Cisgender - the new teen insult

[FannyCann]

Cisgender is just so boring. I feel so sorry for teen girls these days, my youngest DD is 18 and they both seem to have just been ahead of this breaking wave. What a social minefield these young children are having to pick their way through all the while being indoctrinated from above. It's interesting the mother notes that her daughter has received very little information in her PHSE lessons on how to have a heterosexual relationship.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6952453/Why-teenage-girl-picked-NOT-gay-trans.html

[FannyCann]

I also had a thought yesterday regarding evidence of social contagion, especially through SM and schools.
Steiner schools make severely limiting TV and computer time a part of the school /parent contract. Does anyone know or have any statistics regarding numbers of trans youth in these schools? I just wonder if they are to some extent protected from all this and if statistics would bear that out?
(On the other hand most of the parents are woken woke so that could totally ruin my theory )

[2BthatUnnoticed]

It all sounds a bit fraught, doesn’t it.

The kids in my life are now staunchly genderfree - much cooler than cis

[Lamaha]

Ha! I missed this and also posted that link. I was too busy writing to check before I posted. I'll have mine deleted.

[FannyCann]

I liked your comment Lamaha , don't let it go to waste!
I also went to a girls boarding school and we did similar. It was called having a "Pash" - short for passion I suppose. I joined part way through the school year so all the best girls (5th form or lower sixth) were taken but my year group said I must have a pash and chose one for me.
We did little jobs for our "pash" like cleaning their shoes and taking up their laundry. My pash returned the favour by giving me her bun at break so I was quite happy with the deal!
Of course it was all totally innocent.
I would say perhaps it had echoes of the fagging system in boys boarding schools but that seems to have been quite an abusive relationship in some cases so probably not a good comparison.

[Oldrockman]

Cis just rolls off the tongue so well, like a highly vitriolic hiss full of hate and superiority. It is used to bully people into compliance with their ways, notice how many will blow their top if you do not use the correct pronoun for them or god forbid 'dead name'. Yet when anyone complains about being called 'cis' which is very similar to their insisting their demands are met is met with yells of transphobia. The adults behind this who should see the hypocrisy of the contradiction it seems are insisting on it to negate the reality of natural sex, it creates the ambiguity of a woman only being a sub set of women (men also). They are deliberately twisting language to their own ends, saying things that sound like a baby is randomly sexed at birth to twist reality and create confusion in others. The whole twisting of the message seems very sinister, the hate I see and I know others have seen it from them very real. But what I do not get is why so many so called intelligent people keep bending down to them?

[Lamaha]

This is the story from my other thread, which I've reported for deletion:

I would be worried about having a child at school in this climate. I do have granddaughters, but luckily they're spared this for the time being (one not in the UK, the other still too young).
But, this being a girls' school, beings back memories of my own schooldays.

I went to a rather posh girls' boarding school in Yorkshire for a few years. I remember there being a fad for all Lower Fourth girls (12 yo) to have a crush on a Lower Fifth girl (14yo). You had to pick one, and demonstrate that you were in love with her by drawing pictures for her, polishing her shoes for her, carrying her books for her. It was never sexual. These crushed-on girls were called "smuts". It was a secret thing; staff weren't supposed to know.

I remember being quite smitten by mine for a while; for her, I think, it was a bit embarrassing.

Staff found out, and one day the headmistress gave us a lecture and banned it. I'm not sure if the ban was honoured, as I left school soon afterwards, and anyway, once you left Lower Fourth you were allowed to drop your smut. And anyway, that was also the year the Beatles came in and each one of us went on to pick a Beatle to fall in love with (mine was George). Beatles completely obliterated smuts!

I often think about this phase and wonder what it meant. It certainly wasn't a precurser for gayness; it was a very harmless stage. We were experimenting with relationships, finding our feet, and older girls were very safe to have a crush on, compared to boys. It's interesting that it was the younger girls who chose the smut and made their devotion clear.
I never even had a conversation with my smut! I just worshipped her from afar, for a few months. I think some girls had crushes on the games mistress instead of a smut.

The interesting thing is that yes, there was a certain pressure to have a smut. Nobody wanted to be left out. What's happening today feels so dangerous, with T now in the mix with all the possible developments from that, and staff possibly even encouraging T, and outsiders pushing an agenda.

[Antibles]

But what I do not get is why so many so called intelligent people keep bending down to them?

Some people just haven't seen past the LGB/T conflation and just want to be nice and inclusive. But also it's because we have been conditioned in our society to be terrified of being called a phobe or ist of some kind and it silences people.

I get hit with the racist trope for a couple of my political views and it's exhausting, infuriating and alienating, especially when my views stem from feminist and environmental principles. It is identical in experience to being gender critical and under constant attack for being a transphobe. People treat you differently - either ignore you or attack you. The TRA brigade exploit that fear of being cast out. And it's a valid fear, because you do get cast out.

Trans is an unfortunate fad with teenagers, who have always wanted to identify as edgy and special. I don't think they see the AGP link and how they are being used. There are also some parents complicit in it though. I predicted years ago that one of my acquaintances would never be able to have a child who was just plain old boring heterosexual. Et voila, their eldest has just apparently identified as something or other exciting. Well I never.

[ScipioAfricanus]

All these adults we hear saying teenagers innately know their own mind and there’s no social contagion or peer pressure or need to fit in by standing out have either:

a) never spent more than five minutes with teenagers

Or

b) ulterior motives for pushing this idiocy.

[emotionalaffair]

I've been seeing more and more of this on Twitter, it's very worrying. Cis people are boring and unadventurous according to the rainbow warriors.

Have you seen the cis flag? It's shades of grey. Why would you "choose" to identify as that when you can be something bright and colourful.

[Whatisthisfuckery]

It all sounds rather like the crushes I’d make up on boys when I was at school. If you weren’t constantly lusting after some boy or other you’d get the questions and bullying accusations. Seems like we’re no further forward now than we were then, only trans is being overtly pushed from all directions, including the schools themselves, where as homophobia is more of an insidious societal thing. And of course being a lesbian is about as taboo as it ever was, only now it’s seen as actually hateful and bigoted, rather than disgusting and unnatural like it was when I was at school.

It seemed like we were doing quite well at tackling homophobia and accepting difference in people, but now we’ve got a group of people with a very different agenda who’ve come along with a nice big sticking plaster impregnated with something incredibly harmful, and they’re sticking it over a wound that was already healing, all while being cheered on by the terminally woke, lazy but well meaning, and the just plain sinister.

[FannyCann]

Oldrockman very nicely put. You see Cis being (metaphorically) spat out on twitter all the time.
DR's C & H absolutely use it knowing it insults even while lecturing and hectoring that it is just a perfectly good scientific descriptor. I don't think anyone here needs telling but we must absolutely slap that word down every time we get a chance.

[BettyDuMonde]

Kids at my DSD (12)’s school are constantly sitting themselves under the LGBT sorting hat. DSD had a crush on a girl and ‘came out’ as gay, then felt incredibly embarrassed when her next crush was on a boy.
We just told her that life (and love) can be like that, and that human connections can be as surprising as they can be beautiful.

2019 - the year that kids needed to be reassured that ‘cishet’ relationships are valid! I would laugh if I couldn’t remember how earnest I was at that age.

I suspect a lot of this is happening because we (school/social media/society in general) are teaching them about sexualities and gender identity before they are old enough to actually feel genuine sexual attraction. This leaves them mistaking admiration, or close friendships for romance.

Probably doesn’t help that a lot of of the current teen generation will be exposed to hardcore porn online before they’ve even had a proper snog.

[LangCleg]

I suspect a lot of this is happening because we (school/social media/society in general) are teaching them about sexualities and gender identity before they are old enough to actually feel genuine sexual attraction. This leaves them mistaking admiration, or close friendships for romance.

Absolutely this. See: the current No Outsiders thread for this social phenomenon trying to embed and institutionalise itself.

It's not healthy.

[Lamaha]

When I first heard the word cis being used by online friends many years ago, I assumed it meant your biological sex if you had not transistioned -- so, non-trans. Which of course got my back up, though I said nothing, I didn't appreciate being given a lable which was a non-something.

Since coming to MN I've learned that, according to trans jargon, it means something like "identifying with the gender you were assigned at birth", which is even worse, since I don't identify with any gender.

The aim seems to me to eventually completely redefine the words woman/or man (but mainly woman; man seems to be just an afterthought) to include transpeople, so that a natural born woman (gosh, I hate even saying that!) ends up being just a subdivision of the word; and to have this new inclusive definition go mainstream without ever needing further clarification.

I see this happening more and more: woke people using the word "woman" and "girl" quite casually and later on dropping the information by-the-by that the person referred to is actually has a penis; almost as an afterthought. It's an nefarious, stealthy subversion of language and very dangerous.

[AlwaysComingHome]

Parents who deny social contagion are basically denying the effects of socialisation in general.

It’s biological determinism - only without the biology because that’s transphobic too.

[2BthatUnnoticed]

I agree - I always reject cisgender as a descriptor. It is a flawed concept.

#genderfree

[Antibles]

I read something once where someone proposed the theory that language evolved in humans so that they can lie to one another and benefit from it. I'm not sure if it was just meant bitterly but sometimes it really rings true.

We have always used language to deceive, mislead and manipulate as much as to co-operate and inform. The trans word manipulation going on at the moment is a particularly egregious example.

Ultimately, we're cutting through the verbal crap by just focusing on actions arising: Penises in our changing rooms. Stronger bodies in our sporting categories. Physical intimidation at protest events. Visits from the police. Mutilation of children's bodies. Drag kids and interesting calendars and library events to flaunt sexuality at toddlers. Abandonment of safeguarding in organisation after organisation.

[Prawnofthepatriarchy]

Cisgender may be being used as an insult by teens but my DC, both early 20s, tell me that "how dare you assume my GENDAAH?" is a running joke among their age group. They mercilessly take the piss out of the whole concept.

[Goosefoot]

"I suspect a lot of this is happening because we (school/social media/society in general) are teaching them about sexualities and gender identity before they are old enough to actually feel genuine sexual attraction. This leaves them mistaking admiration, or close friendships for romance."

Yes, I think this is true as well, and it also goes for some other issues. I used to belong to an incredibly woke online parenting group, they had totally drunk the gender koolaid and would at the same time rail about gender kid's clothes, and wonder if a boy who liked loong hair might be trans.
Anyway, on the same group there was a controversy about a preschool doing a unit on native Americans, but the teacher was saying Indians, which is non-PC. The mother involved was quite upset, to start, but this got into a whole discussion of teaching about First Nations people, and a few mothers were convinced it was absolutely vital that at that age, which is to say three and four, they should be teaching them "in a gentle way" about genocide. And the other parents didn't bat an eye at this, or question whether it would actually accomplish anything good, or would really even be understood in the way they hoped. None worried that it might really scare some of the children - it was reality, so they need to know about it so they won't be racists. After all, some kinds experience these things first hand! (No mention that they are often damaged psychologically by it.)

To me it just showed how little many people really understand about what is appropriate at what ages, or for that matter what helps develop an open minded and kind person.

[3timeslucky]

I'd share oldrockman's and Lamaha's views/concerns/observations about the subversion of language (and the subversion of the science of biology). I've been reading a lot of the John Boyne related "debate" and I'm seeing the word "cis" being "defined" (apologies for all the inverted commas) as (a) meaning when your sex and assigned gender align and (b) as only used when one wants to distinguish between those who are trans and those who aren't.

So getting beyond the fact that gender and sex are not assigned and that "cis" is being used a lot more widely than to avoid confusion (confusion that can be avoided if you simply use the terms men, women, transmen, transwomen) where does this "definition" of "cis" come from? Who defined it? Why is this definition being so blithely accepted by media and the population at large? And is there a non-ideological definition of "cis"?

[StopThePlanet]

Thanks for sharing this article - I thought that this might happen at some point but I didn't expect it so soon. Very concerning...

[KatvonHostileExtremist]

All these adults we hear saying teenagers innately know their own mind and there’s no social contagion or peer pressure or need to fit in by standing out have either:

a) never spent more than five minutes with teenagers

Or

b) ulterior motives for pushing this idiocy.

This is so true. So very very true.

It's crazy in schools now, amongst the teen woke. I wonder if single sex girls schools are the worst? DD1s mate went to a home countries grammar, she's come out as "asexual", she wrote an article on it for a newsletter, or something. She was 15 when she wrote that. 15. IT IS FINE NOT TO WANT TO SHAG. AT ANY AGE. But especially when you're still a kid ffs.

Schools have gone crazy for this.

Identifying as being interesting. Makes you feel special.

[bettybeans]

Teenage platonic friendships are sometimes just as intense and passionate as romantic relationships. You meet new people and find yourself developing deeper and more meaningful bonds. You're going through puberty, and the world is alive with all these new feelings and your changing sense of self and all these synapses firing off in your growing malleable brain. It's a crazy, wonderful and often terrifying time.

Adding a whole new layer of "is your body the right one for your gender?" type of common social discussion just sounds like a terrible idea to me. You've quite enough to worry about. Social contagion is very real, teenage peer pressure is very real. I worry for teens today. A lot.

[Goosefoot]

There does seem to be a lot of pressure. My daughter's elementary school had a rainbow Club, which parents didn't have to know about - the oldest kids there were 12 but most were finished at 11. Then at her middle school, there was a poster about how there were 111 genders. Both had multiple novels in the classroom about kids transing.

There was no sense that it is ok, maybe even best, to sit back and wait and see how things develop. In fact they seemed to teach the kids that there was no real development over adolescence, it was quite an essentialist view. So a lot of girls in particular tended to think they were bi in the early teen years.

[ZenNudist]

I would hate it if I were referred to as cis. My (batshit) dsis is a cahms consultant psychiatrist and insisted I am cis, but she isnt despite being female and in a hetero relationship because she hasn't got children and is the one who works out of her and her dh. I work too but apparently this is irrelevant. She was really keen on the whole transgender idea as she sees so many suicidal teens. She didn't have any GC view on this despite being very feminist. Go figure how pervasive this ideology is in institutions like the nhs.

I was also surprised how much of this gender shennanagins was going on in Sheffield according to teaching/ parents friends i was chatting to (primary as well as secondary). My two are only in primary school and there isnt a sniff of this. The school is seriously Catholic so I don't think they go overboard on the "gender spectrum" BS.