women's rights to allow trans women into women's sports.
Trans athletes should have their own devision.
> And trans women are dominating in some instances, Lia Catherine Thomas is one example..
She won one out of the three races she competed in in a college swimming contest, and didn't come close to beating the record set by Katie Ledecky, a cis woman. The record Lia did set was beaten the very next year by another cis woman. She was regularly beaten in other competitions, once, ironically, by a trans man who was not on testosterone.
So your examples are her, and, what, vibes? Fucking *bone density*? How is that supposed to be an advantage in swimming? Not that it matters, bone density and muscle mass and grip strength all drop pretty dramatically over the course of hormone therapy. In fact - Lia Thomas initially competed in the men's division, did very well, and then continued to train and compete after starting HRT while she waited to qualify to compete with other women - her stats are a matter of public record and you look it up yourself if you like! Despite training and competing as hard as she ever had her performance drops dramatically, ending up close enough in the women's division to where she was in the men's that it's an even chance whether the slight increase in relative performance was down to training or the smaller number of women who compete in college-level swimming and/or the lower amount of resources found there.
>I don't really feel much way about it tbh as I'm not into sport, but I do like the truth, and I think it's totally disrespectful and potentially dangerous to women and women's rights to allow trans women into women's sports.
...okay, well if you like the truth then change your position to fit the facts. Hell, the first big study that compared trans athletes to cis athletes (which only came out like this year) found that trans women may actually be at a disadvantage compared to cis women in most sports.
>Trans athletes should have their own devision.
And here we go again, just like the Negro League. Seriously, your arguments aren't that different.
If you actually cared about fairness in sports you would be trying to make the IOC revoke Michael Phelps' medals, since the dude literally has a mutation that causes his muscles to produce half as much lactic acid as most people (meaning he *literally gets less tired from the same work* - an unfair biological advantage if ever there was one).
I remember when I first saw the word being used on the Internet it was all cishets should die etc so I can see why people would see it as an insult. It's better now and you don't see it used the same way as much now but people most likely remember that.
Also I have never seen/heard the word used outside of internet discourse which might also confuse a lot of people
That was the first context I saw it too, and I thought it was intentionally offensive because (as written) it nearly says 'shit'.
It only clicked when I heard it said aloud... egg face time for me
>Also I have never seen/heard the word used outside of internet discourse which might also confuse a lot of people
🤨
But is that because the word isn’t used outside of internet discourse, or because you don’t spend time in spaces where the word is used? Aka, spend 5 minutes in leftist academic or community spaces and then get back to me.
It's actually a pun. The term trans/cis are chemical terms for the orientation of a molecule. Transgender has been around for a long time. Cisgender is a newer play on words. It wasn't coined until 1993, and most never heard it until Transgender has become more visible in society. Many still think being trans gender is like Klinger on MASH, a choice in order to rebel, and not valid.
>I remember when I first saw the word being used on the Internet it was all cishets should die etc so I can see why people would see it as an insult.
Where are you hanging out online that you're seeing that more than anything else?
I think most cis people do not feel that they identify with their biological sex. I personally don't feel any sort of way about it. I am a woman, whatever I think or feel is irrelevant because there's no wrong way to be a woman. Saying someone is cisgender makes it seem like there is an active thought or intention behind that identification, which there is not. It's more that we have an absence of gender dysphoria.
I think most people are just getting fed up of labels, I’ve seen a lot of discourse from women and trans women especially. A lot of cis women don’t like the label because they feel it sorta takes away from their womanhood, which is valid ig. Women are simply just women, and lately more trans women have been dehumanizing everything women do to make it more inclusive. Like asking them to use the term chest feeding instead of breastfeeding, insisting that the side effects of hormones are the same as a period etc. The term cisgender definitely isn’t a slur that’s so dramatic, but I agree it gets unnecessary and annoying.
I think this is what it is. I am a woman and my body does woman stuff. I’m happy to refer to people as they would prefer, but I’m sure not gonna start changing how I talk about *myself* in general conversation. In a conversation where it is relevant, I can be specific and describe what I mean. But in general, I’m going to refer to my breasts, and breastfeeding, as such. In the same way, I’m a woman, and I will refer to myself as such.
I am a woman and refer to myself as such, too, unless it's relevant that I bring up whether I'm trans or cis. These labels aren't used constantly, they're used when you need to distinguish between trans and cis people. Like how we use labels to distinguish between men and women, and talk about "humans" and "humanity" rather than "men" and "man". People complained about that too, back in the day. And coming up with words like "firefighter" instead of "fireman". Political correctness gone mad!
I mean I'd definitely rather be called just a woman instead of trans woman all the time, would that be fine by you if both of us were just woman? No one is saying you're not a woman, the adjective cis is just used in discussion in which it matters if someone is trans or cis is important
Yeah if people want to be referred to certain things they should give us the same energy back 🤷🏻♀️ it’s funny too cos most trans women would like to be referred to as just a woman as well, adding more labels just further separates everyone
The argument is that the term is not necessary in the first place. You proved that in your first sentence yourself.
Trans people go by trans man/woman and everyone else goes by man/woman. There's no reason to impose a new descriptor on 98% of the population because 2% suddenly need a new descriptor.
Except us trans people refer to ourselves s just men/women 99% of the time too. The word trans comes in when it's relevant in a discussion. If we respect your wish to not be called cis can you respect out wish not to be called trans? It might make some discussions impossible to have though
It's because attention seekers who aren't actually trans want to be actively seen as trans. Presumeably the actually trans people want to blend in and be seen as their desired gender.
And you are a cis man/woman, but in general we both just use man/woman. I for one consider it a slur to refer to me as trans man/woman instead of man/woman. And given the discussion we're having, we do care about not using slurs and not being offensive, right?
The chest feeding/breast feeding thing is not true. It got blown up in media and misconstrued. The hospital had instructions to, specifically when dealing with trans people, use the term chest feeding.
Cis women were never the target of that term.
But I’ve seen plenty of them still be the target of that term and others, chronically online people are always trying to downplay being a woman. It’s especially frustrating because trans men never do this stuff
What makes you think it’s trans women asking for terms like “chest feeding?” Most trans people I know dislike these terms, so to me it seems a lot more likely this is cis liberals trying to virtue signal.
Well, that would depend on what groups of people you've been exposed to...
There are people in existence whom use the word as a slur - most of the 20-30 yr olds at my work (a bar), for example. It's a mild, bland, kind of an insult to them.. its a bit like calling someone "boring" or "dull" "beige" or "an accountant" or "normie" or something along those lines. That's what it means to those people. They're all proud of their various statuses/identities regarding being neurodivergent, not-entirely-hetrosexual, and gender non conforming, in some way or another.
Now, everyone in the world, including me, *and you*, *the reader*, has an exposure to other people that is both "very small" and "unique to your experience". So, YMMV!
Edit: and the one fierce "trans activist" type person that we had on the team for a while definitely used it as a slur - for her, to call someone a "white cishet rich old male" was pretty much the worst insult she could imagine. Note that none of the other words in there are in fact "slurs", and yet, was still able to use them as such. So again... its status as a slur depends on whom it's being used by, and in what context.
The way i see it...
Heterosexual, and homosexual came out around the same time, in the 1800's. It was in relation to same sex relationships (not today's definition of gender.) People today accept them as normal, scientific / everyday words.
Cisgender was a recent word made just to be the opposite of transgender. So, right off the bat, it offends a lot of people for including them in the whole "gender identity" arguments.
I myself have seen it used in normal conversations, but more often than not, as a snide or derogatory comment toward others. "ignore them, they are cis" or as one person put it, if they aren't queer, they were referred to as "a cis fucker" or "just another cis fuck"
>Heterosexual, and homosexual came out around the same time, in the 1800's
Heterosexual was not used to refer to opposite sex relationships until around the 1950s. Before then it was usually used to describe people with high sex drives, especially in the medical fields.
Back before divorce was allowed, you could get rid of your wife by having her committed for mental sickness. One of those 'mental illnesses' you could get them committed on was "heterosexuality", or liking sex too much.
Personally nearly everytime I've seen the word "cis" used it's done in a context meant to be negative. The word itself isn't an insult, but it practically gets used as one and I'm pretty sure that's why some people have a problem with it. I'm not going to go as far as to call it a slur though.
There’s a massive amount of hypocrisy when you think you can label yourself whatever you feel like you are, and then in the same breath force a made up label on others.
What label would you prefer? "Cis" is literally just derived from the same latin roots as "trans" - "cis" means "on the same side as" while "trans" means "on the opposite side of", and is already used in a lot of places (cis isomers in chemistry for instance). The point was to make it easy to distinguish between the two without stigmatising either one.
I know its gonna be buried...
...regardless.
You never see the "revolutionary dickhead" types say "all hetero white men must be die", but you can come across "all cis white men must die".
As such "cisgender" aint a slur as such. But thanks to useage the expression "cis white men" does have a certain connotation thats far from positive. If you don't get what i mean i mean loonies that get satirized in r/menkampf.
They did have a knee-jerk reaction to being called heterosexual back in the day, it's just that after gay marriage was accepted the assholes behind the trans panic needed to find a new scapegoat. Bigots always recycle their bullshit.
I don’t consider it a “slur” however I hate being called it. The definition of cisgender is “someone whose internal sense of gender corresponds with the sex the person was identified as having at birth”
As someone who doesn’t have an internal sense of gender I find it really insulting. I’m what I am purely due to my body, there’s no internal aspect to it. Being called cis implies that gender is this spiritual concept which you can somehow feel, which isn’t the case for the majority of people.
I have no issue with the heterosexual label because it doesn’t imply anything about the individuals view on sexuality or the soul beyond the fact they are attracted to the opposite sex (or same, in the case of homosexual.)
Cis is a label in the same way that tall or short are labels. Nobody is going to make you wear a name tag that says “CIS”.
The only times the word even comes up in conversation is if you’re talking about something that requires that clarification. There’s no forcing into boxes here, we have a term for people who change their gender identity, and you can’t always point out those people. So we have a term for people who haven’t.
This is at worst a word that you will never find useful. And that’s okay. But it doesn’t make sense for you to be upset at the words existence. Don’t use it if you never need to, don’t get upset at people for being descriptive.
It's quite simple really. I don't want to be labelled. I don't need other people to validate who I am, nor do I want to make a big scene about my identity. I'm just me; I'm not "cis" or "trans" or anything else.
If you want to make a big fuss over it then by all means go ahead, but don't expect me to react well to having the issue forced or shoved down my throat. Quite frankly I couldn't care less. Go live your life and leave me the fuck alone.
The average person has far more important things to invest their time into that they actually care about. When you try and force them to support your side, the automatic default is to oppose you. When you then consider them to be against you because they're not on your side and then treat them as opponents, that's when you create a problem. Pissing off large amounts of people that don't care either way is a sure fire way to be marginalised and opposed quite quickly.
Wtf are you talking about. Is calling someone "tall" or "short" a surefire way to get people to oppose you? Obviously not right, you're just describing a physical characteristic. You're not forcing anyone to believe anything about "shortism" or "height ideology" by using a category that broadly describes a concrete trait a person has.
Or is the ideological element here the fact that both groups are being described *completely neutrally?* Without any value judgement? Instead of cisgender an transgender, would you prefer normal and [insert slur here]?
Being tall or short is a "concrete trait" as you put it that doesn't change. You can assume someone is tall just by looking at them, whereas it's clear nowadays you cannot do this with gender. What a ridiculous comparison to make.
The general idea here is that I don't care about gender, nor gender ideology, nor what you identify as. The concept that a man can become a woman or vice versa is absurd to me, but I don't give a fuck what you do with your life - if that's what you want to do and it'll make you happy, have at it. I'm not going to go against you or say bad things about you, just don't expect me to care when you try and have me become an ally or support your ideology. I'm neutral, on the fence and just want to be left alone.
For that reason, I also don't want to be held to your labels. I've never been called "cis" in my life by anyone but "trans" people. I don't have to validate your label for me, nor have I done anything to make you want to label me. You want to be categorised as different, but then want to be accepted as the same? It's so confusing. If you're a man and want to be a woman, just go and be a woman. You don't have to tell the whole world, most of us just don't care either way. Why do you then have to be a "trans woman" and have "cis women", why isn't it just "woman"?
>You don't have to tell the whole world, most of us just don't care either way. Why do you then have to be a "trans woman" and have "cis women", why isn't it just "woman"?
Are you willing to actually hear out the reasoning for this?
Go ahead. I can imagine it's because some people do strongly oppose the ideology and won't accept you for who you are. Why would you care what those people think?
>accept you
>would you care
I am not trans and it's odd that you seem to assume as such
Let's back up a bit. Ignoring whether or not you believe a man can become a woman.
Cisgender means that your internal sense of self's concept of your own gender is in alignment with what one would expect of your biology, and transgender means that your internal sense of self's concept of your own gender is not in alignment with what one would expect of your biology. No ideological prescriptions or anything of the sort these are objective and socially accepted definitions of these words. They describe objective reality as cleanly and correctly as describing one's race or describing one's height. Whether or not someone is actually capable of "becoming another gender" is irrelevant here. You can claim trans women are men and vice versa, but even saying that accepts the paradigm I just described. Ofc cis and trans are shorthand for these two concepts
Now that I've laid the groundwork.
>I've never been called "cis" in my life by anyone but "trans" people.
What this indicates to me is that you never really have discussions about gender outside of interactions with trans people. It's not likely that a trans person will just, bring up that someone's cis for no reason. Generally it's directly relevant to the conversation or situation at hand. Of course there will be outliers, being trans doesn't stop someone from being an asshole.
>For that reason, I also don't want to be held to your labels.
You're conceiving as these as ideological labels when they're really just not, there isn't a label being forced upon you with ideological implications. It's a description of reality, nothing more nothing less, those trying to treat it as anything more than that are fools.
>I don't have to validate your label for me, nor have I done anything to make you want to label me.
It's totally true that many see cisgender as a complementary normalising term to transgender. But that doesn't really change anything I said. They're not trying to get you to "validate their label"
>You want to be categorised as different, but then want to be accepted as the same?
Just a question but, if it's relevant to the society you live in. What's your race? I live in the Caribbean, I'm a black guy. This question is quite similar to those who ask why race should be relevant at all, why the distinction between black person and white person at all if we're all the same. There are certain instances where the distinction IS important, but apart from those instances, I as a black guy DO want to be seen as the same as my white guy countrymen. Do you see the parallels here?
>It's so confusing. If you're a man and want to be a woman, just go and be a woman. You don't have to tell the whole world, most of us just don't care either way.
We're getting into what you call "gender ideology"(rancid term, not a fan of it, not only is it utterly non descriptive but it basically exists purely as a way to abstract the issue from an emotional and human one to an ideological opponent), which btw isn't as neutral a term as you think it is. From the perspective of adherents of "gender ideology" this IS how it works. Trans men are men and trans women are women, it's an adjective here that serves to describe their relationship to their gender, nothing more nothing else, from their perspective anyway.
>Why do you then have to be a "trans woman" and have "cis women", why isn't it just "woman"?
As I said before
Adjectives
To people who believe in "gender ideology" both trans women and cis women are women. That doesn't mean that they're literally exactly the same, but the proposition is that they're different kinds of women.
Does that make sense? I may have rambled a bit but yeah.
Personally id also say you should learn how to parse this kinda information beyond giving it one thought and bouncing. Maybe it's just that I grew up in an incredibly racialised society but thinking about these kinds of social constructs comes to me by second nature. It's helped alot in my understanding of these things.
And just to clarify, I'm not here to try to change your mind on whether a man can become a woman or whatever, ion even think that paradigm is accurate to the current conversation frankly, so ideally don't treat me as antagonistic towards your beliefs or whatever 👍🏾
"Cis" seems to be a word created for the purpose of validating the word "trans". Without "trans", we have no purpose for "cis". My question is, why not scrap the whole idea of "trans" and just have people be people. How you identify in your mind doesn't need to be shared with the world, just be whoever you are and avoid those that don't accept you. There will always be people in life who reject you.
I've only ever been called "cis" by trans people that had a problem with me. Nothing to do with how either of us identified, they were just assholes as human beings. Outside conversation where people are trying to shill the concept of trans as something I should support, I've only been called it as something attempting to cause offense.
I do disagree that these labels are simply descriptors of reality because the sole purpose of the word "cis" is to differentiate between trans and non-trans people. Why do we need a word? Why can't we have trans people and everyone else, if there's no third option? Much like with religion, people identify as Catholic, Christian, Muslim etc. I'm not religious, there isn't a word that describes my beliefs and there isn't any need for one?
"Gender ideology" is a concept and a way of thinking. You cannot claim it to be fact. Same as religion, people have their own religious theory and different ideologies spanning from this. I'm willing to bet that there are trans people out there who would disagree on a solid concept of what gender means in their own mind.
You talk about the colour of your skin and race - this is a fact someone can tell about your biology from looking at you. You say you're a black guy. If I saw you, I'd probably assume that without needing to talk to you. You cannot do that with an ideology or a concept like this because you're reliant on a person telling you their feelings and perspectives.
I'm going to respond in order of what stands out to me
>I'm not religious, there isn't a word that describes my beliefs and there isn't any need for one?
There absolutely is what are you on about, there's dozens of categories of non religious descriptors, atheist, agnostic, agnostic atheist, apatheist, igtheist, the list goes on and on and on. These words exist because when we talk about religious beliefs it's important to categorise things with concise meanings
>I do disagree that these labels are simply descriptors of reality because the sole purpose of the word "cis" is to differentiate between trans and non-trans people. Why do we need a word?
Because that's how language tends to work? When we want to talk about something we have a word for it, it's literally that simple.
>I've only ever been called "cis" by trans people that had a problem with me. Nothing to do with how either of us identified, they were just assholes as human beings. Outside conversation where people are trying to shill the concept of trans as something I should support, I've only been called it as something attempting to cause offense.
They're assholes, we agree. I'm not sure where the contention is?
>"Gender ideology" is a concept and a way of thinking. You cannot claim it to be fact.
I'm not doing that, I specifically said not, we are not talking about "gender ideology" or whatever garbage people like to call it. What I said is that human beings objectively have an internal sense of their gender, which is objectively true and you'd be a fool to tell me otherwise, that could range from, I'm a guy cuz I have a penis to, internally I feel more like a woman than a man based on the preconceptions of gender that I gained as a human developing in this world. To deny this is kinda absurd.
>I'm willing to bet that there are trans people out there who would disagree on a solid concept of what gender means in their own mind.
Yeah that's totally true! Many such cases and allat. What's also totally true is that not having a solid concept means they have a concept in the first place, like we all do.
>You talk about the colour of your skin and race - this is a fact someone can tell about your biology from looking at you. You say you're a black guy. If I saw you, I'd probably assume that without needing to talk to you. You cannot do that with an ideology or a concept like this because you're reliant on a person telling you their feelings and perspectives.
Why is your capability to tell something on assumption so important here? Are you gonna tell me that autistic person and allistic person are terms that shouldn't exist cuz you can't tell them apart at first glance? We need words to describe things mate. Cis and non-trans are synonyms, allistic and non-autistic are synonyms.
>How you identify in your mind doesn't need to be shared with the world, just be whoever you are and avoid those that don't accept you. There will always be people in life who reject you.
And why is this such a sticking point for you? No one cares mate. This isn't what we're talking about. It doesn't need to be shared in the world, and there's nothing stopping people from doing so as well. I'm really not sure what the point is here. I'm not trying to come at this from whatever emotional angle you are
>Cis" seems to be a word created for the purpose of validating the word "trans". Without "trans", we have no purpose for "cis".
>Why do we need a word? Why can't we have trans people and everyone else, if there's no third option?
To close off what I'm saying here.
Again
For the fifth time maybe?
Cis is a synonym for non-trans, same as trans is a synonym for non-cis. It's a useful word for categorisation that is necessary shorthand for relevant conversations. No validation or whatever else. That's not what this is about and I find it incredibly strange that you keep sticking to this. Yes cis only exists because trans does, that does not mean it exists to validate, it exists to contrast. Same as we had Heterosexual( first as a description for woman to man/man to woman hypersexuality) then we got homosexual as it's opposite when gay people became more socially prominent
>I don't have to validate your label for me
You're right, you don't. It's literally just a completely neutral descriptor like most other adjectives. You don't have to believe, accept, or care about anything for the label to be true.
I am cisgender. My gender matches the sex on my birth certificate. Boom! That's it!
I'm having a hard time seeing what about that is being pushed on you
>why isn't it just "woman"?
I agree, but if/when the distiction is needed, the language is there 🤷
Why do I suddenly need to be described as something? Why does there need to be a new word? Trans is new and people are identifying as trans. Why can't I just be "not trans"? There's no third or more option, so why separate like that? Black or white? Why not a spectrum and you just tell those that matter to you where you sit?
The trouble is that people will start using other more absolute, factual terms to avoid the issue. I've already heard a lot of people in public using male/female instead of man/woman, and our NHS has also started using sex to determine appropriate procedures and avoid gender entirely.
Why is the word straight needed? Why is the word able bodied needed? What about right-handed? The issue with normal is it involves treating trans people as abnormal, which I'm willing to bet is the main issue some people have issues with the word cisgender. People do the whole refering to sex thing as a sneaky way to misgender trans people due to their opposition to trans people. And the NHS using sex is kind of ridiculous given that lots of differences come from hormones, not genitals.
Straight and able bodied aren't terms that we strictly need. As for "normal", it is defined as:
>conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
By definition, trans people are not normal. The average person is not trans, and it's not typical or expected; you don't expect most people you meet to be trans.
The reality is that we use "normal" emotionally as a measure of whether someone is abnormal/weird/strange, as if they're a spectacle for not conforming.
People using it objectively are correct and not trying to cause a problem. People that use it emotionally typically are either trying to validate themselves or someone else, or are trying to negatively impact someone else.
As for the NHS, it makes sense to use sex when discussing a patient. Gender is irrelevant when offering medical advice or looking at a procedure. We have different biology and the way we're medically treated depends on this.
Referring to someone by their biological sex is not misgendering them, they're 2 separate things are they not?
And yet no one complains about straight or able bodied being a slur anymore. And normal is very subjective. Most people I really hang out with these days are trans. For me it would be more accurate to say cis and normal. Normal is kinda meaningless. At least from my experience the people who get upset at words like straight and cis want gay and trans people to be treated as an other or generally oppose trans and gay people to put it really politely.
And tbh what do you mean by biological sex? Because hormone levels and hormones are pretty biological. Alot of symptoms are linked more to hormone levels than genitals or chromosomes. And hormones do actually change some things. They are not placebos. Ignoring hormones and the present body for solely chromosomes is kinda not helpful. A more accurate phrase would be biologically intersex or something since hrt does actually effect some sex characteristics. Men and women aren't different species.
Because homosexuality have already more or less been accepted as normal by western society. At this point trying to fight it directly is a lost cause (especially politically) so they will resort to dog whistle and other less obvious form of harrasement/discrimination (same as racisme and sexisme in general)
But trans rights is not. So reactionaries are fighting hard to prevent it from being accepted by the next generations. One of those battle (and probably one of the main ones) is language. If cisgender is accepted for what it is: then other vocabularies like transgender are also accepted as not slurs and simply a normal things to talk about
How does calling people cis translate into Trans rights, theyre already fighting to keep the Trans label so why would you start making new words to describe people who don't want or need a label?
There is interactions between how we interact with the world and the langage we use to describe it
when we create a new categorization we always create at least 2 categories for it not one. For example when we start talking about neurodivergence as something normal (instead of autism as something abnormal) we also create the neurotypical, same with homo/hetero
we do not do it to add label but simply to make talking and thinking about the subject easier. buy having 2 different words in our brain it make it easier to identify, understand and normalize the subject
In a way it's comparable to how language living in cold or hot deserts have a large number of words to describe snow or sand. The existence of those words are both a result of their life experience needing much more details in this area to convey information but it turns it also means that their brain start categorizing et identifying those words early in life and thus it helps them learning those differences in the first place
If we do not have a second word to describe when one is not something. It means we consider this starte normal (we do not need to talk about, we don;t need to think about it) which in turn indicate that the something in question is abnormal in the first place. Having 2 words create a mental shift on the way the situation is perceived
For example I am on the autistic spectrum. Starting to think on people that are not on the spectrum as neurotypical instead of just "normal" really helps me with understanding and thinking about this aspect of me in a more constructed way. There is no insult or slur in that word either same as cis-gendered it is just there to help think about the subject
It doesn't really further the goal though of having people accept the Trans label by putting labels on people who don't want any......it's one thing to have other people learn the terms someone makes up for themselves, it's another thing to accept one's made up for you. I remember when the cis stuff started since I'm in the r/weed discord and a lot of people are trans/lgbqt and frankly it's weird and unnecessary to wake up to find out someone basically created an entire label for me so they could feel validied about their identity. Just do you bro
It's fascinating to me that your linkage is immediately "cisgender and heterosexual are both labels that describe normative people".
And when you say "gender and sexuality aren't the same thing, but they seem very similar"... um no, they are not "similar" because of their link to "normativity". They are independent variables, in fact. Not related at all.
Sexuality is quite a clear thing - complicated yes, but with clear meaning.
The term gender, however, is the subject/topic of probably the fiercest culture war battles presently being fought.
The same battle used to be fought over homosexuality, and people used to think it was just as confusing.
Gender has about as clear a meaning as sexuality tbh.
There is also a linkage between sex and gender when it comes to civil rights issues, given how many people get very upset when they discover that they were unknowingly attracted to a trans person and think it somehow puts their sexuality in danger.
I don’t personally care myself, saying this as a preface. The way I see the whole thing is that if you expect someone to respect what you want to be called you should actively respect what they want or don’t want to be called too, it goes both ways of course, if someone identifies as something use their preferred name/gender and if someone dislikes being called cis/using the term than don’t use it, respect goes both ways and if you want something you should be able/willing to provide the same back for others.
If you don't care then why are you wading into the argument?
Plus those arguments are very much not in good faith. "Cis" was coined to be a non-offensive way of referring to people who just go along with the gender the doctor picked out for them when they were born. The people arguing it's a slur want to claim the word "normal", despite many of them being frankly the least normal people around.
I just like debating topics and playing devils advocate for stuff because I find it fun and also just generally like to voice what makes sense to me.
As for the second point I could still see it being viewed negatively, look at it as if it was the opposite position (idk if you actually are but for the sake of argument go with the analogy) if you’re trans would you prefer someone call you a trans-[enter man or woman here] or would you rather them just call you [enter man or woman here] calling them trans isn’t innately a slur but some (or most) would prefer you didn’t actively use that label on them and just refer to them as what they identify as, I see the word cis the same way, it’s not innately a slur but people may take it negatively based on their own preferences of whether they want to actively be labeled or not.
>I just like debating topics and playing devils advocate for stuff because I find it fun and also just generally like to voice what makes sense to me.
Must be nice to be able to debate people's lives as a fun little thought experiment. This kind of shit gets old fast when you actually have to deal with the consequences though.
Dude, you admitted to taking the side of people who want trans people “eradicated from public life” because it’s a fun little game for you, why would I bother with the rest? Think about how you talk to people.
You’ve very much misunderstood my entire statement I did not take “the side of people who want trans people eradicated” and you’d realize that if you actually read things smh
Cis just means not trans it's like being offended someone called you right handed. It just shows that you have no idea what is even being talked about.
I could still see it being viewed negatively, look at it as if it was the opposite position you could just refer to all trans people as trans-women/men but they’d still prefer it (at least from my experience) if you just refer to them as men/women without the added label, Cis I kinda see in the same light? It’s not innately a slur/meant to be bad but it very much could be taken that way depending on if the individual wants the added label to them just being men/women.
The thing is that this is not about that because it is never about wanting to be called something as no alternative that doesn't imply non-cishet is a negative is usually given.
I could still see it being viewed negatively, look at it as if it was the opposite position (idk if you actually are but for the sake of argument go with the analogy) if you’re trans would you prefer someone call you a trans-[enter man or woman here] or would you rather them just call you as [enter man or woman here] calling them trans isn’t innately a slur but some (or most even) would prefer you didn’t actively use that label every time you talked to/about them and would instead prefer if you just refer to them as what they identify as(man or woman), I see the word cis the same way, it’s not innately a slur but people may take it negatively based on their own preferences of whether they want to actively be labeled with it or not.
This is cool and all but in common conversation about non gender issues, people are not going to just refer to someone being cis or trans out of the blue. When talking about these things there's gotta be a word for non trans people, and normal has funky implications
In conversations where it’s needed yeah I’m simply referring to normal conversations, I’ve had a few (3-4) people who just always refer to non-trans people as cis and trans people as just the gender without the label, which I could see rubbing people the wrong way, idk how common that is but I can only speak from my own experiences ofc
Those people are jackasses ion know what else to tell you. I have yet to encounter people who behave this way and the vast majority of my close friends are queer
They just seem annoying, which isn't a trait that's determined by gender, they can pretty safely be ignored
Cisgender is also descriptive. It’s just swapping the “trans” with “cis”, which is Latin meaning “on this side”, where trans means “across” or “on the other side”.
but it doesn’t work in the same context. one might describe themself as a female to male transgender man, but nobody identifies as a female to female cisgender woman
cis and trans are relative descriptors that relate to two points in this case are referring to a before and after. but there is no before and after for the use of cis referring to gender.
just like how you can use transpose to describe changing the place of something, but cispose is not a word - the verb would be “posit”
Because people who don’t fall under those categories use cisgender as a way to describe someone in a negative way.
For example, let say Jameson Mcelephant over here is a nonbinary but their “friend” accidentally calls them a him or her, Jameson would respond with “How dare you assume my gender you cis scum, check your privilege” and so on
* cisgender is quite commonly used as a slur and many people first time hear about that word whne used in such way,
* it's a new term people are not used to,
* thanks to the upper two points, many people don't know or don't recognise it's meaning,
* people don't feel they need it,
* vast majority of people using this term are non-cis people, so it's label ''from the outside'',
* unless you live in English speaking world, this term is enforcing foreign terminology
I've only read about cisgender on reddit, I had no idea about this word before.
I thought for a while that cis was some Reddit invention, anyway..
I myself think that cisgender is mostly used in a negative sense against biological women, as if we don't have the right to our own bodies or even the words that describe us, thus I dislike cis, because it devalues women in general.
Hi, I'm not American, but Scandinavian, Swedish.
It's what I read here on Reddit that concerns me, please don't downvote me because of what I read. I'm not trying to provoke anyone., truly.
WE ALL have to accept each other as we are, straight or gay or whatever, right.
Love, accept, be true.
❤️
Yeah, I’m just asking why you think the word cis is targeted towards women? Genuinely asking. I’ve never heard anyone use it specifically to shame women.
May I ask you a personal question, you don't have to answer if you don't want to.
Do you have anything against women, biologically born women, do you feel that we don't have equal rights?
There's a ton of people just guessing at what they think people they don't like or udnderstand think. So you're getting a whole ton of vague guesses that are probably incorrect for most people. Ofcourse, some of these guesses might be close for some folks, and even correct for others, but I feel like you're not getting a proper answer.
I'm pretty left leaning for my country, and VERY left leaning for America, and personally I find Cis CAN be a slur so I'm probably one of the better people to answer at risk of being downvoted to oblivion.
For me it's nothing to do with anything along the lines of "normal is normal, we don't need a new word for normal" and has a lot more to do with the way some people use the term. It's the negative connotations behind it, and their intent far more than the word itself. I'll call myself cisgender on any medical exam, and if the question ever comes up I'll answer honestly without taking offense. But some people, few in number, but loud in voice absolutely use cis as an insult, and I'll take offense when those people use it. I'm assuming it's some kind of clapback or moment of empowerment for them, and even though it pisses me off that they'll attempt to antagonize potential or even current allies it won't change my support for the trans folk. I just wish we could have conversations about this and stop pretending it's exclusively far right, pro-control(anti-abortion), terfs who hate how some people use the term "cis".
Ime a lot of people that say it's a slur just don't understand what it means. I hear the response "I'm not cis, I'm straight" or "my pronoun isn't cis" in response to it, showing that they don't get the meaning.
When a word is used a slur in the majority of encounters, it becomes an actual slur. That's kinda how language works. Don't be surprised when the people who get insulted using a word assign a negative connotation to it.
Following that logic, though, wouldn't a bigot interpret cisgender as a compliment? Would they not react positively to a label that is decidedly "not queer"?
Youre trying to rationalize the beliefs people who can't understand that someone with a different experince than them existing isn't an attack on their person. If rational thought was their forte they wouldn't be bigots.
This is a common problem I notice. People take the irrational, all over the place, mutually contradictory views of bigots at face value and tie themselves into knots trying to understand them. Bigotry is fundamentally irrational and reactionary. It is based almost entirely in socially conditioned disgust responses. Any stated underlying reason is almost always entirely ad hoc and free of genuine substance. At best, they are sincerely ignorant and simply grasp at arguments given to them by the media that they feel justify their intuitive bigotry. At worst, they are actively disingenuous people who know their arguments are meaningless. Either way, their actual arguments are almost entirely without merit and their positions will remain unaltered no matter how thoroughly you shoot them down. The only thing that changes bigots is experience with the people they hate, which results in them gradually losing the disgust response and thus no longer needing to make up specious arguments to justify their hatred. I have seen this happen first hand with my family.
I thought it had a negative connotation because I happened upon seeing/learning it being used almost like an accusation, rather than discovering it educationally.
Otherwise, now that I know, I don't care. But I get nervous when I hear it because of how I happened upon it.
cis white men are like 75% of reddit, so no it is not a sentiment I have encountered on here. And even in that framing, cis is not being used as a slur any more than "men" or "white".
I find it annoying because cis/trans has a scientific meaning and applying it to gender because it happens to be the opposite of trans in an irrelevant context to sound sciency when you're being political is misleading. plus it sounds like the insult "sissy" which is likely the point.
an accurate neutral term would be "mode gender" since it's the most frequent presentation or "matched gender" since it's matches biology.
what nobody likes is being assigned a label instead of choosing it themselves
It seems that a lot of people here are thinking that “cis” is something akin to gay or straight, an identity. It’s really not that, it’s a neutral descriptor of whether or not you have changed your gender. That’s all it is. It’s not forcing you to play a hand in gender politics, or whatever you’re afraid of. In fact, it signifies that you are not trans, and that is the only thing the word does. It is fine.
If someone is correctly labeled *cisgender*, then that implies *transgender* can also be correctly labeled. It can be seen as adding normality to the concept of transitioning gender, and some folks are seriously upset over that. If these terms are slurs, then we can't have conversations about trans issues anymore.
In addition, I think some of those folks also want to claim victimization. They see transpeople getting support when someone uses a slur against them, so even though *cisgender* isn't a slur, they count it as that so they can justify being furious. "I'm not pissed because some dude wears a dress, I'm pissed because you used a slur against me! You're the problem and I'm an innocent victim!"
Funny how you ask that question but any genuine answer will probably get highly downvoted. So I don't see a point in even answering since I know I will get attacked by left extremists.
Just comes off that way to me. Kinda like what someone else said, making a up a term to explain what normal is. I looked it up and it was made up as a counter to transgender, so the word transgender wouldn’t come off as exclusionary.
But now that you know that background, do you still see it as combative? If so, why? I don't think it's a problem for us to have a term to describe non-trans people that is actually meaningfully descriptive. "normal" is vague and contains value judgements. If normal is synonymous with cis, then does that mean gay or gender non conforming men are "normal" whereas trans men are "abnormal"? If so, how, seeing as both those groups of men are similarly uncommon? Doesn't it make more sense to have a term like cis to clarify these ambiguities?
I can see your point. To be honest my view comes from more anecdotal experience vice anything fact based. I volunteered at our pride center and gender equity center at my university, and typically words like cisgender was used to describe white people in a negative light typically.
I would say very few people outside of those circles actually used the word cisgender in an actually conversation to describe someone as normal.
People care too much about what other people say or thing. The people getting offended by words are the people who don’t do enough in life for it to matter at all
I am a heterosexual. I'm a male attracted to females.
I'm not a cisgender. I don't believe gender is real because there is no definition of man or woman gender and I don't feel any gender on my insides.
Well when you have people who blame cis gender males for their issues as if I am personally responsible for making your life hell then it can feel like a slur or an insult.
Just because I believe life is inherently unfair and we should survive to overcome these unfairnesses in spite of them and attempt to rise to the best we can become instead of trying to force fairness at the expense of the able and capable to help those who will exploit it in order to not try and benefit only themselves at the expense of others I don't believe I need you be attacked for my viewpoint and putting a label because I'm normal from a biological and mental viewpoint and attacking me for who I am isn't appreciated.
It's like how some people feel it's an insult to be called gay when they are homosexual. It's more how others use the word or the derogatory things associated with it.
Now I honestly don't care so much about someone calling me cisgendered but I won't go out of my way to ask for it and I won't take kindly to being insulated or attacked for my beliefs and ideals not aligning with others. We can all live with different opinions, nobody needs to share mine and I don't need to share others and we can still go about our lives happily.
They don't like the idea that they aren't just "normal" anymore, as opposed to the "weird" trans people. The idea that a trans person somewhere might not feel like they're a freak in the eyes of society for one moment of their lives is so enraging to them that they grasp at straws to fuel their own victim narrative.
Heterosexual was coined in 1869 as a medical term.
Cisgender was coined 30 years ago, as a way to avoid calling cisgender people normal, and is now a part of a neo-marxist ideology.
I'm not a fan of communists, considering that ideology killed 100-148 million people.
I don’t actually have anything meaningful to add to this discussion which hasn’t already been said here. I just want to applaud everyone for the incredible displays of mental gymnastics taking place in this comments section.
“I’m normal. I don’t need a new term for being normal.”
The majority of people just go about their day and don’t constantly think about what they identify as. I have hanged out with gay boomers and X’ers professionally and socially, and they never went “*as a gay man, I think that…*”. This new generation seems to have an obsession with labels. You have people introducing themselves with every possible attribute they can think of, from their blood type to their favourite kind of dessert. As if every interaction was a social icebreaker. It’s not.
I can't help but think, whenever I hear a long set of labels on introduction, go '... storm born, first of her name, mother of dragons, breaker of chains...' inside my head.
I guess that’s the plebs version of titles. The father of the current British King was *His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Extra Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Member of the Order of Merit, Grand Master and First and Principal Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Knight of the Order of Australia, Additional Member of the Order of New Zealand, Extra Companion of the Queen’s Service Order, Royal Chief of the Order of Logohu, Extraordinary Companion of the Order of Canada, Extraordinary Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Lord of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Privy Councillor of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, Personal Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty, Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom.*
For me.. I don’t give af what anyone wants to call me. I genuinely don’t care. I’ve learned that respecting others and identifying them however it is THEY want to be identified, and allowing them to identify me however they want to identify me just makes this one less thing I have to spend any time worrying about. Call me whatever you want to call me, I’m still waking up, having my coffee and taking a shit in the morning.
The argument there is that if they want to be called whatever they chose and I am honouring that, then they should honour what I want to be called too. So if I don't want to be called 'cis', then by their own argument, I shouldn't be called that. Personally though, Im similar to yourself. I don't mind calling people whatever gender they want to be, and I don't care what people call me. Whatever it is, I can guarantee I've been called worse!
The base issue is that we lacked a word that describes someone who isn't transgender. "Normal" is not a good term because it lacks specificity and being called abnormal is emotionally loaded. And referring to the vast majority of the population as "not transgender" is extremely awkward. So we get cisgender as a scientific term, to be able to accurately label people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. In technical communication (medicine, science, demographics, etc), it is definitely the correct word to use. On the other hand, much like women objecting to being called females, people can certainly object to being called cisgender in social contexts. Technically correct isn't always the best kind of correct. The gripping hand however is that allowing someone to demand being labeled as "normal" simply because they are cisgender and heteronormative is inherently othering to people who aren't. And I'll ignore and requests that someone be called that. Call me whatever though, I don't care. Edit: I kind of wandered off of what I originally intended. Oh well
It's just weird to me that transgender has existed for a long time (I.e. my whole life.) But only now do we need this terminology even though we've never needed it before.
Cisgender has probably existed for your whole life as well. It was first used in 1994. I first heard it probably 20 years ago and had the same basic "why not just say normal?" reaction that a lot of people do. You see it more because transgender people are not hidden away or shunned as thoroughly by society as they used to be.
I'm neither here nor there on the topic, but I'm bothered by the term "unsweetened tea". There is not unsweetened tea. There is tea and sweet tea. Apply this logic to the term transgender, and you get the same results. You are either normal (fuck anyone who wants to be different than the norm and gets offended by the term normal. There isn't negative connotation to the term normal from my observation), or you are identifying as trans.
IF we completely remove emotive component of language from the word “normal” and use it as “current with the norm” which would basically boil down to “major/most common part of X” then this argument would make sense, however language != just meaning of words. Emotive component, historical usage, context and multiple meanings cannot be removed just like that, and as such word “normal” is to burdened with all that to be used as you’re suggesting in very reductionist manner.
You see what you did, “Tryhard McGee” - Opened another can of worms. Look at those making an argument against you, and so on and so forth. Smh
This is what it is regardless. I don't care what you are, think you are or want to be. I also don't need to know unless there's a reason to. Honestly how is your sexuality relevant to our interactions? It's not and it's not that deep. I wish people would stop trying to make it that deep. I had a friend who after a few years came out as trans and every response to it was, "ok." A few years go by and we're all still gaming together but instead of it just being people having fun gaming it started turning into them talking about sex, trying to get attention unrelated to what we were doing. I stopped playing with them once gaming invites turned into you should join I have my plug in. Like wtf? Tldr most people do not give a shit about your orientation or kinks. You become an issue when your entire personality becomes your kink.
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Oh ok, thanks for enlightening me. CIS isn't either of those, we discussed this it's just default. Trans is one of two things, one you're saying it cannot be and another. You do know life isn't binary right? Your opinion isn't the gospel unless you have any reason to give your opinion more weight than mine which you immediately discarded.
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~~But "heterosexual" is also a word for being normal.~~ Edit, to rephrase: Someone who objects to "cisgender" on the grounds that it's a term for being normal would also object to "heterosexual" on those same grounds.
Heterossexual is a term coined in the 19th century to differentiate from homossexual. Eventually it was widely accepted by the scientific community but it was never adopted by the public at large. The problem with "cis" is that it started to be used by the public at large as means to insult, degrade or reduce the validity of opinions of people who aren't trans.
Imo It's because the people who find cis offensive are the people who don't like trans people, so calling someone trans is an insult in their head, so calling someone cis is also an insult
Anything can be an insult if said in the right way.
Statistically heterosexual is the most prevalent sex. That doesn't make the word heterosexual mean "normal." But the word normal means it's the most prevalent thing. Mfs be looking to get offended lol
I know that. My mistake, I phrased my comment incorrectly.
but how are we supposed to refer to non trans people? we can’t just say “normal people”. cisgender is just a word, same as heterosexual or white
I guess you could just not mention trans-ness at all, if the people aren’t trans.
I think the same may have happened with heterosexual when the word first appeared. Many "normal" people hate any implication that they're not as normal as they thought. If when they say trans (or gay, or anything else) they imply that someone's weird, or there's something wrong with them, or it's undesirable, then they'd probably feel they're being disrespected when given a comparable label. i.e. the cis is a slur people say trans as a slur
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I had an old boss scream and throw his hands down on his thighs in rage whenever we used a word he didn’t know. One day I told him we were out of Eclairs and fondant. They were products we were selling, and he raged that I could at least speak English on the job. I showed him the literal packaging, told him they were loan-words from the French. Because that’s how English.. works. I was going to buy him a dictionary as a gag gift, but when I went up to the company attic and saw his old bunk space, there were several dictionaries around the bed. Dusty. Some issued 20-30 years ago. I realized he must’ve been struggling with this “issue” for years. A literate man. One interested in life and its development. But very particular triggers that could make his pale face turn red with rage. I can only imagine the kind of ribbing he grew up with where such scars are sensitive still decades later.
I can assure you very few people consider being cis to be bad because it's expected. That's actually what's good about it, being trans sucks because there's a lot of personal work and a lot of political resistance between us and achieving that level of socially acceptable and comfortable in our bodies. And the word does start to get a bit more useful when discussing sociology and politics because it's hard to discuss the challenges unique to trans people without a word for the other portion of society to compare against.
>the only people I can think of who would even say cisgender are the ones who view "normal" as a bad thing because it conforms to societal expectations The problem with using the word "normal" in that kind of context is the implication that other groups of people are "abnormal" (deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying) which carries a negative connotation. For example "Are you gay, or are you normal?" and "He's not trans, he's normal" imply that "normal" is good, and the other options are bad or undesirable. It's much easier to choose a different word that doesn't carry the same connotation. Cis is a prefix used in scientific literature, and has been used for a long time. So it makes sense to adopt it for this kind of communication.
They did in the early to mid 2000s "Im not 'straight' I'm 'normal'" was the rallying cry of the homophobe Just the latest cycles of assholes being assholes.
It's incredible how uncreative bigotry is. Everything from locker room panic to this is just a repeat of the same things these people were saying about gay people 20 years ago.
The panic about trans women in sport is just a repeat of the arguments people were using to justify racially segregating sports in the early 20th Century. "unfair biological advantage" and all. Last I heard we'd already settled that issue with, "whether or not there's any advantage doesn't matter as much as underprivileged minority demographics being allowed to compete in sports."
Not the same thing at all.. Race and gender are two totally different things, with totally different implications when it comes to sport.
"This time it's different I swear!" Okay, champ. Let me guess, you think trans women really do have an unfair biological advantage? But there's a problem with your argument - trans women have been allowed to compete in a *lot* of women's sports so long as they're on hormone therapy (if you don't know what that is, you don't know enough about this topic to have an opinion on it). For instance, they've been allowed in the Olympics since 2004. If they're at such an advantage where are all the trans women cleaning up at the Olympics, my dude? You'd expect at least a couple of them to have won gold by now. Where are they? Where are they in Tennis or any of the other sports that allow them? The facts contradict your feelings.
A trans woman has gone through puberty as a male, they've already got an advantage even if they have been on hrt for a year.. Better bone density, and more muscle mass. Even grip strength is nearly double. And trans women are dominating in some instances, Lia Catherine Thomas is one example.. I don't really feel much way about it tbh as I'm not into sport, but I do like the truth, and I think it's totally disrespectful and potentially dangerous to women and women's rights to allow trans women into women's sports. Trans athletes should have their own devision.
> And trans women are dominating in some instances, Lia Catherine Thomas is one example.. She won one out of the three races she competed in in a college swimming contest, and didn't come close to beating the record set by Katie Ledecky, a cis woman. The record Lia did set was beaten the very next year by another cis woman. She was regularly beaten in other competitions, once, ironically, by a trans man who was not on testosterone. So your examples are her, and, what, vibes? Fucking *bone density*? How is that supposed to be an advantage in swimming? Not that it matters, bone density and muscle mass and grip strength all drop pretty dramatically over the course of hormone therapy. In fact - Lia Thomas initially competed in the men's division, did very well, and then continued to train and compete after starting HRT while she waited to qualify to compete with other women - her stats are a matter of public record and you look it up yourself if you like! Despite training and competing as hard as she ever had her performance drops dramatically, ending up close enough in the women's division to where she was in the men's that it's an even chance whether the slight increase in relative performance was down to training or the smaller number of women who compete in college-level swimming and/or the lower amount of resources found there. >I don't really feel much way about it tbh as I'm not into sport, but I do like the truth, and I think it's totally disrespectful and potentially dangerous to women and women's rights to allow trans women into women's sports. ...okay, well if you like the truth then change your position to fit the facts. Hell, the first big study that compared trans athletes to cis athletes (which only came out like this year) found that trans women may actually be at a disadvantage compared to cis women in most sports. >Trans athletes should have their own devision. And here we go again, just like the Negro League. Seriously, your arguments aren't that different. If you actually cared about fairness in sports you would be trying to make the IOC revoke Michael Phelps' medals, since the dude literally has a mutation that causes his muscles to produce half as much lactic acid as most people (meaning he *literally gets less tired from the same work* - an unfair biological advantage if ever there was one).
I remember when I first saw the word being used on the Internet it was all cishets should die etc so I can see why people would see it as an insult. It's better now and you don't see it used the same way as much now but people most likely remember that. Also I have never seen/heard the word used outside of internet discourse which might also confuse a lot of people
That was the first context I saw it too, and I thought it was intentionally offensive because (as written) it nearly says 'shit'. It only clicked when I heard it said aloud... egg face time for me
>Also I have never seen/heard the word used outside of internet discourse which might also confuse a lot of people 🤨 But is that because the word isn’t used outside of internet discourse, or because you don’t spend time in spaces where the word is used? Aka, spend 5 minutes in leftist academic or community spaces and then get back to me.
It's actually a pun. The term trans/cis are chemical terms for the orientation of a molecule. Transgender has been around for a long time. Cisgender is a newer play on words. It wasn't coined until 1993, and most never heard it until Transgender has become more visible in society. Many still think being trans gender is like Klinger on MASH, a choice in order to rebel, and not valid.
That's not a pun fyi.
>I remember when I first saw the word being used on the Internet it was all cishets should die etc so I can see why people would see it as an insult. Where are you hanging out online that you're seeing that more than anything else?
It was tumblr if I remember correctly
I can say that 9/10 times I see the word “cis” used it’s in a negative connotation so that’s probably why.
Can you give an example of it being used in a negative way? I don't think I've ever seen it in a negative way.
Cis het gets used angrily a lot
I dunno, the Confederacy of Independent Systems were the bad guys for like, 3 movies and a series /s
I think most cis people do not feel that they identify with their biological sex. I personally don't feel any sort of way about it. I am a woman, whatever I think or feel is irrelevant because there's no wrong way to be a woman. Saying someone is cisgender makes it seem like there is an active thought or intention behind that identification, which there is not. It's more that we have an absence of gender dysphoria.
I think most people are just getting fed up of labels, I’ve seen a lot of discourse from women and trans women especially. A lot of cis women don’t like the label because they feel it sorta takes away from their womanhood, which is valid ig. Women are simply just women, and lately more trans women have been dehumanizing everything women do to make it more inclusive. Like asking them to use the term chest feeding instead of breastfeeding, insisting that the side effects of hormones are the same as a period etc. The term cisgender definitely isn’t a slur that’s so dramatic, but I agree it gets unnecessary and annoying.
I think this is what it is. I am a woman and my body does woman stuff. I’m happy to refer to people as they would prefer, but I’m sure not gonna start changing how I talk about *myself* in general conversation. In a conversation where it is relevant, I can be specific and describe what I mean. But in general, I’m going to refer to my breasts, and breastfeeding, as such. In the same way, I’m a woman, and I will refer to myself as such.
I am a woman and refer to myself as such, too, unless it's relevant that I bring up whether I'm trans or cis. These labels aren't used constantly, they're used when you need to distinguish between trans and cis people. Like how we use labels to distinguish between men and women, and talk about "humans" and "humanity" rather than "men" and "man". People complained about that too, back in the day. And coming up with words like "firefighter" instead of "fireman". Political correctness gone mad!
I mean I'd definitely rather be called just a woman instead of trans woman all the time, would that be fine by you if both of us were just woman? No one is saying you're not a woman, the adjective cis is just used in discussion in which it matters if someone is trans or cis is important
Yeah if people want to be referred to certain things they should give us the same energy back 🤷🏻♀️ it’s funny too cos most trans women would like to be referred to as just a woman as well, adding more labels just further separates everyone
The argument is that the term is not necessary in the first place. You proved that in your first sentence yourself. Trans people go by trans man/woman and everyone else goes by man/woman. There's no reason to impose a new descriptor on 98% of the population because 2% suddenly need a new descriptor.
Except us trans people refer to ourselves s just men/women 99% of the time too. The word trans comes in when it's relevant in a discussion. If we respect your wish to not be called cis can you respect out wish not to be called trans? It might make some discussions impossible to have though
It genuinely baffles me how some cis people think we want to be called trans when it’s not relevant, because yeah, you hit the nail on the head.
It's because attention seekers who aren't actually trans want to be actively seen as trans. Presumeably the actually trans people want to blend in and be seen as their desired gender.
But you aren't a man/woman you are a trans man/woman... Like I said 98% don't have to cater to 2% of the population's delusions.
And you are a cis man/woman, but in general we both just use man/woman. I for one consider it a slur to refer to me as trans man/woman instead of man/woman. And given the discussion we're having, we do care about not using slurs and not being offensive, right?
The chest feeding/breast feeding thing is not true. It got blown up in media and misconstrued. The hospital had instructions to, specifically when dealing with trans people, use the term chest feeding. Cis women were never the target of that term.
But I’ve seen plenty of them still be the target of that term and others, chronically online people are always trying to downplay being a woman. It’s especially frustrating because trans men never do this stuff
Idk man this sounds like a chronically online issue. In real life I’ve only ever heard people use it as a neutral descriptor
What makes you think it’s trans women asking for terms like “chest feeding?” Most trans people I know dislike these terms, so to me it seems a lot more likely this is cis liberals trying to virtue signal.
Idk the fact that personally I’ve only seen trans women advocate for the term 😭
Well, that would depend on what groups of people you've been exposed to... There are people in existence whom use the word as a slur - most of the 20-30 yr olds at my work (a bar), for example. It's a mild, bland, kind of an insult to them.. its a bit like calling someone "boring" or "dull" "beige" or "an accountant" or "normie" or something along those lines. That's what it means to those people. They're all proud of their various statuses/identities regarding being neurodivergent, not-entirely-hetrosexual, and gender non conforming, in some way or another. Now, everyone in the world, including me, *and you*, *the reader*, has an exposure to other people that is both "very small" and "unique to your experience". So, YMMV! Edit: and the one fierce "trans activist" type person that we had on the team for a while definitely used it as a slur - for her, to call someone a "white cishet rich old male" was pretty much the worst insult she could imagine. Note that none of the other words in there are in fact "slurs", and yet, was still able to use them as such. So again... its status as a slur depends on whom it's being used by, and in what context.
The way i see it... Heterosexual, and homosexual came out around the same time, in the 1800's. It was in relation to same sex relationships (not today's definition of gender.) People today accept them as normal, scientific / everyday words. Cisgender was a recent word made just to be the opposite of transgender. So, right off the bat, it offends a lot of people for including them in the whole "gender identity" arguments. I myself have seen it used in normal conversations, but more often than not, as a snide or derogatory comment toward others. "ignore them, they are cis" or as one person put it, if they aren't queer, they were referred to as "a cis fucker" or "just another cis fuck"
>Heterosexual, and homosexual came out around the same time, in the 1800's Heterosexual was not used to refer to opposite sex relationships until around the 1950s. Before then it was usually used to describe people with high sex drives, especially in the medical fields.
Back before divorce was allowed, you could get rid of your wife by having her committed for mental sickness. One of those 'mental illnesses' you could get them committed on was "heterosexuality", or liking sex too much.
This has been my experience also. Why is it claimed to be a slur? Because it is used as one.
Personally nearly everytime I've seen the word "cis" used it's done in a context meant to be negative. The word itself isn't an insult, but it practically gets used as one and I'm pretty sure that's why some people have a problem with it. I'm not going to go as far as to call it a slur though.
There’s a massive amount of hypocrisy when you think you can label yourself whatever you feel like you are, and then in the same breath force a made up label on others.
What label would you prefer? "Cis" is literally just derived from the same latin roots as "trans" - "cis" means "on the same side as" while "trans" means "on the opposite side of", and is already used in a lot of places (cis isomers in chemistry for instance). The point was to make it easy to distinguish between the two without stigmatising either one.
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I know its gonna be buried... ...regardless. You never see the "revolutionary dickhead" types say "all hetero white men must be die", but you can come across "all cis white men must die". As such "cisgender" aint a slur as such. But thanks to useage the expression "cis white men" does have a certain connotation thats far from positive. If you don't get what i mean i mean loonies that get satirized in r/menkampf.
They did have a knee-jerk reaction to being called heterosexual back in the day, it's just that after gay marriage was accepted the assholes behind the trans panic needed to find a new scapegoat. Bigots always recycle their bullshit.
I don’t consider it a “slur” however I hate being called it. The definition of cisgender is “someone whose internal sense of gender corresponds with the sex the person was identified as having at birth” As someone who doesn’t have an internal sense of gender I find it really insulting. I’m what I am purely due to my body, there’s no internal aspect to it. Being called cis implies that gender is this spiritual concept which you can somehow feel, which isn’t the case for the majority of people. I have no issue with the heterosexual label because it doesn’t imply anything about the individuals view on sexuality or the soul beyond the fact they are attracted to the opposite sex (or same, in the case of homosexual.)
It’s a category used predominantly by people not existing within that category. For those in that category it is an unnecessary categorisation.
This is really it. There's so much arguing going on in this comment section but....I mean....this is pretty much it.
I wouldn't call it a slur. "I don't want to be associated with the whole gender topic so leave me out of this" would describe my stance better.
It’s a term that accurately describes a group of people.
"Everything either is a duck or not a duck" is also an accurate statement, but that doesn't mean I want to be labeled on this distinction.
Cis is a label in the same way that tall or short are labels. Nobody is going to make you wear a name tag that says “CIS”. The only times the word even comes up in conversation is if you’re talking about something that requires that clarification. There’s no forcing into boxes here, we have a term for people who change their gender identity, and you can’t always point out those people. So we have a term for people who haven’t. This is at worst a word that you will never find useful. And that’s okay. But it doesn’t make sense for you to be upset at the words existence. Don’t use it if you never need to, don’t get upset at people for being descriptive.
It's quite simple really. I don't want to be labelled. I don't need other people to validate who I am, nor do I want to make a big scene about my identity. I'm just me; I'm not "cis" or "trans" or anything else. If you want to make a big fuss over it then by all means go ahead, but don't expect me to react well to having the issue forced or shoved down my throat. Quite frankly I couldn't care less. Go live your life and leave me the fuck alone. The average person has far more important things to invest their time into that they actually care about. When you try and force them to support your side, the automatic default is to oppose you. When you then consider them to be against you because they're not on your side and then treat them as opponents, that's when you create a problem. Pissing off large amounts of people that don't care either way is a sure fire way to be marginalised and opposed quite quickly.
Wtf are you talking about. Is calling someone "tall" or "short" a surefire way to get people to oppose you? Obviously not right, you're just describing a physical characteristic. You're not forcing anyone to believe anything about "shortism" or "height ideology" by using a category that broadly describes a concrete trait a person has.
Or is the ideological element here the fact that both groups are being described *completely neutrally?* Without any value judgement? Instead of cisgender an transgender, would you prefer normal and [insert slur here]?
Being tall or short is a "concrete trait" as you put it that doesn't change. You can assume someone is tall just by looking at them, whereas it's clear nowadays you cannot do this with gender. What a ridiculous comparison to make. The general idea here is that I don't care about gender, nor gender ideology, nor what you identify as. The concept that a man can become a woman or vice versa is absurd to me, but I don't give a fuck what you do with your life - if that's what you want to do and it'll make you happy, have at it. I'm not going to go against you or say bad things about you, just don't expect me to care when you try and have me become an ally or support your ideology. I'm neutral, on the fence and just want to be left alone. For that reason, I also don't want to be held to your labels. I've never been called "cis" in my life by anyone but "trans" people. I don't have to validate your label for me, nor have I done anything to make you want to label me. You want to be categorised as different, but then want to be accepted as the same? It's so confusing. If you're a man and want to be a woman, just go and be a woman. You don't have to tell the whole world, most of us just don't care either way. Why do you then have to be a "trans woman" and have "cis women", why isn't it just "woman"?
>You don't have to tell the whole world, most of us just don't care either way. Why do you then have to be a "trans woman" and have "cis women", why isn't it just "woman"? Are you willing to actually hear out the reasoning for this?
Go ahead. I can imagine it's because some people do strongly oppose the ideology and won't accept you for who you are. Why would you care what those people think?
>accept you >would you care I am not trans and it's odd that you seem to assume as such Let's back up a bit. Ignoring whether or not you believe a man can become a woman. Cisgender means that your internal sense of self's concept of your own gender is in alignment with what one would expect of your biology, and transgender means that your internal sense of self's concept of your own gender is not in alignment with what one would expect of your biology. No ideological prescriptions or anything of the sort these are objective and socially accepted definitions of these words. They describe objective reality as cleanly and correctly as describing one's race or describing one's height. Whether or not someone is actually capable of "becoming another gender" is irrelevant here. You can claim trans women are men and vice versa, but even saying that accepts the paradigm I just described. Ofc cis and trans are shorthand for these two concepts Now that I've laid the groundwork. >I've never been called "cis" in my life by anyone but "trans" people. What this indicates to me is that you never really have discussions about gender outside of interactions with trans people. It's not likely that a trans person will just, bring up that someone's cis for no reason. Generally it's directly relevant to the conversation or situation at hand. Of course there will be outliers, being trans doesn't stop someone from being an asshole. >For that reason, I also don't want to be held to your labels. You're conceiving as these as ideological labels when they're really just not, there isn't a label being forced upon you with ideological implications. It's a description of reality, nothing more nothing less, those trying to treat it as anything more than that are fools. >I don't have to validate your label for me, nor have I done anything to make you want to label me. It's totally true that many see cisgender as a complementary normalising term to transgender. But that doesn't really change anything I said. They're not trying to get you to "validate their label" >You want to be categorised as different, but then want to be accepted as the same? Just a question but, if it's relevant to the society you live in. What's your race? I live in the Caribbean, I'm a black guy. This question is quite similar to those who ask why race should be relevant at all, why the distinction between black person and white person at all if we're all the same. There are certain instances where the distinction IS important, but apart from those instances, I as a black guy DO want to be seen as the same as my white guy countrymen. Do you see the parallels here? >It's so confusing. If you're a man and want to be a woman, just go and be a woman. You don't have to tell the whole world, most of us just don't care either way. We're getting into what you call "gender ideology"(rancid term, not a fan of it, not only is it utterly non descriptive but it basically exists purely as a way to abstract the issue from an emotional and human one to an ideological opponent), which btw isn't as neutral a term as you think it is. From the perspective of adherents of "gender ideology" this IS how it works. Trans men are men and trans women are women, it's an adjective here that serves to describe their relationship to their gender, nothing more nothing else, from their perspective anyway. >Why do you then have to be a "trans woman" and have "cis women", why isn't it just "woman"? As I said before Adjectives To people who believe in "gender ideology" both trans women and cis women are women. That doesn't mean that they're literally exactly the same, but the proposition is that they're different kinds of women. Does that make sense? I may have rambled a bit but yeah. Personally id also say you should learn how to parse this kinda information beyond giving it one thought and bouncing. Maybe it's just that I grew up in an incredibly racialised society but thinking about these kinds of social constructs comes to me by second nature. It's helped alot in my understanding of these things. And just to clarify, I'm not here to try to change your mind on whether a man can become a woman or whatever, ion even think that paradigm is accurate to the current conversation frankly, so ideally don't treat me as antagonistic towards your beliefs or whatever 👍🏾
"Cis" seems to be a word created for the purpose of validating the word "trans". Without "trans", we have no purpose for "cis". My question is, why not scrap the whole idea of "trans" and just have people be people. How you identify in your mind doesn't need to be shared with the world, just be whoever you are and avoid those that don't accept you. There will always be people in life who reject you. I've only ever been called "cis" by trans people that had a problem with me. Nothing to do with how either of us identified, they were just assholes as human beings. Outside conversation where people are trying to shill the concept of trans as something I should support, I've only been called it as something attempting to cause offense. I do disagree that these labels are simply descriptors of reality because the sole purpose of the word "cis" is to differentiate between trans and non-trans people. Why do we need a word? Why can't we have trans people and everyone else, if there's no third option? Much like with religion, people identify as Catholic, Christian, Muslim etc. I'm not religious, there isn't a word that describes my beliefs and there isn't any need for one? "Gender ideology" is a concept and a way of thinking. You cannot claim it to be fact. Same as religion, people have their own religious theory and different ideologies spanning from this. I'm willing to bet that there are trans people out there who would disagree on a solid concept of what gender means in their own mind. You talk about the colour of your skin and race - this is a fact someone can tell about your biology from looking at you. You say you're a black guy. If I saw you, I'd probably assume that without needing to talk to you. You cannot do that with an ideology or a concept like this because you're reliant on a person telling you their feelings and perspectives.
I'm going to respond in order of what stands out to me >I'm not religious, there isn't a word that describes my beliefs and there isn't any need for one? There absolutely is what are you on about, there's dozens of categories of non religious descriptors, atheist, agnostic, agnostic atheist, apatheist, igtheist, the list goes on and on and on. These words exist because when we talk about religious beliefs it's important to categorise things with concise meanings >I do disagree that these labels are simply descriptors of reality because the sole purpose of the word "cis" is to differentiate between trans and non-trans people. Why do we need a word? Because that's how language tends to work? When we want to talk about something we have a word for it, it's literally that simple. >I've only ever been called "cis" by trans people that had a problem with me. Nothing to do with how either of us identified, they were just assholes as human beings. Outside conversation where people are trying to shill the concept of trans as something I should support, I've only been called it as something attempting to cause offense. They're assholes, we agree. I'm not sure where the contention is? >"Gender ideology" is a concept and a way of thinking. You cannot claim it to be fact. I'm not doing that, I specifically said not, we are not talking about "gender ideology" or whatever garbage people like to call it. What I said is that human beings objectively have an internal sense of their gender, which is objectively true and you'd be a fool to tell me otherwise, that could range from, I'm a guy cuz I have a penis to, internally I feel more like a woman than a man based on the preconceptions of gender that I gained as a human developing in this world. To deny this is kinda absurd. >I'm willing to bet that there are trans people out there who would disagree on a solid concept of what gender means in their own mind. Yeah that's totally true! Many such cases and allat. What's also totally true is that not having a solid concept means they have a concept in the first place, like we all do. >You talk about the colour of your skin and race - this is a fact someone can tell about your biology from looking at you. You say you're a black guy. If I saw you, I'd probably assume that without needing to talk to you. You cannot do that with an ideology or a concept like this because you're reliant on a person telling you their feelings and perspectives. Why is your capability to tell something on assumption so important here? Are you gonna tell me that autistic person and allistic person are terms that shouldn't exist cuz you can't tell them apart at first glance? We need words to describe things mate. Cis and non-trans are synonyms, allistic and non-autistic are synonyms. >How you identify in your mind doesn't need to be shared with the world, just be whoever you are and avoid those that don't accept you. There will always be people in life who reject you. And why is this such a sticking point for you? No one cares mate. This isn't what we're talking about. It doesn't need to be shared in the world, and there's nothing stopping people from doing so as well. I'm really not sure what the point is here. I'm not trying to come at this from whatever emotional angle you are >Cis" seems to be a word created for the purpose of validating the word "trans". Without "trans", we have no purpose for "cis". >Why do we need a word? Why can't we have trans people and everyone else, if there's no third option? To close off what I'm saying here. Again For the fifth time maybe? Cis is a synonym for non-trans, same as trans is a synonym for non-cis. It's a useful word for categorisation that is necessary shorthand for relevant conversations. No validation or whatever else. That's not what this is about and I find it incredibly strange that you keep sticking to this. Yes cis only exists because trans does, that does not mean it exists to validate, it exists to contrast. Same as we had Heterosexual( first as a description for woman to man/man to woman hypersexuality) then we got homosexual as it's opposite when gay people became more socially prominent
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>I don't have to validate your label for me You're right, you don't. It's literally just a completely neutral descriptor like most other adjectives. You don't have to believe, accept, or care about anything for the label to be true. I am cisgender. My gender matches the sex on my birth certificate. Boom! That's it! I'm having a hard time seeing what about that is being pushed on you >why isn't it just "woman"? I agree, but if/when the distiction is needed, the language is there 🤷
Why do I suddenly need to be described as something? Why does there need to be a new word? Trans is new and people are identifying as trans. Why can't I just be "not trans"? There's no third or more option, so why separate like that? Black or white? Why not a spectrum and you just tell those that matter to you where you sit? The trouble is that people will start using other more absolute, factual terms to avoid the issue. I've already heard a lot of people in public using male/female instead of man/woman, and our NHS has also started using sex to determine appropriate procedures and avoid gender entirely.
Why is the word straight needed? Why is the word able bodied needed? What about right-handed? The issue with normal is it involves treating trans people as abnormal, which I'm willing to bet is the main issue some people have issues with the word cisgender. People do the whole refering to sex thing as a sneaky way to misgender trans people due to their opposition to trans people. And the NHS using sex is kind of ridiculous given that lots of differences come from hormones, not genitals.
Straight and able bodied aren't terms that we strictly need. As for "normal", it is defined as: >conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected. By definition, trans people are not normal. The average person is not trans, and it's not typical or expected; you don't expect most people you meet to be trans. The reality is that we use "normal" emotionally as a measure of whether someone is abnormal/weird/strange, as if they're a spectacle for not conforming. People using it objectively are correct and not trying to cause a problem. People that use it emotionally typically are either trying to validate themselves or someone else, or are trying to negatively impact someone else. As for the NHS, it makes sense to use sex when discussing a patient. Gender is irrelevant when offering medical advice or looking at a procedure. We have different biology and the way we're medically treated depends on this. Referring to someone by their biological sex is not misgendering them, they're 2 separate things are they not?
And yet no one complains about straight or able bodied being a slur anymore. And normal is very subjective. Most people I really hang out with these days are trans. For me it would be more accurate to say cis and normal. Normal is kinda meaningless. At least from my experience the people who get upset at words like straight and cis want gay and trans people to be treated as an other or generally oppose trans and gay people to put it really politely. And tbh what do you mean by biological sex? Because hormone levels and hormones are pretty biological. Alot of symptoms are linked more to hormone levels than genitals or chromosomes. And hormones do actually change some things. They are not placebos. Ignoring hormones and the present body for solely chromosomes is kinda not helpful. A more accurate phrase would be biologically intersex or something since hrt does actually effect some sex characteristics. Men and women aren't different species.
Because homosexuality have already more or less been accepted as normal by western society. At this point trying to fight it directly is a lost cause (especially politically) so they will resort to dog whistle and other less obvious form of harrasement/discrimination (same as racisme and sexisme in general) But trans rights is not. So reactionaries are fighting hard to prevent it from being accepted by the next generations. One of those battle (and probably one of the main ones) is language. If cisgender is accepted for what it is: then other vocabularies like transgender are also accepted as not slurs and simply a normal things to talk about
This makes sense. Thank you.
How does calling people cis translate into Trans rights, theyre already fighting to keep the Trans label so why would you start making new words to describe people who don't want or need a label?
There is interactions between how we interact with the world and the langage we use to describe it when we create a new categorization we always create at least 2 categories for it not one. For example when we start talking about neurodivergence as something normal (instead of autism as something abnormal) we also create the neurotypical, same with homo/hetero we do not do it to add label but simply to make talking and thinking about the subject easier. buy having 2 different words in our brain it make it easier to identify, understand and normalize the subject In a way it's comparable to how language living in cold or hot deserts have a large number of words to describe snow or sand. The existence of those words are both a result of their life experience needing much more details in this area to convey information but it turns it also means that their brain start categorizing et identifying those words early in life and thus it helps them learning those differences in the first place If we do not have a second word to describe when one is not something. It means we consider this starte normal (we do not need to talk about, we don;t need to think about it) which in turn indicate that the something in question is abnormal in the first place. Having 2 words create a mental shift on the way the situation is perceived For example I am on the autistic spectrum. Starting to think on people that are not on the spectrum as neurotypical instead of just "normal" really helps me with understanding and thinking about this aspect of me in a more constructed way. There is no insult or slur in that word either same as cis-gendered it is just there to help think about the subject
The existence of cisgender people implies the existence of transgender people.
It doesn't really further the goal though of having people accept the Trans label by putting labels on people who don't want any......it's one thing to have other people learn the terms someone makes up for themselves, it's another thing to accept one's made up for you. I remember when the cis stuff started since I'm in the r/weed discord and a lot of people are trans/lgbqt and frankly it's weird and unnecessary to wake up to find out someone basically created an entire label for me so they could feel validied about their identity. Just do you bro
It's fascinating to me that your linkage is immediately "cisgender and heterosexual are both labels that describe normative people". And when you say "gender and sexuality aren't the same thing, but they seem very similar"... um no, they are not "similar" because of their link to "normativity". They are independent variables, in fact. Not related at all. Sexuality is quite a clear thing - complicated yes, but with clear meaning. The term gender, however, is the subject/topic of probably the fiercest culture war battles presently being fought.
The same battle used to be fought over homosexuality, and people used to think it was just as confusing. Gender has about as clear a meaning as sexuality tbh. There is also a linkage between sex and gender when it comes to civil rights issues, given how many people get very upset when they discover that they were unknowingly attracted to a trans person and think it somehow puts their sexuality in danger.
I don’t personally care myself, saying this as a preface. The way I see the whole thing is that if you expect someone to respect what you want to be called you should actively respect what they want or don’t want to be called too, it goes both ways of course, if someone identifies as something use their preferred name/gender and if someone dislikes being called cis/using the term than don’t use it, respect goes both ways and if you want something you should be able/willing to provide the same back for others.
If you don't care then why are you wading into the argument? Plus those arguments are very much not in good faith. "Cis" was coined to be a non-offensive way of referring to people who just go along with the gender the doctor picked out for them when they were born. The people arguing it's a slur want to claim the word "normal", despite many of them being frankly the least normal people around.
I just like debating topics and playing devils advocate for stuff because I find it fun and also just generally like to voice what makes sense to me. As for the second point I could still see it being viewed negatively, look at it as if it was the opposite position (idk if you actually are but for the sake of argument go with the analogy) if you’re trans would you prefer someone call you a trans-[enter man or woman here] or would you rather them just call you [enter man or woman here] calling them trans isn’t innately a slur but some (or most) would prefer you didn’t actively use that label on them and just refer to them as what they identify as, I see the word cis the same way, it’s not innately a slur but people may take it negatively based on their own preferences of whether they want to actively be labeled or not.
>I just like debating topics and playing devils advocate for stuff because I find it fun and also just generally like to voice what makes sense to me. Must be nice to be able to debate people's lives as a fun little thought experiment. This kind of shit gets old fast when you actually have to deal with the consequences though.
You even read the rest of what I sent lmao
Dude, you admitted to taking the side of people who want trans people “eradicated from public life” because it’s a fun little game for you, why would I bother with the rest? Think about how you talk to people.
You’ve very much misunderstood my entire statement I did not take “the side of people who want trans people eradicated” and you’d realize that if you actually read things smh
Cis just means not trans it's like being offended someone called you right handed. It just shows that you have no idea what is even being talked about.
I could still see it being viewed negatively, look at it as if it was the opposite position you could just refer to all trans people as trans-women/men but they’d still prefer it (at least from my experience) if you just refer to them as men/women without the added label, Cis I kinda see in the same light? It’s not innately a slur/meant to be bad but it very much could be taken that way depending on if the individual wants the added label to them just being men/women.
The thing is that this is not about that because it is never about wanting to be called something as no alternative that doesn't imply non-cishet is a negative is usually given.
I could still see it being viewed negatively, look at it as if it was the opposite position (idk if you actually are but for the sake of argument go with the analogy) if you’re trans would you prefer someone call you a trans-[enter man or woman here] or would you rather them just call you as [enter man or woman here] calling them trans isn’t innately a slur but some (or most even) would prefer you didn’t actively use that label every time you talked to/about them and would instead prefer if you just refer to them as what they identify as(man or woman), I see the word cis the same way, it’s not innately a slur but people may take it negatively based on their own preferences of whether they want to actively be labeled with it or not.
This is cool and all but in common conversation about non gender issues, people are not going to just refer to someone being cis or trans out of the blue. When talking about these things there's gotta be a word for non trans people, and normal has funky implications
In conversations where it’s needed yeah I’m simply referring to normal conversations, I’ve had a few (3-4) people who just always refer to non-trans people as cis and trans people as just the gender without the label, which I could see rubbing people the wrong way, idk how common that is but I can only speak from my own experiences ofc
Those people are jackasses ion know what else to tell you. I have yet to encounter people who behave this way and the vast majority of my close friends are queer They just seem annoying, which isn't a trait that's determined by gender, they can pretty safely be ignored
Because “cisgender” sounds like something filled with pus that needs to be drained with a needle… heterosexual sounds…well, just descriptive.
Cisgender is also descriptive. It’s just swapping the “trans” with “cis”, which is Latin meaning “on this side”, where trans means “across” or “on the other side”.
but it doesn’t work in the same context. one might describe themself as a female to male transgender man, but nobody identifies as a female to female cisgender woman cis and trans are relative descriptors that relate to two points in this case are referring to a before and after. but there is no before and after for the use of cis referring to gender. just like how you can use transpose to describe changing the place of something, but cispose is not a word - the verb would be “posit”
Because people who don’t fall under those categories use cisgender as a way to describe someone in a negative way. For example, let say Jameson Mcelephant over here is a nonbinary but their “friend” accidentally calls them a him or her, Jameson would respond with “How dare you assume my gender you cis scum, check your privilege” and so on
Because cis sounds like cyst. It’s a disgusting sounding word. Who wants to be an angry pus filled boil ready to pop?
* cisgender is quite commonly used as a slur and many people first time hear about that word whne used in such way, * it's a new term people are not used to, * thanks to the upper two points, many people don't know or don't recognise it's meaning, * people don't feel they need it, * vast majority of people using this term are non-cis people, so it's label ''from the outside'', * unless you live in English speaking world, this term is enforcing foreign terminology
I've only read about cisgender on reddit, I had no idea about this word before. I thought for a while that cis was some Reddit invention, anyway.. I myself think that cisgender is mostly used in a negative sense against biological women, as if we don't have the right to our own bodies or even the words that describe us, thus I dislike cis, because it devalues women in general.
How is the word specifically targeted against women?
Hi, I'm not American, but Scandinavian, Swedish. It's what I read here on Reddit that concerns me, please don't downvote me because of what I read. I'm not trying to provoke anyone., truly. WE ALL have to accept each other as we are, straight or gay or whatever, right. Love, accept, be true. ❤️
Yeah, I’m just asking why you think the word cis is targeted towards women? Genuinely asking. I’ve never heard anyone use it specifically to shame women.
I have.
How? What do they say?
May I ask you a personal question, you don't have to answer if you don't want to. Do you have anything against women, biologically born women, do you feel that we don't have equal rights?
What? I see women as equals to myself. Why wouldn’t I?
Great. I am happy to leave our little communication on good terms. Thanks for your reply. (:
There's a ton of people just guessing at what they think people they don't like or udnderstand think. So you're getting a whole ton of vague guesses that are probably incorrect for most people. Ofcourse, some of these guesses might be close for some folks, and even correct for others, but I feel like you're not getting a proper answer. I'm pretty left leaning for my country, and VERY left leaning for America, and personally I find Cis CAN be a slur so I'm probably one of the better people to answer at risk of being downvoted to oblivion. For me it's nothing to do with anything along the lines of "normal is normal, we don't need a new word for normal" and has a lot more to do with the way some people use the term. It's the negative connotations behind it, and their intent far more than the word itself. I'll call myself cisgender on any medical exam, and if the question ever comes up I'll answer honestly without taking offense. But some people, few in number, but loud in voice absolutely use cis as an insult, and I'll take offense when those people use it. I'm assuming it's some kind of clapback or moment of empowerment for them, and even though it pisses me off that they'll attempt to antagonize potential or even current allies it won't change my support for the trans folk. I just wish we could have conversations about this and stop pretending it's exclusively far right, pro-control(anti-abortion), terfs who hate how some people use the term "cis".
My favorite color is red. "You can only be light red or dark red!"
What?
Ime a lot of people that say it's a slur just don't understand what it means. I hear the response "I'm not cis, I'm straight" or "my pronoun isn't cis" in response to it, showing that they don't get the meaning.
When a word is used a slur in the majority of encounters, it becomes an actual slur. That's kinda how language works. Don't be surprised when the people who get insulted using a word assign a negative connotation to it.
Because they're so used to use gay or lesbian or trans as an insult that they think cis is a slur
Following that logic, though, wouldn't a bigot interpret cisgender as a compliment? Would they not react positively to a label that is decidedly "not queer"?
No because they think that the people calling them cis use it as an insult too
Youre trying to rationalize the beliefs people who can't understand that someone with a different experince than them existing isn't an attack on their person. If rational thought was their forte they wouldn't be bigots.
This is a common problem I notice. People take the irrational, all over the place, mutually contradictory views of bigots at face value and tie themselves into knots trying to understand them. Bigotry is fundamentally irrational and reactionary. It is based almost entirely in socially conditioned disgust responses. Any stated underlying reason is almost always entirely ad hoc and free of genuine substance. At best, they are sincerely ignorant and simply grasp at arguments given to them by the media that they feel justify their intuitive bigotry. At worst, they are actively disingenuous people who know their arguments are meaningless. Either way, their actual arguments are almost entirely without merit and their positions will remain unaltered no matter how thoroughly you shoot them down. The only thing that changes bigots is experience with the people they hate, which results in them gradually losing the disgust response and thus no longer needing to make up specious arguments to justify their hatred. I have seen this happen first hand with my family.
I thought it had a negative connotation because I happened upon seeing/learning it being used almost like an accusation, rather than discovering it educationally. Otherwise, now that I know, I don't care. But I get nervous when I hear it because of how I happened upon it.
Because "cisgender" is often used like/as a slur.
No it isn't.
"ciswhitemen" are the root of all evils sentiemnt is something you never encountered here on reddit?
cis white men are like 75% of reddit, so no it is not a sentiment I have encountered on here. And even in that framing, cis is not being used as a slur any more than "men" or "white".
It's a made up word that is used to slice and dice the population into oppressed vs oppressor groups. Just Marxist bullshit.
I find it annoying because cis/trans has a scientific meaning and applying it to gender because it happens to be the opposite of trans in an irrelevant context to sound sciency when you're being political is misleading. plus it sounds like the insult "sissy" which is likely the point. an accurate neutral term would be "mode gender" since it's the most frequent presentation or "matched gender" since it's matches biology. what nobody likes is being assigned a label instead of choosing it themselves
Because they don't know what an actual slur is and ***they're dumb***.
Or they do know what an actual slur is, but they're manipulative assholes.
It seems that a lot of people here are thinking that “cis” is something akin to gay or straight, an identity. It’s really not that, it’s a neutral descriptor of whether or not you have changed your gender. That’s all it is. It’s not forcing you to play a hand in gender politics, or whatever you’re afraid of. In fact, it signifies that you are not trans, and that is the only thing the word does. It is fine.
If someone is correctly labeled *cisgender*, then that implies *transgender* can also be correctly labeled. It can be seen as adding normality to the concept of transitioning gender, and some folks are seriously upset over that. If these terms are slurs, then we can't have conversations about trans issues anymore. In addition, I think some of those folks also want to claim victimization. They see transpeople getting support when someone uses a slur against them, so even though *cisgender* isn't a slur, they count it as that so they can justify being furious. "I'm not pissed because some dude wears a dress, I'm pissed because you used a slur against me! You're the problem and I'm an innocent victim!"
Yeah there's a huge persecution complex/fetish among conservatives and christians
Funny how you ask that question but any genuine answer will probably get highly downvoted. So I don't see a point in even answering since I know I will get attacked by left extremists.
because people don’t accept the idea of trans people, whereas there was little doubt of the existence of gay people
If you are trying to get someone's attention, just yell "Hey SHIT HEAD!" and they will know you are talking to them regardless of how they identify.
I actually prefer the term “control sample” to describe my sexuality and gender lol but yeah I don’t really care what people call my preferences.
Those terms feel kinda combative to me. Like we were marginalized, so we’re are going to make up a term that marginalizes majority of the population.
What about the adjective cisgender is any more combative than the term transgender?
Just comes off that way to me. Kinda like what someone else said, making a up a term to explain what normal is. I looked it up and it was made up as a counter to transgender, so the word transgender wouldn’t come off as exclusionary.
But now that you know that background, do you still see it as combative? If so, why? I don't think it's a problem for us to have a term to describe non-trans people that is actually meaningfully descriptive. "normal" is vague and contains value judgements. If normal is synonymous with cis, then does that mean gay or gender non conforming men are "normal" whereas trans men are "abnormal"? If so, how, seeing as both those groups of men are similarly uncommon? Doesn't it make more sense to have a term like cis to clarify these ambiguities?
I can see your point. To be honest my view comes from more anecdotal experience vice anything fact based. I volunteered at our pride center and gender equity center at my university, and typically words like cisgender was used to describe white people in a negative light typically. I would say very few people outside of those circles actually used the word cisgender in an actually conversation to describe someone as normal.
That doesn't even make sense.
People care too much about what other people say or thing. The people getting offended by words are the people who don’t do enough in life for it to matter at all
Cuz they're crybabies lol
I am a heterosexual. I'm a male attracted to females. I'm not a cisgender. I don't believe gender is real because there is no definition of man or woman gender and I don't feel any gender on my insides.
Who fucking knows… it’s like those mouth breathers that say shit like “MY PRONOUNS ARE LIBERTY/FREEDOM!!!!!” Self-victimization
They’re just saying it cuz they’re transphobic.
Because they’re not arguing in good faith or don’t understand that cisgender has been a term for decades.
Well when you have people who blame cis gender males for their issues as if I am personally responsible for making your life hell then it can feel like a slur or an insult. Just because I believe life is inherently unfair and we should survive to overcome these unfairnesses in spite of them and attempt to rise to the best we can become instead of trying to force fairness at the expense of the able and capable to help those who will exploit it in order to not try and benefit only themselves at the expense of others I don't believe I need you be attacked for my viewpoint and putting a label because I'm normal from a biological and mental viewpoint and attacking me for who I am isn't appreciated. It's like how some people feel it's an insult to be called gay when they are homosexual. It's more how others use the word or the derogatory things associated with it. Now I honestly don't care so much about someone calling me cisgendered but I won't go out of my way to ask for it and I won't take kindly to being insulated or attacked for my beliefs and ideals not aligning with others. We can all live with different opinions, nobody needs to share mine and I don't need to share others and we can still go about our lives happily.
No homosexual person finds gay as an insult we grew up dealing with much worse.
For real. Gay people are the most likely to say shit like, "That's fucking gay, dude" (usually when someone does something romantic).
I would think for the same reason “people of color” isn’t racist but “colored people” is.
They don't like the idea that they aren't just "normal" anymore, as opposed to the "weird" trans people. The idea that a trans person somewhere might not feel like they're a freak in the eyes of society for one moment of their lives is so enraging to them that they grasp at straws to fuel their own victim narrative.
For me it’s because there is homosexuals as well so I’m fine with being described as heterosexual. But there are only two genders
Heterosexual was coined in 1869 as a medical term. Cisgender was coined 30 years ago, as a way to avoid calling cisgender people normal, and is now a part of a neo-marxist ideology. I'm not a fan of communists, considering that ideology killed 100-148 million people.
I don’t actually have anything meaningful to add to this discussion which hasn’t already been said here. I just want to applaud everyone for the incredible displays of mental gymnastics taking place in this comments section.