to think Mumsnet should delete posts in which women are called cis

[violetsarentblue]

I (and I imagine quite a lot of women on here) are fed up with being referred to as cis. I find the term deeply insulting.
I'm a woman and prefer to be addressed as a 'woman', not a cis woman.

I noticed MN are quick to delete posts where transgender people are called 'he' instead of 'she', because that group of people find the term insulting and MN don't want to offend.

Generally we delete posts in which people persistently refuse to refer to people by the pronoun (he/she; him/her) by which they’ve asked to be referred, out of respect for that individual’s wishes.

Please - could we have the same depth of consideration for our wishes?

Thank you.

Cheers Hama. Surfer, if you RTFT it explains.

Turnips

I think that the shorthand explanation that cis = ladybrain just about sums up the stupidity and the offensiveness of the term for me.

Smashing

Great post

As a chemistry teacher, I call myself a Z woman.

Indeed. SmashingTurnips thank you for that articulate demonstration of just how dangerous this shit is.

Although there are plenty of posters on MN who think gender 'just is', going by the recent discussions of toys.

Excellent post SmashingTurnips.

I am not cis. I do not have a gender, therefore I cannot identify with a gender, birth or otherwise. I am female because this is my sex as denoted by my xx chromosomes.

I have no idea how any other female thinks or feels. I like to believe that we are all independent and have our own thoughts and feelings that do not spring from some random "gender" identification pushed on us by a patriarchal society in order to subjugate females. I wholeheartedly reject being put into a "cis" box and being told that I must be like X or Y because a small group of people born with male privilege have decided, to progress their own aims and agenda, that gender exists. I think it is the height of arrogance.

I can quite see it infecting academic conferences.

YANBU, OP.

smashing thank you for that post. I hope MNHQ reads it.

I said this on the other thread, but I think it's more relevant here. The big problem with cis, I think, is that it's purpose is to make women into a rump against which everyone else can happily define themselves. We're the boring, tragic olds with some kind of traditional ladygender nobody wants anymore with all the exciting genders around.

But someone has to do the caring work. Someone has to do the low paid, socially useful jobs. Someone has to do the reproductive labour. Who's that someone? Cis women, of course, the group who always does it. But just now they're also stuffy old bigots who don't know how to be women really well.

Who knows how to be women really well? People socialised as male, of course. Well, if you divorce being a woman from women's work. To do that, you've got to invent cis women. Because people socialised as male aren't any more inclined to wipe the universal arse of society when they identify as trans than they are when they don't.

abbieanders Another key post. Thank you.

Thank you. & if I get time I will RTFT.
( but all sounds a bit too confusing to me )

If transwoman want to differentiate themselves from born woman why can't they call themselves transwoman at these times. Honestly they can call themselves gods for all I care. What they cannot do is redefine who I am to fit their agenda.

They can fuck right off!

As a lesbian can I ask people to stop talking about the LGBT community in this thread?

Yeah, I was just coming on to say the same thing.

The LGB community is different to the T community. People can be both of course but there's a significant amount of conflict and difference between the two. We aren't some big amorphous blob of non 'normal' people.

LGB are sexuality related, T is gender. I can see why both have aligned but they are different things.

You can't suddenly decide that something is insulting when, objectively speaking, it isn't, and then demand that all references to it be deleted. Language just doesn't work like that.

That is precisely what has happened with words like "coloured", "moron" and "retarded". These are all intrinsically neutral and formerly non-pejorative terms used to describe certain groups of people. Then they became tainted by association because they were used in a pejorative way.

Once they became widely disliked, they stopped being neutral and acceptable, even though, objectively speaking, there is nothing wrong with them.

(Haven't read the thread beyond what I'm responding to, so not sure if my comment is redundant.)

Smashing
Great post.

People born male are catagorising people born female in a way that suits their agenda so they can appropriate female spaces and experiences. No thanks! I am a woman not a ciswoman.

I am a woman not a bloody CIS woman what a stupid term.

trans people are not going to call you cis because of your biological sex. They are going to assign the label on the basis of your preferred gender identity - which, to stress, is entirely your choice.

They have no damn business labelling me at all. I can't understand why people can't see that.

Brilliant post Smashing.

Agree with above.
I am biologically a woman, as defined by chromosomes. Just a woman, nothing more or less. Who I have sex with, male or female, is my private business, and doesn't change what I am - just a woman. No adjectives needed thank you.

Thank you.

Another thing cis does is that it assumes that there is a group/category "women" and that within that group there is the subset "transwomen" and the subset "ciswomen". Bang, there you go, just like that - by easing this word into the language we use to talk about sex and gender suddenly MTT people have been linguistically, at least, defined as female, as belonging to the group known as women. And that is massive and has far reaching implications and consequences for girls and women. Because sexism, because reproductive rights, because male supremacist society, because unequal political representation, because structural oppression, because pay gap, because rape, because male violence against girls and women and all the rest of the shit that females deal with. And we don't have to deal with it because of frigging gender identities/spectrums/queer theory/fill in the neoliberal blank. We have to deal with that shit because of sex, because we have female reproductive systems, because we are the ones who carry and birth the world's babies.

Transwomen do not belong to the group which carries and births babies and therefore they are not a subset of women. And it is denying female reality our lived experience and our status as second class citizens to claim otherwise. Hence the tolerating, nay, embracing of T by society.

It comes from the same place as sex positivism, prostitution as empowering, identity politics, queer theory and all the rest of the current wave of navel gazing neoliberal individualism. It is the antithesis of class politics and a total shift to "there's no such thing as society" thinking. Except we all know that society exists and class exists and women need class politics in order to fight for our rights and in order to protect our reproductive status and resist it being used to control and exploit us.

We need class politics so that we can continue to point out that the personal is political and shit happens to girls and women because we are female and not because we have lady brains, like being paid less, aren't interested in political power, were asking for it ( it being sexualized violence), etc.

I'm so glad this is finally hitting the mainstream and women are talking about it.

I'm a ciswoman, a feminist and a trans activist. I won't call you cis if you don't like it, but there are plenty of people who are comfortable with the term.

vashtanerda why do you feel the need to apply adjectives to yourself? its a genuine questions I have never met anyone in my life who describes themselves as CIS

Vashta
How do you know whether I like it or not? Keep it to yourself.