If I don't want to label myself as CIS, does that mean I deny transwomen their womanhood?

[BoredAndBoreder]

I thought I was a kind person. I know lots of people. I am really empathic and people come to me with their problems as I'm a good patient listener. I am trained in counselling skills. I worry about the world. I've had lots of jobs which are in care. I do consider myself to be a feminist.

Today I dared to say on someone's Facebook post that I don't like being labelled as a CIS woman. I just want to be a woman.
I was told that if I don't label myself as a Ciswoman I am denying transwomen their womanhood.

Is this true? I have to change the label I've lived with all my life. And this is more important than how I treat people? 3 letters?

Given trans women aren’t women, and have no womanhood, I think you are good. You should reply why they are denying your womanhood by telling you any man who has the feelz is a woman just like you.

I was told that if I don't label myself as a Ciswoman ...

When all men start labelling themselves CISmen, we might consider it.

I am denying transwomen their womanhood.

No. They are denying biology.

No of course it isn't true. If TIMs feel like a woman in their head and to them this cannot be denied, and regardless of holding on to their tackle they still believe deep inside they are a woman no one could deny their womanhood. The only thing denying their womanhood is their biology and the problem is they know it too. So they blame women for not being called cis, for talking about their reproductive health, for saying women are oppressed precisely because of their biology and just for being different to them, for being women.

This progressive movement is the most regressive, homophobic, misogynistic piece of nonsense and people are just sucking it up.

Just because you decide not to label yourself short doesn't mean you deny someone else the right to label themselves tall.

A transwoman should not be relying on your description of yourself to define their state of being.

It's ridiculous.

I think you just have to accept that as a cis-woman you don't really know what being a 'real woman' is about. This is because you have so much privilege as a cis-woman. This privilege consists largely of the fact that nobody questions your right to be in the women's toilets. Even if you are a 13 year old victim of forced marriage and rape, you are still so much more privileged than say a multi-millionaire former athlete turned reality star. I guess it's just one of those things.

My reply would be when a transwoman has had 40 years of shitty fucking periods and gone through the pain of having 2/3/4 babies, then they can truly call themselves a woman.

You shouldn’t have to redefine yourself to fit in with someone else’s definition of themselves.

You have the right to decide whether you find words used to describe you uncomfortable and even offensive. Some older people that I work with don't believe "coloured" to be a term of offence, but many darker skinned people may find that to be an offensive word and they are under absolutely no obligation to use that word themselves or to accept it being used about them. I think the connotations with "die cis scum" mean that you are perfectly at liberty to describe yourself in whatever way you choose. By describing you as "cis", trans activists are downgrading you and denying your right to a holistic womanhood that is a combination of experience of life in society as a female, experience of female anatomy, being a female within relationships, and any other experience of being girls or women that can't be boiled down to "I want to play with dolls, I like the colour pink and I want to wear a dress", which is the reductive gender-LARPing shit that some individuals believe grants them femininity.

No.

#easyanswerstoeasyquestions

And you don't have to justify it either, OP. The fundamental principle of the self-identification movement is that personal identity is all there is. If you don't want to be labelled cis, they are committing literal violence on you if they insist.

And that's on their own terms. That's before we get to any feminist analysis of gender as an imposed system of power relations.

Best response: "fuck off and get in the sea".

I'm definitely not a cis-woman either. What a crock of bollocks. (Or not, as the case may be!)

@HelpTheTigers obligatory huffy "some women have penises, get over it!"

MouthandT

All of the above. We women are the original default model. Transsexuals are not women, they are men with gender dysphoria. Cutting off their dicks and taking hormones doesn’t change that. I think it annoys them that they can never be an actual woman, they can just be cosmetically altered to look like one.
Trying to label us as “cis women” while they steal our label of “women” is cultural appropriation, and ironically, typical of patriarchal male behaviour!
(Sits back and waits to be labelled a terf...!)

No, you don't have to call yourself anything to make men happy.

You can't negate something that someone has never had, transwomen are not women, they have no share of womanhood.

Tell the commenter who ticked you off to stop talking utter bollocks.

They want us all to fuck off and be 'cis' so they can own the word woman. They don't want the 'trans' because it upsets their poor, delicate, lady feelz.

I peaked in 2014 when I first encountered being called cis on Twitter. That was it for me, i’m Not being reclassified and downgraded to spare the feelings of a tiny minority who can keep their paws off the ‘woman’ label. It’s mine, it’s yours, it’s ours, not theirs.

LangCleg has it: ‘The fundamental principle of the self-identification movement is that personal identity is all there is. If you don't want to be labelled cis, they are committing literal violence on you if they insist.’

Live by the sword, die by the sword. You don’t need to engage in anything deeper than ‘If you wish me to support your right to self-identity, you must reciprocate. I do not identity as or with the term ‘cis’ - do not apply it to me’.

"fuck off and get in the sea"
This and similar comments I've read on MN, are the reasons why I am now armed with an arsenal of fabulous retorts. I just wish that I could remember them when needed , but maybe I would remember and use them if I had a penis and a superior standpoint (no pun intended) .

I would never win any competitions for tact, HelpTheTigers! I also have a childish and inappropriate sense of humour and a potty mouth. Doesn't go down well in all circles!

Nope, it is biology and reality which denies womanhood to men.

It's just fundamentally incorrect for so many of us. I do not identify with the gender society would impose on me because of my sex, therefore, I'm not cis.

It's their own bloody definition, and I don't meet it.

There's no such thing as cis women or trans women, just women.

It's impossible to apply cis-trans descriptors between something objective & material and something subjective & ethereal. Cis-trans describe relative locations in chemistry/geography.

"Cis" mis-sexes me by putting me in the same category as some people with willies. It also places me as subordinate in the violent gender hierarchy, which I repudiate. Just let me have full bodily autonomy and personhood while recognising I have female biology. Anything else is mere cupcake sprinkles.

God this gets my goat.

So, I'm now identified as a ...

"Cis" woman.

Er... based on what exactly?

Even assuming I subscribe to the meaning ascribed to the term (which I don't) how exactly are the people calling me this determining their analysis?

Are they making this assumption based on my appearance?
I am an obviously born female who (they decide) is presenting as a female. So therefore I must "feel" feminine. Hmmm.

How dare they make this assumption? They know nothing about me. How can anyone know (without even speaking to me) that I identify as "feminine" or indeed that I identify as anything in particular. (Can't say I do. I'm just me)

By naming me "cis" aren't they breaking their own rules about "gendering" a person based on their appearance and not who that person thinks they are themselves?

Can't have it both ways.

And if this is NOT the reason I'm labelled this way, what is?