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.

hairy just read that link. How is showing off my baby cisseixism?!?! I am actually confused about that. Please explain.

It would be interesting to know whether children are being taught this term in school.
If the answer is yes.
Then the term isn't ''just something that is only used in the transgender world and we people in the real world won't ever have to use it''

I honestly thought that link was a parody.

I have never heard of cis before this thread.

Just looked it up and found it interesting, but not bothered if people use it on mn. I can't see how it is offensive though.

Can I respectfully suggest, if you don't give a shiny shit, could't care less, are sick of the subject...etc then you needn't comment? No one is forcing you to comment, no one is forcing you to click on a thread with the word 'trans' or 'cis' or Caitlyn Jenner or whatever. I mean, come on. The clue is in the title.

This is an important subject for many people, and I'm sorry to tell you, it's going to be discussed more and more on MN, I feel. So either get used to it, and comment. Or ignore.

Agree. I think it's worth discussing and it's good to listen to everybody's views, whether they're for or against the term being used.
But , I also don't get the ''I couldn't care less'' comments.
Why bother commenting on something you don't care about?
Just avoid the thread.

Don't start banging on about how being identified as "cis" hurts your widdle feelings.

Yes because baby talk is the way to debate in an adult manner.

It's doesn't hurt my feelings. I find it is used regularly as an insult I also think it is unnecessary. The word women is enough of a description thank you.

I would just like to ask all of you who are saying you don't give a shit who calls you what, how are you going to feel if legislation decides that you are are a cis woman, and a woman is what you, presently think, is a trans woman?
Because they are the ones shouting loudest, and unless enough of us say no, they might get what they want.

And itcould happen.
Things like that have a habit of creeping in gradually and then snowballing.
First the term starts off being used by only one group of people, then it creeps into every day language, then children start being taught what the term means in schools (that may already be happening), then it starts appearing on forms, then the next step will be on birth and marriage certificates.

As a lesbian can I ask people to stop talking about the LGBT community in this thread?
Lesbians have been chucked right under the bus by the trans movement taking over our identities and spaces. I don't want to be linked with them.

I didn't realize that. That's disturbing.
I'm even more glad I started this thread, as there is obviously a lot of anger around at the moment that could do with being addressed.

What exactly is the scale of the issue? Because the only times I've seen 'cis' on here have been people complaining about its use, rather than actually being used to describe someone.

Excellent post, Smashingturnips
It's worth repeating:-

Cis is not a neutral describer used only and simply to differentiate between transgender people and people who are not transgender.

Cis is a politically loaded term which is, on the whole, being used by men to define women. In my book, this makes it conservatively patriarchal. Yes, I know it is used to describe men too but I don't see it used to define them ( and most certainly not by women because we do not have that power).

Cis is not a simple word - it refers to a complex set of beliefs and a world view. More and more cis is used on its own so it is easy to forget that it is shorthand for cisgender and cisgender goes hand in hand with cisprivilege. Both of these terms are used in order to gaslight girls and women into believing that we have sex related privilege and that makes us oppressors in male dominated society. This concept is clearly ridiculous but it is very very appealing to sexists as it is a new and deeply manipulative way to resist women's liberation and women's rights.

And this is why the transgender movement and agenda has gained so much traction and become mainstream. Not because society is progressive and liberal but because society is oppressive and conservative and transgenderism bolsters that. The T gets rid of the gay and redefines women in a way which defangs feminism and invisibleizes sex based structural oppression.

Hence why lots of women are paying attention to the issue, an issue which on first impression seems pretty marginal. Same goes for a lot of LGB people, many of whom are stating that they want to "drop the T" as they say it is at opposition with LGB values and is piggybacking the sexual orientation movement as a way to appeal to liberals and rightoners. Anyone who pays much attention to internet feminism can attest to the same happening there, the T movement is making feminism about transgenderism ( despite the basic tenets of the two being poles apart)

So cis may seem like an innocent innocuous word but it really really isn't. This whole thing strikes me as having many parallels with an abusive relationship, indeed it is like an abusive relationship on a grand scale - cis is the beginning and then things escalate. So women who currently are happy to embrace cis, that is your prerogative but please keep your radar on because you are ok just now with giving what is being presented to you as inch but that inch is actually a misogynistic mile.

And another great post from Abbieanders:

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.

^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.^

This. It deserves repeating. Why women aren't a bit more outraged by it all really flabberghasts me. It is not a "widdle" issue. Again, I want to remind you, Transwomen have made more advances on their "rights" in Ireland in two or three years than hoards of women campaigning for equality over several decades. This is why we should worry.

Oops X post! Great ladybrains think alike

WTF is a cis? Could somebody please explain it?

Or is this what it is?

--
SouthernComforts Tue 17-Nov-15 23:46:06
So, for hundreds (thousands?) of years, men were called men and women were called women. Now, some men want to be called women, so women should have to call themselves something else?

Yeah, fuck that.
--

Transwomen have made more advances on their "rights" in Ireland in two or three years than hoards of women campaigning for equality over several decades.

Yes yes yes. Self-declaration is all that is needed in Ireland. No doctor's cert, no medical evidence of any kind, no hormones, no evidence of 'living as the opposite gender'. Just self-identification.

violet because most people think all transgendered individuals have genuine gender dysphoria and are bullied and tormented as a result. They want to do everything in their power to 'transition'. Anyone that is fairminded wants to support that.
Obviously , some do fit into that category but many others don't.
Google 'cotton ceiling' to see how some lesbians have been affected.

And to me, the fact that it has been sooooooo easy for this right to be granted to transwomen suggests on some level that there is actually transprivilege too (probably arising from being socialised male and feeling able to fight for it in a particular way). Say this and you get absolutely shouted down (see previous point).

I object to it for slightly different reasons. It's an expression that means "your internal sense of gender identity matches the sex of your body at birth". This is simply not the case for me. Gender is a social construct that has always felt profoundly wrong and insulting to me, in terms of the behaviour that is expected of me as a result of my assigned gender. In that sense I am not cis, and just because I have become accustomed to walking around with a woman's name and wearing dresses doesn't mean that I am comfortable with other wider associations and demeaning implications of femininity and my position in society, particularly vis a vis stupid men who adopt an instinctive position of patronising superiority towards me; and my rejection of it is socially problematic and usually punished; alternatlvely my sometime attempted docility towards it results in psychological back lash and mental health fallout

YY and YYY to this lockthe. A very articulate expression of how I feel - thanks.

startrek90
I have as much idea as you. I LOLd through most of the article.

I imagine the author meant women who had a vulva visible in their own baby pics and are happily show them off are being cissexist and are oppressing transwomen who can't show off their own baby pics because of the triggering presence of their baby penis.

So none of us should show our childhood photos because to blatantly demonstrate we are not-trans is cissexist.

Or something. Seriously, I read that three times and still was WTAF?

(I think you didn't pick up that I am against this nonsense and posted that article for the benefit of people who might be unaware of the transactivist position on cis)

Vashta you may not be reading anymore but nevertheless I want to clarify something.

I don't think that when women agree that they are cis that that means they have ladybrains. I mean that I hear women who are being compassionate, kind and nice about transgenderism using a word in a "no skin off my nose/solidarity" way unfortunately also signing up to the concept of ladybrain and a whole bunch of sex role stereotyping and classification.

Gender is a manmade hierarchy. It is a system of categorization which has been constructed in order to justify boys and men being awarded higher status in society than girls and women. It isn't an "identity" which is open to choice. Logically, accepting cis = accepting cisgender = acceptance of gender = acceptance of sex roles, stereotypes and classification = acceptance of superiority of masculinity = acceptance of the subjugation of girls and women. ( And a whole lot more.)

Hardly "widdle feelings" BTW pocketsaviour (way to dismiss women's concerns about our second class citizenship).

And people who throw "TERF" around are signing up to all the above too, whether they realise it or not. This is way way beyond being a lefty liberal progressive right on open minded individual versus being a bigot - and those who insist on dragging things down to the lowest common denominator in such a manner perhaps need to engage in some critical thinking about the wider issues.

Ditactylos - yes to everything you said.

It seems like at least some of the people who think 'cis' is innocuous, are doing so because they mistakenly equate the phrase 'ciswoman' with meaning 'biological woman'.

They do not mean the same thing. I don't find 'biological woman' offensive, just a pointless repetitive definition, like 'woman-woman' or 'P.I.N. Number'.

Woman is sufficient.

Tautology: the saying of the same thing twice over in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style (e.g. they arrived one after the other in succession ).

I am not LGBT or CIS or gender fluid or NT.....or any other of these fucking labels.
Why must people define themselves with labels?
You don't need anyone else's permission or pressure to call yourself whatever the hell you want!

i thought NT was used when talking about SN (as in not SN)