Being told I'm a ciswoman

[DeleteOrDecay]

My first trans related thread, well more of a rant. So please be nice

Got into a 'debate' with someone on a Facebook page I follow about the term 'cis'. Apparently I'm no longer allowed to refer to myself as just female/woman. I am now a 'ciswoman'. So far I've been told:

• that the term 'cis' is a scientific term (oh how I laughed at that one).
• that as I'm not trans or non binary then I am a cis woman and that's that
• that I'm wrong for finding the term 'cis' offensive and refusing to accept being called it.

It's just infuriating. Why shouldn't I be allowed to refer to myself as a biological woman. I don't need a silly, shitty prefix to identify myself I'm a woman, we've existed since the dawn of time.

Passive aggressive hashtag shows the agenda. Stop engaging with them. Let them have the last word; when the last word is snark they lose the moral high ground.

Just go back with "#nodebate" or "#lookicandohashtagstoo"

I wonder if she has sources for her shite about the biologists. Certainly the president of the American College of Pediatricians doesn't think share that view- "Biological sex is not assigned....Biological [sex] is imprinted by our DNA at the moment of conception, and it’s [in] every single cell in our bodies.”

Genuine question. Do people who have adopted cis refer to men as cismen? I have heard ciswomen but never cismen. Sorry if this has been explained.

Couple of others were joining in too. The hashtag guy had nothing to say except the hashtag and that I was somehow proving his point.

Someone else chimed in with this gem:

I didn't say you had used the word normal, or that you are being disrespectful to the trans community. The offence is not in you being born as a woman. It is that defining that as normal makes anyone else 'abnormal', and that marginalises people. It's a subtle language change.

So apparently calling myself a woman=calling everyone else abnormal.

My response was 'quite frankly that's a load of bollocks'. It's so exhausting trying to reason with these people. Especially when they make no sense. I give up.

You won't win the argument, OP. Because these bananas can go round and round for longer than it will take you to weep tears of blood and smash through to your brain from the repeated banging of your head against the wall.

Just tell them that you're agender, as any sane person should be, and it's bloody insulting they assumed you're cis.

If they get cross about that just keep saying "Always remember: respect is key" until they get bored and give up or spontaneously combust. You can win that one!

Tell them, "ok no problem, I'll just call you a man and you call me a ciswoman and neither of us are allowed to be offended at being called something we don't like. job done"

Yes I've said that several times on social media

We need to keep pointing out the misogynistic rape-culture of forcing labels and identities on women. If TIMs want to come up with their terms for themselves fine but don't make ones for us or expect us to use theirs FFS.

Their comment about abnormality is actually logical. If transwomen need a prefix but ciswomen don't then it is setting out ciswomen as the norm. The problem is you wanting to be too nice and not just owning what you're saying that yes, it is (by definition) abnormal to be a transwoman. Abnormal does not have to have pejorative connotations. It simply means it is a small enough minority to not be normal. It's a statistical thing, not a value judgement.

Exactly Lucy.

I haven't replied since my 'total bullocks' comment but I have since been told that I don't get to pick the definition of words unless I have the power to influence the language of the entire community around me and I should read up on language philosophy.

Oh the irony.

That's a good point Kitty. I should have called their bluff by asking what exactly is so wrong about being abnormal.

The 'cis is a biological term' point always amuses me. I mean, technically, that is correct. But I actually studied biochemistry, we use cis to refer to molecular arrangements. Same with trans. Hence why we have 'trans fats'.

I will admit to having at one point been fairly engaged with trans activism, I'm young and that was the circle of friends I spent time with. However, the more I got into it, the more nonsensical the logic and the arguments got. I don't think the term 'cis' was intended to be insulting. I think initially it came out of people accepting that trans women are women and therefore needing another term when talking about the differences between trans women and women born female, which didn't deny that trans women are women. Hence trans women and cis women as opposed to trans women and women.

I think the term has it's place in discussions and academic literature and what have you. In day to day life, it doesn't. If trans women can identify simply as women, so can you! So can I. Nobody should be called out for not using a prefix to state whether their gender identity is in alignment with their birth sex. If something is referred to as a 'woman's issue' and people are offended by that and think it should be 'cis woman's issue' (or even more cringe-worthy, a uterus owners issue), I think they need to realise that it's a woman's issue because the majority of people affected by it are women.

I am a woman - An adult human female
There is no need to add cis

There is a need to add trans because a transwomen isn’t a women they are male so can be a woman

Yeah I don't understand what is so wrong with calling biological women, women and men who want to live as a 'woman' a transwoman. It seems like a perfectly simple way to distinguish between the two.

You could warn them to stop misgendering you, because people have been taken to court for mis-gendering. And others have lost their jobs.....

"Why do they get to be offended and we don't".

They get to be offended because they're the liberal left and have moral superiority, and really good people.

Shit I get why people voted Trump. I still wouldn't, but I get it and that's a sad realization.

Let's assume they just want to be called women and they intend only to bring out the ciswoman when there is a need to differentiate between TW and natal woman.
Why not then describe the TW as TW and not the natal woman as Ciswoman?
If it's just a silly descriptor label...

It is that defining that as normal makes anyone else 'abnormal', and that marginalises people.
So they're happy to define a man with a penis who feels like a woman as a 'normal woman' yet calling born women ciswoman.
But I suppose you can't marginalise 51% of a population can you...

Re marginalization - so why aren't they complaining about disabled people being called disabled. And anyway, that quote basically admits that they know there is a difference, but we should just pretend there isn't, so that they don't feel marginalized. Which also proves that they themselves are transphobic, because trans is so bad that you feel marginalized.

I had this exact moment in the middle of the night.

A guardian report / film about a woman with facial hair and pcos who’d decided to embrace it and grow it for Movember was referred to as ‘a cis gendered female’ in the blurb.

And yet you bet a report on men with breast cancer or enlarged breasts would be referred to as men.

Surely in this situation it’s apt to say woman? Comments were quite frustrating. Any woman who said - ‘err just say woman’ was shouted down and told to go look up intersectional feminism

And as said upthread, so you’d get a trans woman insisting on woman and insisting that a woman is a cis gendered female...

I came in to ask the same question as acorns above. Was thinking the other day that I'd never heard a male described as as cis-man. Is this a thing?