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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

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

999 replies

violetsarentblue · 17/11/2015 22:21

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.

OP posts:
INickedAName · 19/11/2015 15:10

Individuals are the best experts in what gender they are. That is the end of the matter as far as I'm aware. Transgender people hardly get an easy ride in society right now, so I think it's safe to assume that if people express they are transgender, it isn't just for shits and giggles.

Gender might be able to be changed. But sex can not. It is not possible.

I know it must be really difficult for someone who doesn't feel right in their body, but that doesn't make it possible to change sex, hiwever much many people would like it to be. So men can become Transwomen, but it's an impossible physical reality for them to become female.

I'm sorry if that seems like bigotry, I'm sorry if that is seen as hatred and I'm sorry if it's transphobic. I would love for everybody to be happy in their own bodies but I'm not sure how pretending sex can be changed will do that.

SmillasSenseOfSnow · 19/11/2015 15:14

Individuals are the best experts in what gender they are. That is the end of the matter as far as I'm aware. Transgender people hardly get an easy ride in society right now, so I think it's safe to assume that if people express they are transgender, it isn't just for shits and giggles.

Any of us could have been born in the body of the opposite sex. I am just lucky that I wasn't. We shouldn't be making things harder for people who didn't have that luck. There is nothing superior about people who happen to have been born in the correct sex body.

The issue seems to have gone completely over your head.

People aren't saying 'trans women are male gender despite what they say' (though they have certainly largely been socialised as males and some sometimes show quite striking evidence of this socialisation, as has been mentioned a few times re. mansplaining/transsplaining and entitlement issues).

A huge number of people here are making it quite obvious that they do not buy into gender identities in the way you would appear to.

53rdAndBird · 19/11/2015 15:14

I don't feel like I was born in the correct sex body. I also don't feel like I was born in a body of the wrong sex; I don't really have any sense of my 'self' as having an inherent gender separate from my chromosomes.

But I can accept that clearly some people do, and for a subset of those people their sense of their own gender and the physical body they have don't match. It's not like this is something that's only started happening within the past few years; it's happened in all sorts of societies in all sorts of places throughout history.

Maybe in a far distant future where we were free from the constraints of gender stereotypes and discrimination, nobody would feel that way. Maybe they would. I don't know, and I don't feel like I need to know in order to not be shitty to people experiencing their minds and bodies differently to me today.

It's not like there have ever been just male and female with no blurring between the two. What about intersex people? What about people with androgen insensitivity syndrome, where you could grow up with a female body and not realise until puberty that you have male chromosomes? What about someone like David Reimer, who was born male then raised female with his bodily surgically operated to look female, but always felt male and later identified as male again? Sometimes it just is complicated.

almondpudding · 19/11/2015 15:24

David Reimer didn't identify as Male. He was male. By saying so he was telling the truth about himself to a bunch of people who had lied to him, abused him as a child and experimented on him.

53rdAndBird · 19/11/2015 15:29

Yes, I am fully aware of the bell that was inflicted on David Reimer. I am pointing out that sometimes gender identity is more complicated than what kind of genitals you have or what the people surrounding you are telling you that you are.

53rdAndBird · 19/11/2015 15:30

Hell, not bell!

abbieanders · 19/11/2015 15:47

I am pointing out that sometimes gender identity is more complicated than what kind of genitals you have or what the people surrounding you are telling you that you are.

Which can be unfortunate but doesn't change anything.

Listen, we all get that there are people who are very uncomfortable with the bodies they were born into and want to live socially as the other sex. Nobody has any real issue with that or with anyone living as they choose. The problem is when they ask everyone else to change how they identify too. I will call people by their preferred name and pronoun, I don't care how they dress or present themselves and if they feel more comfortable making surgical alterations to their bodies, that's their choice, nothing to do with me.

However, I draw the line at being called cis to support an idea that wanting to be socially identified as a woman is exactly the same as being born and raised in a female body. And this idea that we should suspend any critical thinking around this because transgender people have a hard life is ludicrous and patronising. I imagine I'd find it much harder to accept someone saying, ah, she's had a hard life so let her be a woman, sure what harm? than someone honestly telling what they think if I were a trans woman.

Alisvolatpropiis · 19/11/2015 15:53

Sorry but no, attheend.

Feeling like something does not make it fact. A man feeling like a woman does not make them female because you can't change biological sex.

Icarus thought the wings he made meant he could fly. He was wrong too.

almondpudding · 19/11/2015 15:54

53rd, being intersex is not a gender identity.

Random people who have a feeling in their head that they think is how it feels to be intersex don't get to say, I identify as intersex. People whose biological sex is one of the intersex conditions are intersex.

Somebody who has had their body mutilated during childhood, who then points out to the world they are actually a male person isn't talking about a state of affairs that exists in their head. They're simply telling us what their sex is.

StrawberryTeaLeaf · 19/11/2015 15:56

53rd, being intersex is not a gender identity

You're brave almond Smile

PassiveAgressiveQueen · 19/11/2015 15:57

i have just realised i am not cis anyway (by the definition)

sex: female
gender: null

sex != gender

(hope that isn't to geeky to be understood)

53rdAndBird · 19/11/2015 16:03

Where did I say that being intersex was a gender identity? Confused

CoteDAzur · 19/11/2015 16:06

"don't get to say, I identify as intersex. People whose biological sex is one of the intersex conditions are intersex"

Just like females being people whose biological sex is female. And yet there are people claiming that they can identify as female although they are male. There is one just on this thread.

Welcome to the brave new world where biological descriptions have no basis in biology and it's all about how people feel.

almondpudding · 19/11/2015 16:19

53rd, then why are you bringing up intersex to demonstrate that gender identity is complicated?

Intersex conditions are neither gender identities nor complicated. They are just uncommon so most people don't always know exactly what each of the conditions entail.

53rdAndBird · 19/11/2015 16:28

Almond - As I said, to point out that there has never been a time when there were only either men with male bodies or women in female bodies, and no fuzzy area in between the two.

Once again, I didn't say that being intersex was a gender identity. It's difficult to have a reasonable conversation if you're going to keep disagreeing with me on things I never said in the first place.

OneMoreCasualty · 19/11/2015 16:41

No one disputes the biological existence of intersex conditions; it's just that they aren't relevant to a gender identity discussion, any more than XX/XY are, as they are based on the body

OneMoreCasualty · 19/11/2015 16:42

It is possible that there is a link between hormonal balance and gender dysphoria. That doesn't change biological sex.

almondpudding · 19/11/2015 16:44

I am trying to have a reasonable (and civil) conversation.

I am trying to get you to clarify what you mean, so I can understand you.

Saying things are a 'fuzzy area' or 'complicated' isn't making it clear to me what point you are making about gender identity.

Intersex conditions are not a fuzzy area in between something else and they are not complicated.

And I find the idea of 'women in female bodies' a weird phrasing. It sounds like the female body is some kind of object you put on. I am not 'in' a body, but maybe that's a religious point?

53rdAndBird · 19/11/2015 16:44

The discussion has involved an awful lot of people saying that men are people with male bodies, and women are people with female bodies, simple, end of story. So clearly bodies - and their complexity - are relevant, if what we're discussing is a body-based definition of gender.

almondpudding · 19/11/2015 16:54

I don't know what body based definition of gender means, sorry.

Sex means what biological sex someone is - male, female of one of the intersection conditions.

Gender identity refers, in our society, to a feeling some people have in their heads.

I don't know what you mean by a 'body based definition of gender.'

PassiveAgressiveQueen · 19/11/2015 16:54

if what we're discussing is a body-based definition of gender.

myself and others (i think) are not discussing gender, as it is something to be battled/ defeated/ got rid of.
Not something to work around.

almondpudding · 19/11/2015 16:55

Intersex not intersection! Autocorrect, sorry.

BeyondThirty · 19/11/2015 16:55

Women in female bodies.

to think Mumsnet should delete posts in which women are called cis
OneMoreCasualty · 19/11/2015 16:57

Also not clear what a body based definition of gender is - surely anything body based is bepenised/bevaginaed/intersex?

Lozza1990 · 19/11/2015 16:58

Oh wow some people really need to get a life!!!