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.

It is a balance. If we are talking about guidance to lecturers so they do not upset people then some of it goes over the top but others of it is common sense - just try to be kind to everyone. However my own position is in favour of freedom speech and calling a spade a spade. I am certainly not in favour of all this over the top being far too careful not to upset people stuff.

It's just another flavour of misogynistic bullshit from that generation of Tide pod munching imbeciles.

That's a really good statement, NoIDon'tWatchLoveIsland.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

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.

e) they will be forcing people to out themselves

It's another stick to beat women with.

@YoniAndGuy

Not sure, maybe something to do with isotopes?

No, configurational isomerisation. Not to be confused with conformational isomerism, in which the two forms can interconvert; the equivalent terms in that case are syn and anti.

I have a young family member who is trans. They recently started at a Uni but decided to leave as they felt they were not understood.

(I personally wonder it if was because no one gave a shit and they weren’t special any more)

I agree that the fact that I was born as a woman and identity as such does give me a certain level of privilege. But I find the use of ‘Cis’ offensive and unacceptable.

@EastWestWhosBest

I have a young family member who is trans. They recently started at a Uni but decided to leave as they felt they were not understood.

(I personally wonder it if was because no one gave a shit and they weren’t special any more)

Surely you go to uni for ‘find yourself’ and to expand your mind? The only people who could possibly not be understood are world class geniuses who are thinking way beyond their lecturers.

@EastWestWhosBest

I have a young family member who is trans. They recently started at a Uni but decided to leave as they felt they were not understood.

(I personally wonder it if was because no one gave a shit and they weren’t special any more)

DS says at his university there an absolute obsession with 'passing' and 'passing privilege' which has formed a weird system of segregation of its own, and a sub-ideology about whether it matters or not.

He was an officer of a student union society so had to 'have the training' and did go quite woke for a while. So he's commenting genuinely, I think, and he now thinks on reflection that it's all a bit fucked up.

There's always a privilege to being "normal", majority or predominant though isn't there?

You may disagree with the cis terminology, and you may not see yourself as privileged but as for white privilege and male privilege they are just expressions referring to what's considered the standard through majority or dominance

Not a defender of IDpol nonsense by the way but the deliberate misunderstanding by some of what this could possibly refer to is weird, or do those ITT denying privilege also deny it in those examples as well?

Yes, but 'privilege' is a loaded word here.

Why not replace with 'experience'?

And remove the utterly meaningless term 'cis' as a social signifier.

So, I have 'female experience'. In my case, this includes menstruation, maternity, hysterectomy, workplace sexism, societal misogyny, male-on-female assault - and yes, it IS important to be able to specify the sexes in these hugely significant social contexts.

NoIDon’tWatchLoveIsland I gather that there are also studies that show that if women are constantly affirming their sex (and displaying pronouns is an example of this) then their performance suffers.

Apologies for not linking to a study but I can’t find one right now.

There’s a lot of useful information in legalfeminist.org.uk/tag/pronouns/

@AccidentallyOnPurpose

It's women not being the right kind of women. Nice,inclusive ,welcoming and willing to have their rights trampled all over.

That's what it really comes down to.

Quite. And by definition, any woman who will not meekly roll over and be nice is not cis.

Cis privilege means that you have accepted your lot in life. That as a women you deserve to be objectified and discriminated against. You probably actually those things. If you didn’t you would identify out of them.

(Do I need to put the sarcasm disclaimer on that)

Quite. And by definition, any woman who will not meekly roll over and be nice is not cis.

Someone here a few years ago called it "Compliant Individual Signalling" and that's how I see it. It's an act of submission to this ideology, and/or putting the feelings and goals of a group of males over those of women and girls out of some misplaced sense of what is "kind", and internalised sexism about how women should behave.

Chanjer

You may disagree with the cis terminology,

Accepting the "cis terminology" would mean that I identify with being a gender.

I and others do not identify as a gender.
We are the sex that we are due to our chromosomes.

To label someone in a way that they do not want to be labelled is wrong.

That you and others accept the label is OK, but it is wrong to force your ideology on other people.

@Chanjer

There's always a privilege to being "normal", majority or predominant though isn't there?

You may disagree with the cis terminology, and you may not see yourself as privileged but as for white privilege and male privilege they are just expressions referring to what's considered the standard through majority or dominance

Not a defender of IDpol nonsense by the way but the deliberate misunderstanding by some of what this could possibly refer to is weird, or do those ITT denying privilege also deny it in those examples as well?

Bollocks.

Women are by definition the second sex in terms of how humans are treated and what the default is.

Thats kind of the point of why people see this cis nonsense as so offensive because its trying to pretend this isn't the case.

@OhWhyNot

So I am privileged for not being discriminated against because I am a woman

Well I know that is a load of bollocks

A trans women will be discriminated against because they are trans

I will be discriminated against because I am a woman

So it’s not the same as white privilege. A black person can never have white privileged but a trans women can have male privilege and will have grown up having male privilege

Indeed. and if they are Pip Bundy, they can have built up their career as a man, pop on a dress and be a woman and win awards for being such a high performing woman, and then slip back into man mode when they feel like it. A transwoman will always have male privilage, because they can simply present male, and be treated male

Indeed. and if they are Pip Bunce, they can have built up their career as a man, pop on a dress and be a woman and win awards for being such a high performing woman, and then slip back into man mode when they feel like it.
A transwoman will always have male privilage, because they can simply present male, and be treated male.

Or Izzard, flipping between girl mode & boy mode.

If transpeople just wanted to be accepted as the transpeople they are, there would be no need for the word cis.

As transwomen attempt to cuckoo themselves into the word woman, the need for a word that means woman-that-is-not-a-transwoman still exists.

Just the fact that they have to come up with a word like cis is proof they are not the same as the men & women they say they think they are.
Transpeople are the ones othering themselves using the word cis.

It's not a privilege, it's called reality.

I totally agree.

In the space of only a handful of years, maybe 3 or 4 and only a couple maybe that it really got into the press etc.

The words woman and girl have been redefined in England (my focus as where I live and know most about) by much of the media, by the political parties, by the NHS and a raft of charities.

The new definition (globally?) is 'any human who has an internal gender identity of woman/ girl'.

This was changed without consulting women or girls (globally?).

Some obvious issues.

A child is neither a boy nor a girl by definition until they are able to express a definite and firmly held internal gender ID.

Many people do not have a sense of an internal gender ID. They are therefore not women/ men/ boys /girls. For females, this means that anything looking at or discussing anything to do with girls/ women should not include them in any studies, and the results should not be applied to them. From educational achievement in different areas, to health needs, to services etc. We have seen this with girl guides who changed from sex to gender (and then said they had never ever been a single sex org...?!) and initially said they would have a conversation with non binary girls and advise them that other groups would suit them better. (I think they changed that after a fair bit of criticism).

Luckily, we have been given other names that we can use when we need to. They are very friendly terms and not dehumanising at all. Additionally, the fact that they focus on the very functions and parts of our body that are the reason we've been oppressed globally for as long as anyone knows is not an issue (for reasons).

Menstruator
Vagina haver
Ovulator
People with a cervix
Non men
People without a prostate
People who menstruate or expect to go through menopause
Etc etc

Men however rarely seem to be termed cis, I don't know if male dominated websites get posts about their cis privilege. They are not called people with a prostate, ejaculators, scrotum havers etc. Even on sites which do use the new language for female people.

I think we'll all agree this is fair though (for reasons).

So in short. I think we're very lucky! We've still got words to describe women and girls when it's needed. For example, headline. Systematic rape of Uighar people with a vagina in Chinese camps. That's nice and clear isn't it. Not jarring at all. (Not sure why orgs who use people with vaginas for reports on reproduction, didn't use it for that headline. They used women. A real head scratcher that. Must have been an editorial mistake).

So all in all. We have it good! I think all the terms I put upthread are quite long though and they boil down to one thing. It would be easier just to say something like gash? Hole? Cunt even. After all they're terms that plenty of men are already familiar with, and women too, of course.

It's all very progressive and I can't understand why there is pushback at all

I also like the way over time it went

Women and transwomen
Transwomen and ciswomen
Women and cis women / transwomen and other women. And so on.

I haven't seen that happen with men.

Also note that the word female is now being redefined. And that some transwomen ID as female, as ciswomen, as female from birth.

Lucky we've got the whole vagina/ gash terms though eh!! So no harm done.