The use of cis gender

[Ollycat]

I've read the trans threads and they've definitely been an eye opener! I would say I'm definitely Spartacus!

Can someone enlighten me on the whole cis thing? When did it start becoming prevalent and who was the driving force behind it? The phrase cis woman is something I find quite disturbing- I am a woman plain and simple- not something which needs a quantifier.

Sorry if this is really basic stuff but am intrigued as to how this sort of terminology has become a "thing" and how it's becoming ok for men to define/ explain to women what it means to be a woman?

Genuinely confused and shocked about the whole thing.

I think this emphasis on what you identify as ignores the social nature of gender. Even if we accept the gender/sex separation, your gendered experiences won't just result from what you see yourself as, they also stem from how the world sees you.

I've seen "born woman". Not sure if that's helpful.....

Leaving aside the fact that I've never heard anyone say "ATM machine" instead of just "ATM", the comparison doesn't hold because in the ATM example adding the word "machine" is redundant because it's repetition.

Adding the word "cis" to describe an actual woman is redundant because the word "woman" is sufficient. Anyone who isn't a woman has their own label and can use that without the need to redefine actual women.

Yes, countess. No matter what I say, I will always be labelled as 'woman' by others. When that meant 'biologically female' I was ok with that. If the meaning is going to change to 'identifies as...' I'm no longer happy to have the label applied. So either I fight against these news definitions, or I look for a new word. That's why I get so angry about 'cis' it's just not a label I can accept. TRA are trying to force women to accept certain labels (based on something as intangible as gender identity) while simultaneously arguing that feminists must not use labels like 'man' and 'male' (based on unalterable physical fact.)

BTW yet to come across a decent definition of the word 'women' that applies to ALL women, that doesn't just boil

Sorry. Boil down to basic biology.

I can't get my head round how a handful i.e. a minority of transwomen who do not accept basic biology think they can dictate to half the world's population what they should call themselves. Even more, how so many women - also clearly confused about basic biology - are supporting them.

Just fuck off.

TheMortificadosDragon it is interesting! One of the reasons I went back to university was so that I could study this. And it was refreshing to discover there are some areas where academic rigour is still important and words don`t mean whatever you want them to mean.

lol @ atm machine stuff

Aren't they called cashpoints or cash machines in the UK usually? They are in my neck of the woods! Of course, I've never asked one how it identifies...

Picking up TheMortificadosDragon's point about the wiki definition there. Much of this hinges on an idea that pretty much everyone has an internal sense of gender that they feel / feel strongly.

Most women on MN when asked this a while back, didn't know what that meant, that they didn't have this feeling, that the things that made them "feel like a woman" were external (periods, street harassment etc).

The TAs (from what I have seen) say this is because women are too stupid to understand their own thoughts and feelings and what is going on must be that women all have this feeling but it's so instrinsic and comfortable that they can't even notice it.

What they NEVER address is the fact that throughout the centuries large numbers of women and girls have felt pretty awful about the whole female / female body / gender roles thing. Girls have employed a range of methods to try and stop their bodies changing from girl to woman, or to slow the change or reverse it, including starving themselves. Wearing baggy clothes so that their female shape is hidden. Self-harm is very common. Fighting to be allowed to do things that are "not for them" - this continues all over the world. etc etc

Anyway. Back to this idea that pretty much everyone has an internal sense of gender. So this idea has been come up with by "trans" poeple - who by definition have a sense of this, as it is at odds with their sex. OK. BUT the mistake is to assume that means that everyone has this feeling. Has anyone asked, done studies? I've not heard of any.

When pressed on what it means, as far as I can tell there are some people with sex dysphoria, the trans-sexuals of a couple of decades ago and before who wanted surgery. Body dysphoria of any type is extremely difficult (as so many women and girls well know!) and I think there was a lot of sympathy for people who felt that strongly that they wanted surgery. And of course, the numbers were fairly small. And from what I understand it was usually gay men - so there was no infringement on women (lesbians), it was mainly in the gay male community.

Now, it's Gender ID - an internally felt thing which is disconnected from the body. And sex is a spectrum, a social construct. While gender is real, and whatever a person asserts.

Thing is, as a middle aged woman, with a couple of kids, if I say I am agender (which would be the correct definition by the new rules, which I don't agree with anyway) and therefore (in the new parlance) trans, does anyone really think that will be acceptable? Will I be accepted as an agender and therefore a trans person? I don't look young and beautifully androgynous, with multicoloured hair, so I'm thinking not. My views are also not compatible with trans ideology. I think they would tell me that I was cis. I think that I would not be allowed to self-identify that way. I think I would be "misgendered".

This is for the young, isn't it? And for men. Women, girls, we don't get to indentify out of our treatment around the world, and we don't get to self-identify anyway, usually.

Who really, is cis, when it comes down to it?

And, given the above points about the lengths girls have gone to, to stop their bodies becoming "grown up" because of all that entails, is it any surprise that girls are donning binders and hitting the gender clinics at an exponential rate. Are the TAs questioning why this might be? Or, as they are mainly shouty people with penises (is that an inclusive way to put it?) do they even care?

How people 'identify' is irrelevant and narcissistic.
I don't care what beliefs someone holds, irrational, delusional or otherwise, so long as their belief system doesn't begin to intrude on my liberty to call bullshit. And so long as I am able to live in a factual, meaningful and representative universe where I am not forcefully categorised with a bullshit prefix like "PersonWhoDoesn'tBelieveInUnicorns" to 'helpfully' distinguish me from those who do.

Gender is like religion.
If a person wishes to adopt a faith type belief fine.

But I am not ok with being assigned a default religion any more than I am happy being assigned a default gender. Cis indeed.

Gender is bullshit. Its a made up myth. It really doesn't exist.

Thank you so much everyone who's replied.

I'm totally with you all on tge identifying thing. I am a woman but don't think I identify as anything other then me! Am totally at a loss with gender fluidity- isn't that just really the same as me wearing jeans to move furniture around and then dressing up to go out? I never realised this needed it's own gender.

Can someone talk me through tge idea that someone presents as male - clothes, facial hair etc, isn't taking hormones but can decide they're a woman? How is that any more real then me deciding I'm a unicorn? Are they seriously thinking that this is ok? And that they can access women only things??? Is this a widely held belief??

Also - with the exception of a very very small minority - how then sex be on a spectrum? And this talk about tge"sex assigned at birth" - that's just mumbo jumbo isn't it??

Sorry meant to add to trans activists just really hate women? Are we not being women in tge right way? It feels like they are trying to take it away from us!

Do not to!

Sex isn't on a spectrum. Sex is binary, and then there are people who have genetic or developmental disorders that places them outside of that binary.

Even gender isn't a bloody spectrum because a spectrum is a line going from one thing to another - eg. from hot to cold. Since gender is made up of an infinite number of attributes, all of which are arbitrarily designated feminine or masculine depending on the culture you're in, with a person having a varying number of those attributes, it's more of a scatter graph of personality.

And yes, from my experience, TRAs (as opposed to people with body dysmorphia/dysphoria) seem to think that women have it easy, and they'd make much better women, and us boring, normal women should just get back in the kitchen and leave them to be fabulous.

I think that the reason this all sticks in the craw of some women and most especially some feminist women is that:

Many women come to feminism when they are girls. I was a feminist before I realised what the word was, and when I heard what it was I knew that was what I was. The reason I felt that way so young was because my external appearance was very feminine - small slight build, long blonde hair, big blue eyes. But that my personality was such that I was interested in "boys" things - I was good at and enjoyed maths and science, playing with lego, reading "choose your own adventure" books etc. My mum was forever making me do ballet and putting me in "pretty" but uncomfortable clothes and fussing over my hair. I reacted to all of this, by developing an idea that girls should not be pigeonholed! And I was a feminist.

When I got older and the constant appraisal by passing men, the catcalling etc started by god I HATED it so so much. And when I was older still, A Level, the fact that people (men and women) reacted with frank disbelief to my taste in films / books / hobbies and the subjects I preferred to study.

Anyway. That was then. I knew it was wrong and I became a feminist.

Now, I suppose I would simply try to identify my way out - I'd be agender. And, the issues that have plagued women and girls everywhere for ?all time, would not be my problem, would they. And the people who are subject to them - well there must be something in them that likes being treated that well otherwise they would identify otherwise, right?

So, I think this is why so many women and feminists in particular are highly pissed off.

And then there is the problem of language. If I want to raise funds for girls in a particular part of the world who are being denied an education, for example, what words do I use? There are none, according to the new rules.

Well I could be agender, bigender, genderfluid and there are probably more options.

Point is, I wouldn't have been some dreary as fuck girl.

I think a lot of this comes steeped in a hefty dose of misogyny. The place of girls in society makes them very likely to "trans" at least socially, into anything but "girl". As if it might protect them.

As an aside, the pictures of MTT why are they so often in really bizarre poses that are beloved of eg shop dummies but ordinary women very rarely adopt? It does all feel like the whole thing revolves around ideas of womanhood to do with submissiveness, high levels of grooming, sexualised clothing etc. The TAs say no no it's not like that at all. But, it seems that way. The pictures of FTT children they are always slathered in makeup and surrounded by pink toys and hairdryers and things. Men seem to be leading this movement, and what do so many men and boys think women and girls are like, what we are? Superficial, interested in hair, makeup, pink, and batting our eyelids at males. Fuck off.

Sorry the "dreary as fuck" girl thing, I was remembering how I felt when forced into clothes and activities that I hated due to my sex.

Of course girls aren't dreary as fuck generally, whether they like lego or ballet or neither or both

TBH I have softened on it now - probably as I'm over 40 and people have much less obvious expectations that they want me to meet in terms of looks etc. Men no longer tell me to smile on the street, women no longer ask me why don't I wear a skirt more often.

Just shows if we're left alone without the expectations we are able to be who we are much more easily. And not have to react against something and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

DameDeDoubtance Does that make my actual cat a cis cat, or a cat cat? What about if he is online, how should he describe himself?

Your cat is feline, not online.

Can you believe I registered purely to make that joke? What am I DOING with my life???

And it's quite a good joke, Hurricanado. Have you been lurking long?

Oh Hurricanado, that's gorgeous!

Now you're registered you might as well stick around

Yes, come in and pull up a chair.

I hope my cat isn't online! She hates other cats. She'd be trolling Catbook and demanding to know why the Rights for Cats movement wasn't doing more to help dogs.

Aren't they called cashpoints or cash machines in the UK usually? They are in my neck of the woods! Of course, I've never asked one how it identifies...

I prefer 'magic money machine'.