The use of cis gender

How people 'identify' is irrelevant and narcissistic.
I don't care what beliefs someone holds, irrational, delusional or otherwise, so long as their belief system doesn't begin to intrude on my liberty to call bullshit. And so long as I am able to live in a factual, meaningful and representative universe where I am not forcefully categorised with a bullshit prefix like "PersonWhoDoesn'tBelieveInUnicorns" to 'helpfully' distinguish me from those who do.

Gender is like religion.
If a person wishes to adopt a faith type belief fine.

But I am not ok with being assigned a default religion any more than I am happy being assigned a default gender. Cis indeed.

Gender is bullshit. Its a made up myth. It really doesn't exist.

lol @ atm machine stuff

Aren't they called cashpoints or cash machines in the UK usually? They are in my neck of the woods! Of course, I've never asked one how it identifies...

Picking up TheMortificadosDragon's point about the wiki definition there. Much of this hinges on an idea that pretty much everyone has an internal sense of gender that they feel / feel strongly.

Most women on MN when asked this a while back, didn't know what that meant, that they didn't have this feeling, that the things that made them "feel like a woman" were external (periods, street harassment etc).

The TAs (from what I have seen) say this is because women are too stupid to understand their own thoughts and feelings and what is going on must be that women all have this feeling but it's so instrinsic and comfortable that they can't even notice it.

What they NEVER address is the fact that throughout the centuries large numbers of women and girls have felt pretty awful about the whole female / female body / gender roles thing. Girls have employed a range of methods to try and stop their bodies changing from girl to woman, or to slow the change or reverse it, including starving themselves. Wearing baggy clothes so that their female shape is hidden. Self-harm is very common. Fighting to be allowed to do things that are "not for them" - this continues all over the world. etc etc

Anyway. Back to this idea that pretty much everyone has an internal sense of gender. So this idea has been come up with by "trans" poeple - who by definition have a sense of this, as it is at odds with their sex. OK. BUT the mistake is to assume that means that everyone has this feeling. Has anyone asked, done studies? I've not heard of any.

When pressed on what it means, as far as I can tell there are some people with sex dysphoria, the trans-sexuals of a couple of decades ago and before who wanted surgery. Body dysphoria of any type is extremely difficult (as so many women and girls well know!) and I think there was a lot of sympathy for people who felt that strongly that they wanted surgery. And of course, the numbers were fairly small. And from what I understand it was usually gay men - so there was no infringement on women (lesbians), it was mainly in the gay male community.

Now, it's Gender ID - an internally felt thing which is disconnected from the body. And sex is a spectrum, a social construct. While gender is real, and whatever a person asserts.

Thing is, as a middle aged woman, with a couple of kids, if I say I am agender (which would be the correct definition by the new rules, which I don't agree with anyway) and therefore (in the new parlance) trans, does anyone really think that will be acceptable? Will I be accepted as an agender and therefore a trans person? I don't look young and beautifully androgynous, with multicoloured hair, so I'm thinking not. My views are also not compatible with trans ideology. I think they would tell me that I was cis. I think that I would not be allowed to self-identify that way. I think I would be "misgendered".

This is for the young, isn't it? And for men. Women, girls, we don't get to indentify out of our treatment around the world, and we don't get to self-identify anyway, usually.

Who really, is cis, when it comes down to it?

And, given the above points about the lengths girls have gone to, to stop their bodies becoming "grown up" because of all that entails, is it any surprise that girls are donning binders and hitting the gender clinics at an exponential rate. Are the TAs questioning why this might be? Or, as they are mainly shouty people with penises (is that an inclusive way to put it?) do they even care?

TheMortificadosDragon it is interesting! One of the reasons I went back to university was so that I could study this. And it was refreshing to discover there are some areas where academic rigour is still important and words don`t mean whatever you want them to mean.

I can't get my head round how a handful i.e. a minority of transwomen who do not accept basic biology think they can dictate to half the world's population what they should call themselves. Even more, how so many women - also clearly confused about basic biology - are supporting them.

Just fuck off.

Sorry. Boil down to basic biology.

BTW yet to come across a decent definition of the word 'women' that applies to ALL women, that doesn't just boil

Yes, countess. No matter what I say, I will always be labelled as 'woman' by others. When that meant 'biologically female' I was ok with that. If the meaning is going to change to 'identifies as...' I'm no longer happy to have the label applied. So either I fight against these news definitions, or I look for a new word. That's why I get so angry about 'cis' it's just not a label I can accept. TRA are trying to force women to accept certain labels (based on something as intangible as gender identity) while simultaneously arguing that feminists must not use labels like 'man' and 'male' (based on unalterable physical fact.)

Leaving aside the fact that I've never heard anyone say "ATM machine" instead of just "ATM", the comparison doesn't hold because in the ATM example adding the word "machine" is redundant because it's repetition.

Adding the word "cis" to describe an actual woman is redundant because the word "woman" is sufficient. Anyone who isn't a woman has their own label and can use that without the need to redefine actual women.

I've seen "born woman". Not sure if that's helpful.....

I think this emphasis on what you identify as ignores the social nature of gender. Even if we accept the gender/sex separation, your gendered experiences won't just result from what you see yourself as, they also stem from how the world sees you.

AverageJosephine

I think women should just mean people who identify as women, the bulk of those are naturally born as women.

Right. And what term would you suggest for someone like me? I'm biologically female, but I don't 'identify' as a woman. I don't have a gender identity, I'm just me. The term 'woman' used to work fine for me, but it seems I can't use it any more.

I really needed an MN thread to link to!

And Average do the men who self identify as women get to do all the women stuff? In the women places?

I was on a FB thread with some mature students (friends of family member) and got ABSOLUTELY SLATED for disliking the term cis woman. I got verbally attacked including by the family member as being narrow minded, and a lot worse. Also lumped as a Trump supporter (they are in Canada). It was horrible. I was trying to put forward my arguments but it's been 25 years since I was at Uni.

Average, what about crime stats? Women are far less violent and including males as females will skew this.

There already are words to describe us, women and female hth.

Glamour magazine (UK) use it a lot.

DameDeDoubtance, fair enough, but until everyone is on the same page ideologically, there will need to be distinguishing terms that are not "redundant". Or alternatively until everyone becomes psychic and knows what everyone else thinks and means.

I think women should just mean people who identify as women, the bulk of those are naturally born as women. The only times when the fact that someone is trans is relevant is during medical treatment, probably sports and when starting a romantic relationship (I think this merits disclosure as do some other things at the start of a romantic relationship). I think woman (without trans or cis) is fine otherwise. But I know this is not popular opinion on this thread.

JAPAB - a lot of feminists believe that gender is oppressive socialisation, a way of keeping women down. the term cis would say that I am wholeheartedly embracing the socialisation that places me below men.

I'm not.

They can take cis and poke it.

I`m currently writing an academic essay about gender stereotypes in a particular context, if I used the term 'cis women' instead of 'women' I would lose marks because it is a redundant term. I would be told not to use unnecessary and irrelevant phrasing and that the word 'cis' was only relevant in a scientific or geographical work.

You are not the first here to claim it is "redundant". I wonder if the word redundant means different things to different people. The use of machine in "ATM machine" may be redundant as it conveys no extra information or tells you anything new over what ATM alone would have. If someone whose beliefs and ideology on these matters are unknown to their audience declared themself to be a man or a woman, with no further qualification or detail, then this leaves open some possibilities. Cis would close the gap as would trans. Redundant does not as far as I am aware mean that you do not ideologically agree with a term.

fakenamefornow - bravo, very well said! :)

I hate the term "cis-gender". I've only ever seen it used derogatorily (is that a word?!) and mainly towards so-called cis-women.

I take issue with TRA that refuse to acknowledge they are different, instead creating a label for women who were born women and identify as women. Equality doesn't mean the same. They seem to forget that. 5+2=7. 4+3=7. They are not the same. But they are equal.
Instead of ramming it down our throats that they "are women" and that "feminism is bullshit" if you're a "cis" gender, they should perhaps focus on ways to make life easier for transgendered people. So not by allowing mtf into women only spaces, but by creating spaces for them specifically.

I've seen things online from TRA spouting that if we, as feminists, do not accept MtF as "real women" then we are only seeing women as walking vaginas - like misogynists. And yet, they are changing the very definition of what a woman is...how can we demand rights as women, if no one is even really clear on what a woman actually is anymore?

Sick of this nonsense. Sex is a biological fact and absolutely IS binary.

At the same time, I'm not completely dismissive of gender but I think we are all on a spectrum, we are all fluid, which kind of shows it up for the nonsense it is, just a way of dressing/acting that can change from morning to afternoon. If I spend the day working in the garden in a pair of wellys then change into a dress and make-up for a night out, I wasn't male in the morning and female in the evening ffs.

The point touched on earlier re this being a "woman thing" is interesting. I feel as though the shrill insistence of the MtF activist lobby that woman should step aside, change our name and allow their male "sisters" room in the female only space is male privilege in heels.