Could we reclaim "cis"?

Most women are devoid of this feeling...

Phone ate an important word!

No. Fuck's sake no.

If women were to bow down and accept the label "ciswomen", then there will be an aggressive campaign for penis people to also be given the label "ciswomen".

Absolutely.

The thing is, this whole fight isn't about the word 'woman' as such. It's about men asserting their right to define female reality, making sure that we have no words to describe ourselves as a distinct group and therefore ensuring we can never draw any boundaries against them.

Men only want the word 'woman' because it refers to adult human females. If we started using another word for ourselves, whether it be 'ciswomen' or 'snarfleblarts' , that would be the word they would want. And they would find ciswomen-only and snarfleblart-only spaces and shortlists as unacceptable as women-only spaces and shortlists.

No, just no.

I do wonder if having a "strongly held internal sense of gender ID" ( as per stonewall) is something men feel more than women?

Most (not all, but most) are devoid of this feeling and find the whole thing rather hard to get to grips with as a result.

Like me and spirituality. I get that some people are spiritual, feel there is "something more" and some follow their own faiths or organised religion as a result. For me though, it's theoretical, I have no idea what that feeling is like, just don't have it, never have had.

No, and not necessarily for the obvious reasons. Every authoritarian movement currently in play seeks to impose constricting definitions and 'boundedness' on those it seeks to exercise control over - while retaining the 'power' to escape criminal and financial law, national boundaries, and legal accountability for themselves.

Exhibits A, B, and C: Trumpism - check (immigrants/Mexicans/women's bodies vs. transnational collusion and dodgy money); the Brexiteer elite (JRM et al.) - check (British people vs. the whole tax haven/shell company money laundering/offshore finances thing, a.k.a. dodgy money); trans activism - check (reinforcing traditional gender roles and imposing 'cis' as a compliance marker vs. gender/identity fluidity enshrined in law).

I'm not suggesting that they are related. But the powerplay uses the same script in all three examples.

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. It took a while to establish this, but only the most naive would dispute it now.

"Wouldn't it be better if we reclaimed the label and had ciswomen only shortlists or ciswomen only refuges or ciswomen only sporting categories?"

Most people, following gender definitions, are "non binary" or "agender". From what I've seen on here anyway.

Therefore most women (old style cunty women) would not be allowed in the things you mention.

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

That's the problem. I don't. I know my sex is female. I reject the bullshit gender nonsense and see it as harmful.

I tried to explain this to a woke type at work. She said, "but you're cis, right". I said, and this is important, "I perform as much female gender stuff as I need to to get by fairly frictionlessly in society. That makes you think I'm 'cis'."

But I reject the idea that this stuff is innate. How are skirts, or make-up, or liking pink innate? It's utter bullshit. Bullshit that isn't even consistent over time or geography. Otherwise why aren't men in London asking to break their toes and bind their feet, or lengthen their necks, or tattoo their chins, or be married off to 50 year old men at 14? Because that is the deeply unpleasant stuff that is female gendered.

That doesn't work for me I've never been cis always been a woman my sex was observed at birth as female no cis on my birth certificate

The "identify as" claim means absolutely nothing to me - as it would be like re-defining the word "lawyer" to "anyone who identifies as a lawyer." Such a definition won't exactly help me choose who should represent me in court.

I've been thinking for a while now that as soon as someone says they identity as XYZ you can pretty much guarantee they absolutely are not XYZ...otherwise you simply are XYZ, no need for identifying.

No doesn't work at all.

For it to work, all women and girls in the world of the cunty type, who are not "trans" would have to
A. Agree that internal gender ID, detached from both biology and sex stereotypes, is a "thing" that
B. They have and
C. They firmly "identify" as

Problems.

1. The existence of internal gender ID as a standard thing that the vast majority of people have is far from decided /agreed
2. Most women and girls - from multiple MN threads - do not have such a feeling and so are not "cis"
3. What of cunty babies and young children - too young to say - they have no collective/ general word?
4. Still no word to speak of all cunty people ( inc non binary, transmen etc) and the specific issues they face

The whole "not allowed to have any words to refer to cunty people" is a gift for misogynists.

Wouldn't it be better if we reclaimed the label and had ciswomen only shortlists or ciswomen only refuges or ciswomen only sporting categories?

So you would be excluding transmen (which are female!) from safe refuges during periods of male violence against them?

No thankyou

I am a woman. If, for the sake of clarity, in discussions people wish to draw a distinction between transwomen and women like me who were born biologically female then I'm happy with 'natal women'. My gender or sex wasn't assigned at birth though; my sex was observed at birth.

I am who I am. Me being a woman is like my eye colour or my skin colour. It's biologically part of me. I don't identify as being a woman. I am one. It just is.

No.

No

I utterly reject cis, it's a term put on me by men who want to insert themselves into the category woman to which they don't belong and have no claim to.

I also think using it wrt yourself when you're female is a sign of submission to they who must be obeyed.

So that's a no from me. I won't kneel.

And the point is that whatever we are called, transwomen want the "label" too, because TWAW. They are identical to us, penis and all.

Quite frankly, I think trans people should just own the trans and accept the fact they cannot be and will not ever be the same as the people born in the opposite sex (unless they invent a time-machine AND a transmogrifying machine to actually change gamete production). Our current definitions are sex-based, and nobody has been able to come up with a satisfactory definitions of "woman" that reliably group females and trans women together which would require the prefix "cis" for females- without relying on how someone internally "identifies as." The "identify as" claim means absolutely nothing to me - as it would be like re-defining the word "lawyer" to "anyone who identifies as a lawyer." Such a definition won't exactly help me choose who should represent me in court.

Buying into "cis" means accepting this contradictory, faith-based, proselytising trans ideology - which I categorically will not do.

we are reclaiming the word "woman" by utterly and totally rejecting the term "cis" forever

@petal: it's pronounced "sis" and yes, if a man's not a trans then I'd personally call him a "cis man" which is objectively one of the most boring creatures on God's green earth

Perhaps transwomen can be women but they can never be ciswomen.

If women were to bow down and accept the label "ciswomen", then there will be an aggressive campaign for penis people to also be given the label "ciswomen". Since they'll already have won the main battle in the war, that is women relinquishing that they are "women", this would be pushed harder than you could imagine. Also, defending "ciswomen" would be practically impossible because it is ridiculous and meaningless when referred to people being "non-trans", where these days "trans" is a meaningless label.

Cross-post with Upstart

And is it Cis as in Sis-ter, or Cis as in Kiss?

You cant reclaim something you never owned in the first place. Cis wasn't something we had that was taken from us.

We can reclaim 'woman' and 'female'.

REclaim??? How can we (and why would we want to) REclaim something that we never claimed or wanted in the first place?