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.

why should we have to move out of the feminist house, why do we need to surrender the name and the movement to a bunch of people who joined it in the last 10 years when it's been going for the last 100? I find it deeply ironic that trans activists have basically walked up to feminism's front door and went "that's not feminism, let me explain you what feminism is" and then demanded that feminism ditches the concerns of 99% of feminist women in favour of their own. For people who think they fit better in the feminine gender, that's very stereotypically male behaviour.

Yes, this, very much this - why is it always women that have to make the concessions? It makes me feel very shouty. Be whoever the fuck 'you' want, identify however the fuck 'you' want, but don't tell me how to identify or who I should be/how I should think.

Can someone use this in a sentence please - as in every day conversation because I just don't get what the fuck it means/is. And I'm not trying to be funny or stupid before anyone (potentially) jumps on me. I've NEVER heard this before now and I think I would laugh if someone described me as CIS Woman...... is that the right context? Have I used it correctly?!

I'm very late to this discussion to and do find it very interesting.

I totally agree with gender being a social construct and one that shouldn't automatically be assumed on the basis of your sex. But I do see that even if gender roles vanished one could still feel that one was in the wrong body - I don't think that an individual trans women's idea of their own gender role necessarily enforces that role on others.

So I suppose I'm happy thinking that I am a woman and a trans woman is also a woman but that if further clarification was sought then I am a cis woman and they are a trans woman but that we all fall under the woman umbrella (like other social demographic categories such as ethnicity or political views or hair colour).

A sentence...
Your just a cis woman, what do you know about my struggles

Stands and applaudes toomuchtooold. That. Is. All.

I have reported my own post, it is too bitchy

Ffs, why do you fucking care? Yes, 'cis women' are just women. 'Trans women' are also just women. Let's just use 'women' for everyone.

Hmmm, OK. I think I might back out of this one. I'm a woman. That's good enough for me. I don't need any other labels and I feel this may all be a bit deep for me but Prussian's post helped clarify. Passive thanks for the sentence!

I thought it was rather on the money Passive

So I suppose I'm happy thinking that I am a woman and a trans woman is also a woman but that if further clarification was sought then I am a cis woman and they are a trans woman but that we all fall under the woman umbrella (like other social demographic categories such as ethnicity or political views or hair colour).

Agree to a point Prussian, but when discussing anyone other than oneself, isn't born-woman safer (and therefore politer) because it only comments on the route by which someone became female and NOT on their inner feelings abut the extent to which their sex matches their gender?

'Trans women' are also just women. Let's just use 'women' for everyone.

You mean, like we currently do with "men"?

Okay. As long as there are separated changing rooms, bathrooms, prisons, etc, for bepenised women and women with uteruses, that's alright.

And as long as a everyone who needs them is given free abortions, access to midwives, breast cancer screening and so on, and people who gave birth to children are exempt from doing any chores for three years afterwards, while the non-birth-giving parent has to change all the diapers and stay home to do the childcare.

Also, I want prison for life for anyone who puts her penis into another woman without invitation.

And I don't want to hear any complaints by the bepenised. After all, we are all women, so there's 100% equality.

Another voice objecting to the cis prefix for women.

I am not a ciswoman, I am a woman; a transwoman is a man, free to live as they please, until it comes to redefining who I am (especially by relating it to, reducing me to, a definition in relation to not being a type of man)- this I object to.

In principle at least (although it can be difficult to draw the line in practice at times) there is a distinction between:

asking that you not be hindered
demanding that you be facilitated

One thing I have noticed (as a middle child, and as a mother of two dcs 2 years apart) is that oldest children often struggle to tell the difference. They want to play a game, the younger one doesn't and just doesn't join in, there are howls of anguish - the older one feels sincerely badly done to. Really genuinely wounded. It is as if she has been cruelly prevented from following her dream, when actually the younger one just said "sure, follow your dream, but I'm just going to carry on sitting here reading my book." At this point the older one can howl "That is nonsense! I can't do it on my own! there is no such thing for tennis for one person!" but the younger one might just shrug. Not my problem. Don't feel like tennis.

I feel like something similar is happening with the trans debate. I'm afraid I do think that some of the most egregious examples are simply embodiments of male privilege, which is like oldest child privilege- they have always had women there to facilitate their dreams coming true and they can't understand they shrug and the "not my problem". It is bitterly wounding to them

I was brought up to look after myself - I was brought up to be domestically competent, educated and encouraged to get a decent job, I was taught to save for things I wanted and I was encouraged to learn to drive and manage money properly and so on. I was taught to do decorating and DIY, what to look for when you buy a car or a house, and so on - I was brought up with the traditional skills of a woman and a man and I was supposed to grow up to be independent. It worked, and as a result I don't feel the need for someone else to facilitate what I need to do. I can't have everything I want, but that isn't anyone else's fault. I can have what i need because I am lucky enough that I have learnt how to do the work to get it.

I feel really sorry for people who can't do things without other people. People who can't go the loo in a pub alone. people who can't cook or can't drive. People who don't see the films they want to see because no one will go with them. People who won't go somewhere new alone.

This whole trans thing feels like this. It feels like "I want to do this thing!" "oh ok" isn't enough. It has to be "I want to do this thing! And you have to play your part in dancing attendance on my thing that I want to do! And I don't really care that you were already doing something else that you want to carry on doing because you aren't as important as me and I WANT TO DO MY THING and I NEED you do your bit or my thing doesn't WORK". And I feel sorry for men and for certain activist trans women who are so pathetically dependent on what women do to make them feel real that they are constantly badgering us, abusing us, humilating us and committing violence against us to make us do it. obviously I feel more sympathy with us, but the pity for that fragility and lack of centre that they have is there too.

VestalVirgin I was really just trying to say that it's all a matter of words, and prefixes (i.e. cis and trans) don't help anything much. I am absolutely lost as to why you have attempted to link everything you said in your message after that to my message...

My feeling is that trans women feel that they are women. In which case stop being special and crack on. Don't redefine what you say you are to suit you.
Women are a wide spectrum and you can be a woman. Redefining me because you want to make me different to you makes you different to me.
Celebrate your journey and I can celebrate too. I have other journeys so don't give me another one to get back to where I struggled to be.

Because trans women aren't 'just' women separated.

I hope MN are taking note of all of this and will act accordingly. I propose we make a point of reporting all uses of the term 'cis'.

LockTheTaskBar -- I agree with your post. I feel there is on top of the male privilege a huge element of narcissism to the T demand that everyone rearrange everything they know to be true, both about themselves and about others, in order to be accommodated. I am pleased to see a backlash from the lesbian community, though sad that it has its origins in harassment and huge disrespect of lesbians from many T people, and I hope the implications for women (I insist on using that term) of accommodating people with the bodies of men, both in girls' and women's bathrooms and changing rooms and in theoretical terms will be realised by enough people that eventually someone will have the guts to stand up to the bullying and call a halt to to the madness. And it is bullying - look at what happened to Germaine Greer. Better still, maybe some day we will all collectively rise up against it.

It's not all a matter of words. Even as we all type here, girls in high schools in the US are required to allow fully functioning male bodied individuals to use locker rooms formerly segregated by sex but now allocated according to gender.

And to those saying that I need not be offended by the term cis as it's only going to be used in discussion about trans, I still don't want it applied to me in that instance as it defines me as having a gender identity that is on the same side as my sex, which I don't agree with and don't want forced on me. I'm also not happy that its use and the assumption that all women have a gender identity, a 'woman' gender identity unless otherwise made explicit by a label of genderqueer or similar. In that way, trans theory tells me that I either feel myself a woman in some innate way, or don't recognise that I'm feeling it because of blindness to a gender identity due to cis-privilege, erasing the option, truth, or possibility that I do not have a gender identity at all. That catch 22 of either you feel your matching gender identity, how privileged, or you don't recognise it because of your privilege, feels like an attack, almost mocking that silly little woman me has been being a woman wrong all along, but this vocal group of men have come along to fill me in on what it's really like, and how I should really experience being a woman, if I can get over my own privilege for long enough to do it right.

Just no.

Prussian
I do see that even if gender roles vanished one could still feel that one was in the wrong body

That's true, but body dysmorphia isn't unique to transpeople. In fact looking in the mirror and being unhappy with what you see is a huge part of the feminine experience! Maybe there's a qualitative difference between that and what transpeople feel though.

What is genderqueer please?

Good post Taskbar.

There is a 50-something trans women in a female college basketball team. She rang up the coach after transitioning a few years ago, he originally said the squad was full but when she said she was 6ft plus he gave her a trial and then a place.

Her argument now is that she has to work hard to keep the place despite height as she is getting older. Obviously the odds of a 50 something born female being on the squad, even if tall for a woman, are vanishingly small. Ditto the odds of any trans man making the male team.

Surely that is demanding that born-women "budge up"? And it's inconsistent with sport in general; there are certain bodily conditions that make either treatment for the condition or the sport incompatible (athletes with asthma cannot use a standard steroid treatment, for example). Why shouldn't it be possible to say, as I believe the IOC do, that for medical/biological reasons, a transwoman is at an advantage to a born woman and this makes sports just as unfair as one competitor taking drugs to increase lung capacity.

I keep being reminded of the story 'The Emperor's New Clothes'.

Yy onemore. Two other examples are the iranian womens football team (with 8 pre-op tw) and the tw mma fighter who is basically paid to beat up women. Sorry, this is one of those times, being trans-relevant, that i should clarify. The trans woman with her phenotypically male musculature is paid to beat up "cis" women. Cis-privilege, for fucks sake.

If someone can provide a description of the characteristics of what "feeling like a woman" that does not rely on stereotypes, I might be willing to accept that there is such a thing as a cis woman.