I lived in Switzerland for a few years as a kid and used to love Schaffhausen's Fasnacht. I'd actually totally forgotten about it until seeing this post!
Regardless of dictionary definitions, when judged by the tone and context of common use, "cis" is primarily a slur which is used to de-legitimize and insult the people it is directed at. Of the people who are ostensibly "cis", exceptionally few will choose to self-describe using that word. Kindly refrain from using it.
The only people who would have cis used to "delegitimize" them would be ones who are saying something innacurate about trans people and are being told that they do not have relevant frame of reference for that comment.
Slurs are made by context, tone, and perception by the target. I have never been called "cis" except by people with antagonistic tones trying to get a rise out of me. Furthermore the overwhelming majority of the roughly two billion English speakers around the world who aren't trans do not self-describe as "cis".
> I have never been called "cis" except by people with antagonistic tones trying to get a rise out of me.
I can tell you from personal experience that this says more about you than the word.
The majority of people in my circle would self describe as cis, and most people I interact with would self identify as cis if the meaning was explained to them.
> I can tell you from personal experience that this says more about you than the word.
Backhanded insults like this won't convince me that I'm wrong. On the contrary, it shows me that you do intend to insult and that the word is in fact a slur.
I did intend to insult you slightly with that phrase, I apologize. I was hotheaded and in the wrong for that.
However, it is not an insult at cis people, but people who behave in a way that would get cis used in a conversation against them - which usually takes place in a circumstance where someone who is not trans is telling someone who is trans that they know more about their life than the person in question.
The reason cisness is relevant here is because much like I as a white person will never be able to _fully_ understand a black persons lived in experience, a non-trans person will never be able to _fully_ understand a trans persons experience, and it is _incredibly_ frustrating being told something that is objectively false, and having people who misunderstand the situation being in charge of your situation.
- Add an unnecessarily complex psuedo-intellectual layer to the discussion in order to catch normal people off guard and make them feel "uneducated" so that they can be "educated".
- Decouple the idea of normal from heterosexuality, which is, frankly, normal due to it being the most common state for of existence for people.
Overall it is a purposeful attack on the status quo. In summary, "cis" as a term is unnecessary.
> Decouple the idea of normal from heterosexuality
Um, no, other than arguably being wrong on the broad kind of motivation in either case, you seem to have also confused the word “cisgender” (or “cis” for short) with the word “heterosexual”.
Transgender people can be heterosexual or homosexual or asexual or any other sexuality, and the same is true of cisgender people; having a term to refer to people who do not deviate from the until-recently-in-our-society culturally obligatory stereotypical relation of gender identity and sex characteristics at birth does nothing to reduce heteronormativity of language compared to just referring to them as “normal” (and then, depending on context, elaborating further on the axis of normality and possibly whose norms are being referenced), to the extent that having a word does that, its the word for people who don’t deviate from the until-recently-in-our-society culturally obligatory stereotype of sexual preference for partner gender based on their own gender.
But, independent of undermining the norms involved, its sometimes useful to be have a convenient concise term, which both “cisgender” and “heterosexual”, in their respective domains, provide.
Nope. You can be a man or a woman. Or you, in a very minority case, might be trans. The point is that there is absolutely no need for the "cis" identifier.
The obvious response is that that that shouldn't result in a ban either. There's a right not to be physically threatened, but there is and should not be no right to not be offended.
I agree. The marketplace of ideas and opinions should be protected to the greatest extent possible. Restrictions should be limited to things such as actual threats, doxxing of private information, and illegal content.
Otherwise, allow people to use the block, mute, and unfollow buttons as they see fit as a form of personal moderation.
Sure I’d hate it if you called me a TexanLady instead of a TexanFeller. But I will defend your right to call me names. Speech that offends someone doesn’t imply speech that shouldn’t be allowed.
I've been called a sissy on many an occasion. That is in fact, being misgendered, and I cared a lot when I was young. I no longer care about being mocked and I reject gender norms in general, but I'm just old enough to just realize a bully being an asshole is a tale as old as time.
I realize though that it isn't always on option for people. This can be much more challenging if it's in the workplace, or when people are younger and social acceptance is more important.
I think the trans movement would be helped massively if we just focused on that being anti-trans is just being bullying. The focus on edge-cases and ontology and essentialism of gender makes the debate much more muddy.
One thing I do, which no clue how helpful it really is, is use a custom domain for my emails with support for catch-all addresses. When I sign up for a new site, I typically put my email as something like "<site-name>@<my-domain>.com".
If my data were exposed, I guess someone who realized that could try any variation of the site's name to figure out the exact one in my address, but you could always do something more unique than that. Even something like generate a BitWarden password and use it as the user for the domain.
