To ask wtf is cis privilege and why does it need to be tackled

[KateWinceyette]

Seriously, what is cis privilege? My phone doesn't know because it corrected it to customer privilege!

Please explain to me in simple terms for I am simply a woman who doesn't get it.

Yes just another way for men to oppress women. Cis is not a thing, it doesn’t exist in the why it is being used now. We must resist its use in all settings, education, work places etc and journalism.

I wouldn't giggle at the badly made up bloke anymore than I'd giggle at a woman who'd put her make up on badly. I wouldn't be kind if he wanted to use the women's loo, apply for a role specifically open only to women or compete in a women only sport.

This. At that point the badly made up bloke needs to be kind to women by not invading our spaces.

I bet Hamster knows better than to use women’s toilets.

By the way, great posts on here, especially as we seem to be allowed to express our anger more here than on FWR

They are told that they are being kind. And of course being ‘incloosive’ is the gold standard if humanity these days. To not be inclusive to anyone banging on the door demanding access, is the epitome of evil.

@Thecatonthemat

By the way, great posts on here, especially as we seem to be allowed to express our anger more here than on FWR

Wonder why? No eyes on the topic maybe?

@KateWinceyette

if some huge 6 footer comes into your lecture hall and has put on his make up badly and has a dress on don't giggle and just carry on regardless. Be nice to people. We are taking all this far too far and damaging women but if we just remember that core issue - try to be kind to everyone we cannot go too far wrong

Oh god Xenia don't lecture us on being kind

I wouldn't giggle at the badly made up bloke anymore than I'd giggle at a woman who'd put her make up on badly. I wouldn't be kind if he wanted to use the women's loo, apply for a role specifically open only to women or compete in a women only sport.

And as an aside do that many women actually giggle, in general?

Or once again we get our behaviour prescribed for us , just because we are women.

Not only is the presumption I'd laugh at or do/say anything mean to a trans woman offensive(in a place they have every right to be) ,why the fuck does it have to be giggle?

Toffee for the moment..

For example, you are not questioned about what restroom you should be using, denied access to healthcare, misgendered when addressed or spoken about, asked what your "real" name is, or fearful of violence because of your gender presentation

I am misgendered everytime someone calls me cis which is increasingly common. As a biological female I am fearful of violence all the time, having experienced it a number of times - like the majority of women. Always from men btw. I am denied appropriate medical care all the time as it's designed to best treat a male body. I've never been asked what my real name is but I've been called patronising things like sweetie and girlie instead which may have much the same impact. I've never been questioned about which restroom to use, you're right but I do have to join a much longer q than my male OH most of the time as restrooms have also been set up around male needs.

@merrymelody

Are there cis men too?🤔

See Graham Linehan's interview with Mr Menno.

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-dreadful-lie-being-told-to-young

By the way, great posts on here, especially as we seem to be allowed to express our anger more here than on FWR

Don't summon the demons ...

I'm currently marking and YET AGAIN there are papers where students assume that all the scholars they have to study are men - denoted by the pronoun 'he' to describe them, even when they have visibly female names like 'Kate' or 'Judy'. But if they don't know or cannot be bothered checking then it's 'he'.

This really annoys me. The default academic, lecturer, scholar and researcher has a dick. It is not so much a 'microaggression' as a reminder that the university and academia are not my places as a woman - the default is male. But yet, elsewhere, I must be 'cis' and I am assumed to have 'privilege' ALSO those students who do this are oh-so-careful to put their pronouns in their screen names and sig. files.

We fought so hard for our rights. Rights to be "privileged cis". Or, I dunno, just women.
In reality, most of us would be kind and the adults among us mostly don't giggle .
If I stay away from Twitter and certain conversations on here, I find it doesn't actually have much of an impact on my actual life. A small subset of an already small minority who want to have it all, loudly. The trans women I know don't see themselves reflected in the violent trampling and self absorbed cat calling of people on the Internet.

@AccidentallyOnPurpose

or fearful of violence because of your gender presentation

The audacity to say this to women.

Agreed. Breathtakingly audacious. Was Sarah Everard trans gender? Was the woman recently murdered walking her dog in Kent? Were ANY of the women murdered since the start of the year?

No. They were all women. RIP.

Stop using ‘fear of violence due to gender presentation’ as a stick to beat women with. We have enough problems of our own and NOW we don’t even have the right to single sex spaces for sanctuary, safety or whatever reason.*

(Actually we do have this right, according to the Equality Act 2010 but Stonewall have trained organisations to ignore it).

@Oneeyeopen

Apparently this

Cisgender privilege: the unearned benefits you receive when your gender identity matches your sex assigned at birth. For example, you are not questioned about what restroom you should be using, denied access to healthcare, misgendered when addressed or spoken about, asked what your "real" name is, or fearful of violence because of your gender presentation.

Conveniently forgets all the disadvantages of being a woman.
And are trans people denied healthcare?

We don't like in the US.

We don't have 'restrooms' we have bogs and toilets and lavs.

We don't deny people healthcare on the basis of gender in the UK because we don't have nutty religious based laws and we have the NHS.

I think Americans sometimes forget we haven't lost the plot in the UK and that socialism isn't dictatorships and the red menace they've been conditioned to believe.

*don't live in the USA

@memberofthewedding

Just another construct by the bloody woke and BLM brigades.

Stop that now. How dare you conflate the issues raised by this post with the BLM movement? Take your nasty racist agenda and shove it 😡

@FrippEnos

I have always found the biggest irony in this is that it is a group of people demanding how they should be labelled (otherwise it is literal violence), Labelling people in a way that they don't want to be labelled (and getting away with it).

Now correct me if I am wrong but isn't that privilege?

Literal violence, so I hear

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Cis also introduces the concept of a qualifier to the word 'woman'. You can't just be a woman anymore, you must be a type of woman, cis, trans, black etc. Your qualifying word becomes more important than the word 'woman and reduces the validity of 'woman'.

That's a really important point - never thought of it quite like that before.

Yes, excellent point. There are no women any more, just a range of types of women. Balls to that.

Regarding Healthcare, the Green party have stressed, in every interview I've heard, that there is a 3 year waiting list in Glasgow for a first referral, however I think there must be more to this ( although I doubt this is even true).

The Sandyford in Glasgow is the only place I know of in the UK that is ignoring the result of Keira Bell's court case.

www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/scotland-transgender-sandyford-clinic-19558298

I'm this article the clinic admit "it's difficult to find staff" - wonder why?

The materials used on their website include lovely cartoons and videos from childline.

www.sandyford.scot/parents-sandyford/secondary/gender-identity/

Not sure, maybe something to do with isotopes?

@Pedalpushers

This thread is woefully misunderstanding the concept of privilege. If you have any sort of privilege it does NOT mean your life is in no way difficult for any means. Cis privilege does NOT mean being a woman is not hard or that it doesn't come with its own oppression, it literally just means that whatever oppression you experience as a person is not because of being transgender. Same as white privilege - it doesn't mean that every white person has a charmed life, just that their life isn't more difficult on account of being white.

Whether or not 'privilege' should come into universities etc. is a separate discussion, but the concept is VERY simple. There is a word that accounts for the specific hardships of being a woman - it's called male privilege.

For someone who explains the concept so lucidly I'm surprised that you don't question the language used - 'prvilege' - because that's the start point at which the resentment begins. In terms of questioning the concept it's the tip of a very destructive iceberg, but I wouldn't expect you to see that 😎

Similar guidance has appeared in several Russel Group universities, many of which have asked lecturers to undergo new training on 'cisgender privilege' - the advantages afforded someone who identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth

So does this also mean a heterosexual male suffers 'cisgender privilege'?

Eldest son just texted me about some nonsense group chat he'd had to attend at Bristol Uni about micro-aggressions.

Being white, male, "cis" and heterosexual he wasn't going to pipe up with anything. It was apparently dominated by the blue haired brigade competing to see who was the most oppressed.

If you have any sort of privilege it does NOT mean your life is in no way difficult for any means. Trans privilege does NOT mean being a transwoman is not hard or that it doesn't come with its own oppression, it literally just means that whatever oppression you experience as a person is not because of being a natal woman. Same as white privilege - it doesn't mean that every white person has a charmed life, just that their life isn't more difficult on account of being white.

Presumably it works both ways then?

@Xenia

When this all calms down as it did decades ago over some other issues (it comes in phases) we should all just follow basic human and religious values - be kind to others.

if some huge 6 footer comes into your lecture hall and has put on his make up badly and has a dress on don't giggle and just carry on regardless. Be nice to people. We are taking all this far too far and damaging women but if we just remember that core issue - try to be kind to everyone we cannot go too far wrong.

When that six-footer rubs 'her' erect penis up against you on the dance floor, do you continue to 'be kind' then?

Before someone says that this 'never happens', it already has. In a university in the North East. The students' union accused the many victims (yes, we're talking of a serial offender) of being 'transphobic'.

Oddly though, when the same thing came up but with a man from the rugby club, the SU came down like a tonne of bricks. Yet when a male wears a dress they can apparently intimidate, harass and assault as many women as they like.

I really dislike this stuff. There are rumours about at work that we are going to be forced to "state our preferred pronouns". I'm already drafting a statement to give my boss explaining that
a) gender is a term reflecting cultural and social differences and that I don't feel it's relevant to my role in financial services.
b) I'm not the least offended if anyone is unclear about my biological sex & thus uses male pronouns by accident.
c) I'm happy to confirm my biological sex if required in relation to my job
d) given that workplace discrimination against women is not unusual (especially among some of the developing countries I work with) I don't feel I should be forced to disclose this personal detail in an email where people are otherwise unable to identify my sex & use it to discriminate against me.