Cis

[Fabulosia]

I’m receiving an unpleasant battering on social media regarding the term “ cis women”. Can anyone point me at resources to help me defend my objection to this terminology?

I love this comment Ive seen it on Twitter a few times. We are not a subset of our own sex, there is no such thing as a male woman. And as men who identify as women have so well demonstrated, we are not privileged over them.

Iain Macwhirter@iainmacwhirter
“Cis” is both a term of abuse and a form of linguistic apartheid. It robs women of their unique sexual identity. Intimidates them into accepting the absurd proposition that any man can become a biological female just by announcing it. “Cis” is the most extreme form of misogyny.

If you google the definition, it states that women are either cis or trans, and that cis women are OK with their gender.

Feminists believe that sex and gender are not the same thing (sex is your biology and gender is a set of rules that society has determined are appropriate based on your sex) and that no-one should be punished for stepping outside of the gender rules. Boys should be able to like pink and do ballet. Girls should be able to like blue and science. Those boys and girls do not need any kind of special label.

The implication of 'cis' is that women who don't comply with feminine gender stereotypes are actually trans men, or masculine. Which is regressive. Its the antithesis of feminism.

Its also offensive for any group to apply an identity to you that you reject. That is not a civil rights movement, it is a supremacy movement!

Lots of feminists are totally fine with cis.

Not everyone, obviously, but it can be a helpful descriptor to use for clarity.

I’d rather it was clear in training or documents or whatever if something was about or for cis women and definitely not about or for trans women.

It’s not like people don’t get confused, right? So accepting a small addition in language to make it explicitly clear seems like a good thing in some situations.

For a lot of people, the word "Cis" effectively means "person whom it is OK to use sexist stereotypes of"

It doesn't mean that to everyone, and some people choose to describe themselves as cis so it's OK to use the term specifically and only about those people who choose to use it of themselves.

For anyone who hasn't chosen it, it is offensive to use it of them, claim that is what they are, or insist that if you aren't claiming "trans" then you have to be "cis" - if you (generic "you", not OP) believe in the binary distinction of trans or cis that doesn't require everyone to agree with you. We are allowed to reject the basis of your belief system.

If you reject the basis of the belief system you may believe that effectively everyone is non-binary and there is no such thing as a cis person. That's also a POV that can't be forced on anyone.

Describing people in terms that they themselves find hateful is not OK, so it is very wrong to use "cis" of anyone who doesn't embrace the term.

Really? I've not met a woman that chooses to be downgraded to a subset of her sex and to buy into sexual stereotypes

I'm a woman

I think how we look, the closed we wear, whether we wear make up etc should be personal choices irrespective of sex and refuse to be bound by this backwards concept that if a boy wants to wear a frock he must be a girl. Christ what happened to the 80s and 90s you've all gone back to 1950s old fashioned negative stereotypes

CIS is as insulting as calling me an infidel

I don't believe in gender and do not have one, I will not be a subset of women in order to allow transwomen to take over the category woman.

Do you really think there are loads of women that are ok with CIS?

I’d rather it was clear in training or documents or whatever if something was about or for cis women and definitely not about or for trans women

Don't be so ridiculous. Using this stupid language implies that men are a type of woman. They are not.
If something is about, or for, women then most people would know that that naturally excluded male people who are not any type of woman.

Women don't need 'cis' to differentiate themselves from men.
You don't redefine our sex class to pander to male fantasy.

Women and men.

It’s not like people don’t get confused, right? So accepting a small addition in language to make it explicitly clear seems like a good thing in some situations.

We already have a word to describe the female sex. Women. It's not confusing and everyone knows what it means.

If a group of men want to use that noun to describe some members of the male sex, they need to be told that word is already taken and they need to think again, not force women to change their own descriptor.

That's appropriation, right?

This

I think I read on here sometime ago:

“There doesn’t need to be a name for people who don’t collect stamps”

in response to @Titerama , we can say when things apply to women, when thing apply to transwomen, and when things apply to women and transwomen. cis is unnecessary. If it really needs to be clear we can say female.

I really don’t think it helps transwomen to pretend there isn’t a difference between them and women. I’d be deeply concerned about someone who really thinks they’ve changed sex. The polite thing to do is not point it out unnecessarily. In which case, using cis does exactly the same thing, but accepts the terms under which we cannot define women as a distinct group i.e. including people with other identities, like transmen. That’s not a good thing.

'Women are women. Men are not women' might do as your defence, because you don't need 'resources' to prove a biological fact.

There is nothing unclear to me about the term "woman", @Titerama

Many thanks everybody ; really helpful x

It literally only means a person is comfortable and happy in the body they were born into.

That's all it means.

There are examples of things having a subset in relation to whatever aspect of it is being discussed, everywhere.

If someone is described as a cis man or cis woman, it doesn't mean they aren't primarily a man or a woman. It means in the context of that particular conversation that their subset is relevant too.

Having a horrid feeling subset isn't the word I'm after. Going to find my dictionary.

It literally only means a person is comfortable and happy in the body they were born into

No. It means you believe in the batshit religion of gender identity ideology.

There is zero need to use the word 'cis' when discussing women, because women are female humans.

If you want to pander to the men,
Then use women and transwomen to differentiate.
Women don't need any prefix added.

Stop using it to try to shoehorn a subset of men into a category they don't belong in.

no. Women are not a subset of women. And the use of cis just reinforces the fact transwomen are not women doesn’t it? Because if they were women, they’d be cis, but they’re not. It just proves transwomen can never be included in “women” whatever linguistic tricks they use.

DemelzasGreenDress · Today 17:31
"It literally only means a person is comfortable and happy in the body they were born into."

In that case you wouldn't be able to use it about anyone apart from yourself, or someone who has stated that they are "cis."

It literally only means a person is comfortable and happy in the body they were born into

Also, in the context of women who were or were not comfortable in their sexed body, the correct use of the words cis women and trans women, would both refer to people of the female sex class.
Because there is no such thing as a 'man' woman, no male can ever be female.

So a cis woman would be a female comfortable in her body
And a trans woman would be a female who was uncomfortable in her body.

The very deliberate switch from 'trans identifying man' to 'transwoman' to now 'trans female' has all been done to confuse and twist our language into meaningless nonsense so that actual women can no longer even define their own fucking sex class as separate and distinct to males.

'CIS' OFF

Well, I'm not happy and comfortable in the body I was born in. I would much rather have Elle McPherson's body. But that doesn't make me a subset of anything. I'm still a woman (albeit a deeply flawed one!) My nephew, who was born blind, is deeply unhappy with the body he was born in. He's not a subset of anything either.

Well I'm not happy and comfortable in the body I was born into. I suffer with an autoimmune disease that has had major impacts on my life through my 50 years on this earth. I'm also too short and need to wear glasses so I am not happy in my body. I know for fact that I am a woman though. I don't need a stupid, pointless prefix to differentiate me from a man.

I’m not comfortable or happy in the body I was born into. My legs are too short for my height, my thighs are pudgy and my hair is a disaster. But it is the only body I have, I certainly wasn’t born into the “wrong” body despite its faults.

I also don’t have a “gender identity” that matches my “sex assigned at birth” (another thing I don’t have - sex is observed, not assigned like some sort of lottery).

I am not cis, as none of the various (nonsense) definitions of the word I’ve seen espoused apply to me.

Do not listen to the siren voices persuading you that it a meaningless reasonable adjustment. We become cis and cede the word woman to men.

So how come transwomen are women but women have to be cis women? Using cis would mean surely we’d have to refer to transwomen as transwomen not as women. So we’re back to women and transwomen. Works for me.

Just imagine if we applied this to race! A bunch of white people start identifying as Asian, for example. So then everyone who's actually Asian starts being called cis-Asian. Ridiculous and offensive.

It literally only means a person is comfortable and happy in the body they were born into.

No it 'literally' doesn't. That's a woolly, and frankly even more offensive, description of an already offensive concept. Do you think all people who aren't trans are 'comfortable and happy in the body they were born into'? Maybe have a little think about the people for whom that might very much not be true.

There doesn't seem to be any agreement as to whether cis means "not trans" (and "trans" itself is difficult to define), or "having a gender identity that somehow "aligns with" your sex, even though they are entirely separate concepts".

So it's problematic purely for that reason - plenty of people don't consider themselves trans but also don't have a gender identity. This is further complicated by many people saying that not having a gender identity makes you agender, and therefore a form of "trans".

I know loads of people that aren't comfortable in their body. This has nothing to do with cis or trans, so it's incorrect to say that "cis" means you don't have any problem with your body.

'Cis' also implies that women somehow have some made up privilege due to the very biology used by men to oppress us, over actual privileged men, simply because those men wish they were women.

@Fabulosia if you go into this with the attitude that any and every use of cis is oppressive, offensive, colonialism or pandering to male fantasy, you can be sure of coming off like an obsessive annoyance.

And unlike in the bubble of mn feminism boards, an unpleasant battering is likely.

I’m not interested in getting into a tussle about it, just a tiny reminder of how the real world works out there.