Banning the term "cis"

[OlennasWimple]

Apologies if this had already been done, but can MNHQ consider banning the term "cis", given how horrifically offensive so many users of MN find it?

I don't think I need to set out the background and reasoning to this request (but can do so if it would help!)

Please Starspread, please read my posts.

i find it very offensive.
i refuse to use it and would report any post that referred to me as that as a PA.

I love the way you think your contributions were so compassionate and helpful. Many women don't like the term cis being imposed on them by unthinking "progressives" and people with an agenda. This has evidently never occurred to you before. Get over it. Everyday Feminism is that way.

Notwhatiexpected unfortunate cross-posting there. I'm so sorry, that sounds horrendous. If that's the only experience many women on here have of encountering anything related to trans* issues then yes, I can see where some of the confusion is coming from.

Speaker "bakeoffcake you could, you know, work together as humans perhaps?"
Women are very up for "working together" regarding supporting Trans people getting their own safe places, but don't you dare demand access to ours.

It absolutely baffles me that Trans people don't understand women's anger regarding this issue, then I reaslsie it's because they were brought up with male privilege and they can't possibly begin to get it. Instead they turn it all around and accuse us of being transphobic.

I'm usually found on the other side of the discussion in relation to trans issues, but I have to say that I don't like the term cis woman either.

I really don't care how some men want to dress, or if they want to be thought of as women or if they see themselves as women, or if they get surgically reshaped.
But I have to agree that woman is a biological state.
Gender is a construct.

When I say I'm a woman, I'm not saying that I think I comply with what is usually associated with being a woman. Certainly not what many trans adopt as living as a woman, when they change how they act or dress.
I reject that women are supposed to think or act or dress a certain way. As I reject the same idea for men.

I can accept some people rejecting their own bodies, and identifying better with gender stereotypes of the other sex. But it is a gender stereotype problem, and I am concerned that the more we gender stereotype children, the more people will feel they are trans.

And it is a fact that no man can know what it feels to be a woman anymore than I can know what it feels to be a man. Or be tall, or fat, or black, or something I've never been.

I do think men should be braver at this time and push to break gender stereotypes that are associated with men.
And women should be more accepting of men breaking those stereotypes too, as men have ended up accepting for women too.

venus I said I was trying, not necessarily succeeding. A minor difference, but I'm glad you feel better telling me to get off the site. Will do.

Do any of you have any trans friends?

Yes.

I find it offensive. I'm a woman not a cis woman.

It absolutely baffles me that Trans people don't understand women's anger regarding this issue, then I reaslsie it's because they were brought up with male privilege and they can't possibly begin to get it. Instead they turn it all around and accuse us of being transphobic. (sic)

I absolutely agree with this.

The 'confusion' seems to me to be coming from a small minority of trans activists serving their own agenda. The majority of women aren't confused, they're women, some of whom are trans women.

Starspread, I am in it up to my eyeballs, Beaumont society, counsellors, support meetings.

I didn't tell you to get off the site. You're the one pearl clutching, not me.

Many posters need to get a grip on reality. Not all transwomen are out to rape you, abduct your children, infiltrate your platform, fix the next football game or help cover up the chilcot enquiry

9.01 - feel sorry for whoever in MNHQ has come in this morning to this.

Tbh I don't expect cis to be banned, it's not the MN way, but posts applying the term after being asked to desist should be reported and removed.

I'm beginning to think that (as redefining words is apparently ok) we should start calling out behaviours like suppressing talk about common women's bodily functions as gynophobia.

Nobody said trans women were any of those things?

I don't like cis, I don't think it's hate speech though so I'd say let it stand but challenge it when used.

'bunch of transphobic cis women' as said up thread is clearly using it as an insult.

I don't see this as being about fear of trans women. I see it as being important because it's about the definition of a woman, which is central to feminism and to women's issues.

If a woman is anyone who says he or she is a woman, then defining women's issues and women's needs becomes impossible. It means that really important figures like, how many women are killed by men each year, rape statistics, women who don't have a place in refuge centres, women who've won Olympic medals, women in the workplace, women in STEM, all become muddied. WHich is problematic because it makes it much more difficult to see what needs to be done about any of those things.

The term 'cis' implies that women born as women with no desire to be men are automatically happy with their place in society and the gender expectations placed upon them, which is also fundamentally antithetical to feminism.

'Cis' also implies that there's something more to being a woman than your biology and your upbringing - something a little bit indefinable (or verifiable by pseudo-science with an agenda) which makes you a woman. And if we say there is that little bit of something that defines women, then we run into all kinds of problems in terms of defining what women are like, what they can do and what they can't do.

We have a word for a person with a female body who's always had a female body: woman.

That said, I don't know if I want 'cis' banned - I'll just carry on thinking that anyone who uses it is a dick.

Speaker girl - that's just silly hyperbole. I think most of us are perfectly clear that the problems arise from a few trans activists, exacerbated by misogynistic culture which still squashes women's rights too readily.

No "confusion" here thanks Starspead. I know gaslighting when I see it.

calling someone a cis woman means you're telling them they are a Stepford Wife style slave to the patriarchy

No. It's not about Stepford wives. It's about centuries of women having few rights and opportunities because of their 'female brain'.

Ban it. It is offensive and i hate it.
Man/women works just fine.

Real honest question here - why do trans people say they feel like the other sex? Is it not that they feel they should be treated/responded to like the other sex?

Since I only know how being me feels, but I can see differences between how I'm treated and how other people are.

I agree, would support banning it.

Still so many posters who think that objecting to the term 'cis' (when used in the non-chemistry related way) equates to transphobia.

They have no basis for saying that they feel like the other sex. They have no way of knowing that is what they are feeling.