Could we reclaim "cis"?

Funny how Mumsnet says people aren't allowed to use that c-word, but is fiiiiiiine with the use of the word in this thread.

Funny how in order to discuss a word one might have to actually use that word.

1/10 Gotcha! points. Try harder.

No.

Because it's so often linked to the word "privilege". This is a device to make an actual oppressed class (ie sex) feel guilty, playing on the socialisation of women to "make nice" and give up our spaces.

I defy you to define "cis privilage" without it boiling down to "I'm jealous of the pretty things and I wanna be in the big girls' clique". Because I've looked through those "cis priviliage" lists and pretty much everything applies to ACTUAL WOMEN. "I can't buy pretty shoes in my size", FFS.

I do think it's a peculiarly English-language thing, too (which given it almost certainly stems from American MRAs, is no surprise). Can you have "cis-frau"? Does it work in Hebrew? Bengali? Swahili? Ridiculous.

Nope. Not having it.

I’m not an isomer.
I’m not a genetic control element

Not claiming it, reclaiming it or anything else. It’s not empowering (boak) to do so.

I’m just a woman. The c word can go jump.

Absolutely not!

No.

Not playing adolescent identity/category games, engaging with it validates it. You might as well argue which colour power ranger you are.

I'm likely to get out a soap box and scorch someone's ears off if they are so rude as to imply to me that I embrace and obey sexist stereotypes and disempowerment, and that if I don't get in the little box they've ascribed me then yay I have to be stuffed in another box like queer or non binary or Hufflepuff . I'm an adult human female, it's a woman, grow the fuck up.

And the whole 'boring old cis' thing really shows it for what it is. This hours spent finding the perfect list of labels that describes the real, authentic, absolutely categorised you basically means pushing everyone else into your own boxes so that you can define yourself as something more special and exciting than them. If you're still doing that past about nineteen you need a good counsellor and less time on your hands.

It reminds me of that shrink boyfriend of Phoebe's in Friends... 'define me! love me!'

"Replacing sex with gender identity is like replacing modern medicine with prayer."
You can only do it for yourself, never anyone else.

Funny how Mumsnet says people aren't allowed to use that c-word, but is fiiiiiiine with the use of the word in this thread. #Hypocrisy!

puppiesnotpatriarchy

"Transgender, cisalpine, and trans- in trans-isomers are all adjectives, not verbs, that's why transport doesn't have a corresponding "cisport"

Is "transgender" not a noun? Is "woman" or "man" not a noun? Is "transport" not a noun? Is "isomer" not a noun? [Granted that "alpine" in that context is an adjective.]

Cis basically just means a person that identifies as the sex/gender that they were assigned at birth, right?

Wrong.
It is a chemistry term that was adopted by TRAs to 'other' women the way men always have.
Men have always described women in relationship to them. Wife man was the origin of women. Now that some men have decided to use the terms that formerly described the female half of the population to describe themselves, female, woman, girl, they have decided to call us non-men and non-trans or cis, or whatever other subhuman category that catches their fancy.
"I must ask you to resist, do not submit."
Women tried in the seventies to reclaim "bitch" and I think you can see how well that worked out. You cannot reclaim slurs that were never yours. All these slurs they scream at women when we tell them no belong to men.

I couldn't be cis as I don't fit the criteria.
If I had to have a prefix it would have to be scipro woman-short for scientifically provable woman.

No. I'm not being labelled and defined by angry, misogynist men. Had enough of that in my life.

gendercritter

Do you know what really is telling with all this cis crap? It is just a way of virtue-signalling.

This.

I typed a long post.

But then remembered that 'no' really is a full sentence, despite my social conditioning.

No.

The entire reason for cis is a kind of linguistic trick. So it goes. You have women come in all different ways:

Black women
Muslim women
Trans women
Gay women
Disabled women
Etc

Who is anyone to say that any sort of woman is not a "real" woman?
Historically many groups of women have been oppressed and had to fight to be seen as "real" women.
...

That is the point of the exercise. It is to position trans women with marginalised groups of women. Ie appropriation.

Nope. Don't want it in the first place. I refuse to be coercively assigned.

No.

No. Just that really.

Do you know what really is telling with all this cis crap? It is just a way of virtue-signalling. Eventually the people using it to look inclusive will find another crusade and get bored of this one. I've been pretty alarmed to see the word 'cis' scattered through newspapers but I will eat my hat if I ever see an article on a serious subject use it. Would there be a piece on how our cis-woman Prime Minister, Theresa May is managing Brexit? What about something about notable cis-woman Ang Sang Suu Kyi one day dying or continuing to turn a blind eye to her people being massacred?

No? Why? Really. Why?

Not because it would confuse readers but because it's all fucking farce. It's like anything with the trans issue that you shine a light on - penises being lady-penises, it being literal violence to misgender someone.... Go say that to a bunch of 60 year old men in power. They would raise their eyebrows at you, if that, before getting back to serious matters. I kind of feel demeaned that I even engage in any debate over it. 'Yes, dear, of course, now go and tidy your room,' is all the response any of this cis stuff requires if you actually think about it.

We would do well to remember that.

I don't see any necessity for this prefix, woman is a word with a firm pedigree in linguistic terms. Not altogether happy with trans woman actually, I preferred the term we are not allowed to use anymore. Occasionally I call myself a real woman or a proper woman, but that's as far as I'll go.

We should insist on the right to define ourselves, just like PoC did to combat the 'post-racial' "I don't see colour" BS that US republicans were all about some years ago. The statistics showing that black people in the US (at least) are disadvantages aren't boosted by a bunch of white dudes calling themselves post-racial^^

YY

I’m a gender atheist* so I could only pretend to be a ‘ciswoman’ same as I pretended to be a Christian when I accidentally ended up in a church during the Wednesday morning service and the handful of pensioners got so excited to have a ‘young un’ amongst them, I ended up taking communion for the first time in a decade. Pensioner-peer-pressure.

I do kinda get where you are coming from though - there is a group that calls themselves ‘SistersNotCisters’ and I quite fancy arranging a parody called ‘CistersNotMisters’ but that’s as far as I can go with this cis-thing. Soz.

pearl

Could be.

Suggests someone who wants to identify out of a masculinity that hasn't served them well, into something they perceive as much more fun, kind, exciting, whatever.

I am sorry if the gender stereotypes of your sex are crap, but change THAT

We are all individuals

A friend and I were discussing a form she had to fill in for work, I think relating to diversity, she told me when she came to the portion that dealt with the participant's gender, she was given several options including "cis", she had no idea what the term meant and whether in fact the term applied to her, and had to seek advice on this point. Apparently she was not alone, many others in her company were baffled by this new pronoun. I wouldn't have known either had I not come on to MN and observed the debate that is now raging around the whole transgender issue. I think many people feel that they should not have to redefine their gender by adding the preceding "cis" to the word that has been used since the beginning of time to describe an adult member of the female sex in order to accommodate a small minority of people who aren't women. I can quite see why many women find the word offensive.

I like boring men. They are usually much quieter.

To cis - nope. I don't even have a gender identity. It is utterly ridiculous.

Nothing to reclaim - it belongs to the margarine

I'm with you Petalflowers - I thought it WAS Sissy for such a long time. I couldn't understand why it seemed to be applied to me. If you knew me, you'd never in a million years describe me as a sissy. Not unless you wanted me to live up to my MN name!!!