A thought about 'cis'

Here is the Catholic Church on the subject of gender identity.

Yeah, much as I respect your faith I'd suggest spending less time studying the Catholic Church and a bit more time reading what the women of wide ranges of faith, ability, sexuality etc here have to say if you want to understand what the issues actually are.

@DadJoke
Sorry but what the Catholic Church think about gender identity is not proof of the existence of gender identity as anything other than another belief. In fact it actually underlines the fact that Catholics do not believe in gender identity. So there is a defined group of “nonbelievers”.

Sexuality and gender identity are well-established, and found to be heritiable and innate in twin studies. Not believing in gender identity or sexuality requires an pseudo-religious (and often religious) commitment to an ideology, in this case biological essentialism and gender critical feminism.

Sexuality has been proven to not be genetic/heritable or an innate condition:
“Late last month, a team of MIT and Harvard scientists published a landmark study of the genetic basis for sexual orientation in the journal Science. The study, which was based on an examination of the genetic material of almost half a million individuals, definitively refutes the idea that being gay is an innate condition that is controlled or largely compelled by one’s genetic makeup.” [Sept 2019]
www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/09/57342/

Furthermore, there is only speculation/belief that gender identity might be heritable or innate, but as of yet no genome sequencing study has been conducted.

Similarly, you are also by group two different concepts together attempting to argue that if sexuality exists, then so must gender identity, which is a bit like arguing that if horses gallop, then some of them must think they are unicorns. You are taking an observed behaviour...that if sexual attraction and conflating it with a concept regarding inner life/thoughts. And what could be more religious than a concept regarding inner life/thoughts?

@DadJoke

Before the terminology of sexuality existed, heterosexuals thought of themselves as normal, and that homosexuality was a perversion or abberation. Many people strongly resisted the term "heterosexual" because they thought of it as normal or natural. But no one would deny that people were gay or straight before the terminlogy was invented. Likewise, the people who get upset with the very neutral term "cis" are upset for similar reasons.

If you are cisgendered, there is no internal conflict between your sex assigned at birth and your gender identity, therefore you take your gender identity for granted, just as people took their heterosexuality for granted. The definition doesn't care whether you attribute your internal sense of sexuality or gender identity to the natural order of things or biology.

Sorry, you are still missing the point.

Firstly, despite your bald assertions of gender identity as a given, the concept of everyone having a gender identity is not proven. It is simply the currently popular hypothesis to explain how trans people feel about themselves. So anything you state based on this assumption is simply an implication of the assumption and is only "real" to the extent that the original assumption is "real", which as I noted is not in any way proven.

Seondly, the fact that heterosexuality and homosexuality both exist says nothing whatsoever about the entirely different concept of gender. If you believe the situations are the same you can certainly use one as an illustration or an analogy for the other, but in itself a fact about sexuality prove nothing about gender. Again, logic fail.

Now, with the basic tenets properly clarified and caveated, I will get to the point:

The definition doesn't care whether you attribute your internal sense of sexuality or gender identity to the natural order of things or biology.

Nope, that doesn't follow. My "internal sense" of myself as a woman is entirely predicated on Woman being the name for my body type. So if that's not what the word Woman means, which by your definition it is not, then I am not a woman.

I don't have body dysmorphia so I don't feel my body is wrong, but I don't have a sense of "being" a woman any more than I have a sense of "being" short or "being" fat. While I am all those things, I am them only to the degree that they are labels for the outside not aspects of the inside.

I can entirely accept that another person with a female body may look at their body and feel that it is wrong and doesn't match them. I support their right to do what they can to alleviate their distress so long as it does not inflict distress on others or demand they accept labels or situations that are demeaning or oppressive. But I do not see how some individuals' distress with the body they have is proof of an overarching gender identity of Womanhood which is more significant in the physical world than the physical body and therefore should replace sex for all legal, social and physical purposes.

"The denial of this duality not only erases the vision of human beings as the fruit of an act of creation but creates the idea of the human person as a sort of abstraction who chooses for himself what his nature is to be."

"Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him."

You are in good company.

www.educatio.va/content/dam/cec/Documenti/19_0997_INGLESE.pdf

Not believing in gender identity requires an pseudo-religious (and often religious) commitment to an ideology,

You what?

For example, with sexuality. The defintion
"a person's identity in relation to the gender or genders to which they are typically attracted; sexual orientation."

The question:
"Are you attracted to men, women, both, or neither?"

@Tomatalillo
"If I turned up to operate on you, say for a vasectomy, put a camera up your urethra or to conduct a heart transplant, would you let me go ahead if said I feel like a surgeon, I identity as a surgeon, oh but I am not qualified and have no recognised training?

If not why not?"

The word identify has two meanings.

"establish or indicate who or what (someone or something) is."

"associate someone or something closely with; regard as having strong links with."

The "identity" in gender identity is meaning one.
The "identity" in your example is meaning two.

@Delphinium20
"Reminds me of a lesson I was taught as a young girl in a religious school. But we were talking about souls. While the concept of souls was almost universally recognized by Christians, this lesson was a way to show that the non-Christian souls were lost to Satan. But then I grew up and stopped believing in souls, but I'm sure that doesn't stop some Christians from thinking I still have a soul and that my soul is lost"

It's more the other way round. Sexuality and gender identity are well-established, and found to be heritiable and innate in twin studies. Not believing in gender identity or sexuality requires an pseudo-religious (and often religious) commitment to an ideology, in this case biological essentialism and gender critical feminism.

@ Blibbyblobby

Before the terminology of sexuality existed, heterosexuals thought of themselves as normal, and that homosexuality was a perversion or abberation. Many people strongly resisted the term "heterosexual" because they thought of it as normal or natural. But no one would deny that people were gay or straight before the terminlogy was invented. Likewise, the people who get upset with the very neutral term "cis" are upset for similar reasons.

If you are cisgendered, there is no internal conflict between your sex assigned at birth and your gender identity, therefore you take your gender identity for granted, just as people took their heterosexuality for granted. The definition doesn't care whether you attribute your internal sense of sexuality or gender identity to the natural order of things or biology.

dunno why

I know you don't know why. It's the same reason you're shocked and saddened I used the phrase Foxtrot Oscar - which was not incidentally used in the sense you're implying it was. It's because you appear absolutely unable to read and understand what any woman here tries to explain to you. Particularly if saying something you don't agree with.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Absolutely

I probably should have included in my post ...

If someone asks you not to use the word in conversation with them, then be polite and don't use it.

We all get so excited/pissed off about this stuff ... dunno why
You don't want me to use the word in conversation ? say so and I won't use it (although, I don't actually use the word anyway), its that simple.

Surely?

When it comes to forms, my personal way round the nonsense is -

• To cross out 'gender' and replace with 'sex' on paper forms

• To replace 'cis' with 'real' on paper forms. Surely that eliminates all confusion, fake or otherwise

• If online, and therefore not editable, leave 'gender' blank (and email the organisation to 'educate' them if I can be bothered that day. I particularly enjoy quoting the actual word 'educate' for extra patronising)

Important addendum: don't use it about other people without their consent just because you want to use it or they may tell you to Foxtrot Oscar

Use the word if you want to use it

Don't use the word if you don't want to use it

And should an 'Activist' (from whichever side of the fence) criticise you for your choice tell them to (as somebody delightfully said to me last week - can't remember who, but it was a 'delightful moment')

Foxtrot Oscar

Do whatever you choose ...

I think ‘cis’ is meant to religate women further down the hierarchy of oppression, so hat a transwomen can reclaim the position that he had when he was born male, - being above the women in the social hierarchy - It’s a way to retain the male privilege that they have lost through transition.

The good news is that we are both agreed on the pronunciation.

I am curious as to whether he's enough of a purist to scream in anguish when he hears it pronounced as in Sistine Chapel. But that's a discussion point for later this morning.

Oh - the page re-loaded & I see the PP did have a stab at it....

I see we are agreeing that 'cis' is a Latin prefix (not adjective) with a few rather specific applications. Suspect J Caesar would be surprised at the adoption of it to distinguish between women & male people who'd prefer to be women, though.

This is a very good question, Potholes.

I doubt you'll get an answer.

And luckily to 99.9999% of the worlds population.

Woman girl female mean what they always did...

I’m a woman. I take offence to being called a Cis woman, a category created by male bodied for male bodied purposes.

The idea that the term ‘cis’ includes everyone except trans women seems rather similar to the recent political party statement about women being non-men. Effectively defined by the fact we don’t have a penis.

I’ll stick with woman and female.

Its just obvious.

As with so much else in this movement. The given reason (which is then argued and women end up continually taking at face value and on the defensive. About the entire appropriation, redefinition of words we have had for bloody ever).

Is not the point. Look at the process. Insist on a change. Say it's nothing no impact. Disagreeing is sign of hater because. Not a big deal. In fact. The most innocuous thing ever.

Let that settle.

Push a little further. Same process. Repeat etc.

I have no idea what or why this happened so... Slickly. But what has happened is just true.

My earlier post iterated this progression.

The current point is that seeing
'women and cis women' is not unusual.

Also interestingly some TW ID as cis women.

So.

We were given a label we never asked for, making the words woman girl apply to.. anyone.

And now some see it as othering and to TWAW and deciding to ID that way when they feel like it.

🙄

I won’t respect anyone who doesn’t respect me. That is the essence. You cannot name and brand other people, according to your definitions. That is what bullies do. Just start using the words men and women and grow up.

Blibbyblobby

Indeed. Should I decide to define myself according to the tenets of the gender philosophy, I would be "non-binary".

I choose not to, but it's interesting how people tell me I must be "cis". Often while telling me I must respect other people's pronouns, because they choose how they identify. Really? I remember pulling axillary hairs out by the root. Not just there, either.

But that is less important than the lack of reciprocity. I'm still nice enough that my default is to use preferred pronouns out of goodwill, but if you are going to call me "cis" and take it upon yourself to classify what relationship I have had with my body from adolescence up until now, then there is no more goodwill to be had.

for people who deny that trans women can be women, the word 'cis'' seems superfluous and unnecessary, well you have no idea why I don’t want to be called or use that name for myself, or any other woman. The point is you have no right to categorise me or any other woman. End of.

Also… circular again… trans women are recognising that there are biological women which are different from trans women otherwise they wouldn’t have invented a name for biological women - there would be no need to call anyone else another name at all.

[quote Piapiano]**@JustPassingThrough3* and @DadJoke* if cis women and trans women are both subcategories of woman, how do you categorise woman?[/quote]
I'd love an answer to this

the word 'cis'' seems superfluous and unnecessary, because the word 'woman' will suffice on its own

It's not just "superfluous and unnecessary". To someone who does not buy into gender as a more relevant factor in ones life than sex, being referred to as "cis" is always offensive and very likely also insulting.

Offensive because the word "woman" is being used in a way that does not in fact apply to me, and aligns me against my will with an ideology that I believe is detrimental to female people.

Actively insulting depending on exactly what the person applying the term "cis" actually thinks a woman is, and therefore what I am. Of course, this question - "what do you actually mean by "a woman", what are the intrinsic characteristics that make one a woman rather than a man or non-bimary?" is never answered.