Last to the party as usual but here’s my two cents worth:
Somewhere along the way the terms normal and normative got conflated. When you analyze a group statistically, and there’s a majority type against which you compare the outliers, that majority is “normative”, or norm for short. Normal doesn’t come into it. The outliers are not abnormal. They’re non normative in the context of the comparison.
However psychology and social science borrowed heavily from the hard sciences and medicine in the 1950’s (for various reasons) and we’re left with a deeply rooted impression that cultural, social and psychological can be understood within a medical model.
When you add in the pressures of the pharmaceutical industry and the vast budgets behind campaigns to convince us that pills can cure everything (who here doesn’t think anti-d’s cure depression?) you end up with a dangerous mindset where:
Anyone different from the stereotypical is abnormal/sick.
This is the thinking that sends people to conversion camps. But it’s the exact same piece of thinking that drives people to fix their bodies, through plastic surgery, drugs, alcohol, corsets, implants, etc, etc, etc.
And the vast majority of the so called majority are much more diverse than anyone can admit, either for fear of ridicule/ being found out/ not fitting in/ drawing attention. Recently there’s a fear of appropriating other identities, or being disrespectful to minorities by “centering” by drawing parallels to our own experiences.
My hope was that men would do what women have done since the 40s, which is push the boundaries of what is acceptable for women to do/say/wear/be.
By comparison to women, men are massively restricted despite their massive privilege. The space allotted to “real men” is very narrow. I remember gay men carrying signs saying “I am a man” and it being a paradigm-shifting message because it was a society-wide trope (and comedy gold) that gay men were not real men.
Every insult directed at men who don’t fit the narrow mould, are insults to women- pussy, sissy, douche, etc. even bastard is just a reference to his mother’s marital status.
It’s long over due that we tackle the fortresses of masculinity, and tear down the walls. And even for those who do fit the mould, it’s toxic, psychologically draining and damaging. So much that is wrong with our society could be righted if we just could allow all men to be men.
Like football? Yes you’re a man
Don’t like football? Yes you’re a man
Shoot em up soldier? Definitely a man,
Pacifist? Definitely a man
Wear trousers? A Robe? A cassock? Shorts? A dress? still a man.
Long hair, short hair, no hair. Still a man
Gay, straight, not bothered? Still a man.
If just the fact of being born with a penis entitled the bearer to full, unequivocal and unconditional membership of the title “man” with no onus to act a certain way, or pretend, or shut down parts of yourself, there would be no homophobia and no transphobia. There wouldn’t need to be.
If the boundaries of MAN stretched to accommodate every type of man, and the definition of WOMAN stretched to accommodate every type of woman, then there would be a massive area of overlap where it would be quite difficult to be certain whether an individual was male or female without checking their pants!
And then it wouldn’t matter for most purposes because we’d be working from a point of respecting individuals instead of stereotypes.
And this could be the moment. We could do it. The world is ripe for change. There are amazing voices coming to the fore. But instead of dismantling the prison bars of toxic masculinity, those who could now make the most amazing differences to the world are set on a road that could destroy all that has been hard won. It’s incredibly frustrating.
My understanding of “cis” is that by re-defining the normative group in the context of the non-normative groups, it makes it difficult to “other” people in the way we always have. It disrupts the implications of normal vs abnormal.
We need to do this. And not just for sex preferences- it’s vital for special needs too as other posters have said.
As long as we keep mistaking the normative for “normal” and trying to conform to stereotypes instead of being free to be ourselves, we are damaging lives.
The thing is that when people react to the word “cis” with wtf and challenge the “ladybrain” concept and say that there’s no one way to be a woman, then they’re achieving what the word is trying to do. They’re saying that human experience is too diverse and individual for labels.
Feminists, and indeed every woman just living her life her own way, have been fighting for the space to be who and what we are. We’ve been fighting for trans rights. We should be on the same side.
The fact that we’re not suggests to me that the trans movement is being manipulated by different motivations than the ones they claim. I am entirely in favor of people being free to be their best selves. But something isn’t right about this. Because if you project what’s currently happening to it’s logical conclusion, the rights of everyone who isn’t a boba fide alpha male will be destroyed.