Do women like 'cis'?

[CisMyArse]

Bloody gone and tangled myself in a twitter argument.

I don't like the term Cis, not many here do neither. I should have worded it differently, but I can't let it go. Someone has asked me how I can speak for all women and I don't know how to retort

"I know a lot of people who have never thought about the difference between romantic and sexual attraction, that's fine, it doesn't stop me experiencing the things that I do in the way that I do."

I'm sure you're not doing this at all, but it does seem like you're implying here that if we all thought a little bit more about it we would see that we do actually have a female gender identity, we just haven't realised it yet.

And you do realise that you are ‘othering’ woman when you use the term cis...

Using 'just woman' implies that woman is the natural order of things and trans are something other.. Indeed.

Ilikebread Yeh that's fair, I wouldn't use it to describe someone who told me they didn't want me to use that word. Same as if someone had an issue with the term "person of colour" I would use a term they preferred. Using any term as an insult is uncalled for IMO.

assassinated I think gender ID comes from the brain, because everything comes from the brain. I don't think that men and women have 'different brains' or that gender = the entire brain, the same way I don't think lesbians have different brains from straight women although the 'sexuality' part of the brain is different.

If anyone calls me “cis” I will report them to the police.

I don't see any logical reason why women should be relegated to a subcategory of their own sex.

@loopsdefruit..since you have said that you wouldn't call me cis as I find it offensive , then that is fine.

However there is a difference between woman and transwoman that is not the same as the difference between women and lesbian. The first are subsets of the thebiological group human, and the second is a subset of the group biological female, which is a subset of biological human that doesn't include transwomen, although for most of the time that distinction is not needed to be known and shouldn't matter. However where things get biological then it is a distinction that does matter.

Stonewall's definitions below in italics, my comments in non-italics.

Gender – often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender is largely culturally determined and is assumed from the sex assigned at birth.

A lot of what is culturally imposed on me in the name of femininity is the oppressive shit I've spent my whole life trying to escape from.

Gender identity - a person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or something else (see non-binary below), which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth.

Note the weaselly slide from "masculine" and "feminine" in the definition of gender to the biological terms "male" and "female" in the definition of gender identity. I don't have an "innate sense" of which biological category I am; I simply am that category. Nor do I have an "innate sense" of my femininity - it's just a word used to apply to a bundle of characteristics which some parts of society tell me I ought to have because of my biological sex, but which, for the most part I don't have and don't want to have, because sex stereotypes are a crock of shit.

Cisgender or Cis – someone whose gender identity is the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. Non-trans is also used by some people.

Having established that I don't have a gender identity, and that I experience gender as something oppressive done to me from outside, I think it's safe to say I am not cis. I am just a woman - in virtue of my biology.

TL:DR
I can't speak for all women, but fuck off with the "cis" label as far as I personally am concerned. I am not going to "identify" into my own oppression.

Loops - I'm not sure you get it. I'm happy you labelling yourself cis if cis is something you're happy to self identidy as. You can identify as a unicorn for all i care. Noone really has a problem with that.

What is offensive as most women on this thread have tried to point out is dividing women into trans and cis - calling me a cis woman
People are objecting to being called cis woman as a default, not to others choosing to call themselves that.
Particularly as it describes a feeling many women don't have.

assassinated That's fair, it was kind of a bad example, I mean I don't think that people who don't agree with the split-attraction model are ignorant, or even 'wrong'. There's no evidence either way so at this point it is just a difference of opinion.

myrelationship yes, so I don't want to do that because I think it's incredibly offensive. You can do what you like, and I won't stop you. It's a matter of personal ethics and how you express them.

bread If a person felt uncomfortable or angry with my use of the word cis, I would not use it. I use it about myself and don't have a problem with it. I don't have the right to call you cis if you don't want to be called that, but you also can't tell me not to use it about myself (or about people who I know accept it and/or use it themselves).

Hairy exactly. I don't feel feminine, but I AM female, a woman. I don't agree with any gender construct assigned to me at birth or any other time. But I am a biological woman.

The other thing is that the analogy with "straight" is way off.

Straight does indeed simply mean opposite sex attracted, not gay. I wouldn't take offence at that. I would however (depending on the circumstances of the surrounding conversation) take offence at being referred to as a "breeder".

"Cis" is much closer to "breeder" than to "straight" in the way it is used.

So do you call out your fellow students and your lecturers if they refer to all women (natal or biological in your terms) as "cis"?

Lang I am a feminist yes, although not the type of feminist you would probably describe yourself as. I believe in gender equality, and that feminism is for the benefit of everyone. I am a feminist in the same way a lot of my classmates and university tutors are feminists, and I don't think our feminism is any more or less valuable than yours even though we disagree.

Feminism is by women, about women, for women.

If yours isn't that, it isn't feminism.

This is what I think - I think we have lost a generation of left wing thought to a useless ideology that privileges individuals over class analysis. It calls itself of the left but is antithetical to the left because it ignores extant power relations and will therefore result in the entrenchment of power imbalances in the favour of status quo - that is to say, people who are middle class, people who are male, and people who are white. Although it is not limited to the transactivist movement, transactivism is a perfect example - the top of the pyramid? Oh, quelle surprise - it's class-privileged white males.

I think you are a lost cause and I am wasting my time talking to you, if I'm honest. But the generation after you will need these placemarkers to refer to, to see that these conversations were being had, when they are trying to undo the damage this hopeless generation has done. I'm speaking to that generation, not really to you.

Stick Maybe I haven't got it, but I thought the OP was asking people how they personally felt about the term 'cis'. I personally don't mind it, but I get that some people do. I will use it up until someone asks me not to, and then I will ask them what term they find acceptable. If they don't have one I'd basically compromise with them on one they found acceptable (usually biological or natal is acceptable for many people who dislike cis) or not continue the conversation to avoid upsetting them.

The answer to "do women like cis" is some do, some don't, and some are indifferent. I am mostly indifferent, I use it because I feel it serves a purpose, but I won't continue using it if someone doesn't like it, and I'd never use it as an insult.

loopsdefruit totally agree you should call yourself what you like.

The problem I have is if I don’t define myself as a cis woman then I’m ‘othering’ transwoman and therefore being hateful and a transphobe.

So in your world the transwoman gets to be called a woman (because the term trans upsets her) and biological woman have to be cis woman. Ludicrous

Lang so, the feminist academics are also not feminists unless they agree with you?

Also I don't know what generation you assume I am in, but the age span from the youngest people in my university and me and the lecturers suggest more than one generation.

You are perfectly entitled to feel that I am a lost cause, but it serves about as much purpose as me saying that people who think differently are all old and out of touch. I don't think that, I just think we disagree.

@loopsdefruit could you not perhaps consider that gender ID comes from society? Given that the vast majority of research points that way?

I also work in a university and have never used the term "cis" in my lectures (which are neither in gender studies nor in astrophysics, but which do touch on humans). I have never heard a student use it nor a colleague.

I have noticed that one department in my faculty has the information on their "applying to study with us" page that all members of staff have been trained to work "sensitively" or some such guff with "trans" students. I'm not sure if they haven't had any training to work with women/people of colour/students with disabilities but as all of those three groups are way more common (as well as suffering discrimination and potentially having different needs to "default" white, male able bodied students) I am going to ask them.

ilike I didn't say that it's women and cis women, any more than it should be women and trans women. I think it should just be women. You should only use cis WITH trans, so you can differentiate, otherwise of course it is othering.

I also don't think that if you choose not to use cis you are an awful transphobic bigot. I use cis, because I feel that not using cis but using trans is something that I don't ethically want to do. I don't believe that anyone should have to do what I do, I just do what feels right to me and don't worry too much about how other people are navigating life. Unless, again, they ask me to do something different to make them more comfortable.

loopsdefruit yes I know how to use the term cis, you don’t need to explain.

Do you still use the term cis when speaking to the transwoman you know who don’t like the word trans?

worstofboth I mean, I don't know where it comes from for certain, so it could come from society. I don't think gender ID does though, although gender stereotypes certainly do, so gender expression may changed based on cultural norms.

loopsdefruit I have to say I know lots of transwoman and the term cis is never used.

It’s fine for you to use the term cis for yourself but please god don’t use it when referring to biological woman in general. Most of us hate it (with good reason).

Lang so, the feminist academics are also not feminists unless they agree with you?

Words have meanings. Obscuring those meanings is also an imposition of existing power structures. That you can't see that is entirely my point.

I think the academy (particularly the elite liberal academy) has become so infected with postmodern thought that it has major problems acting, as it does, as a bridge from elite education to policy making. It is so far removed from the real world that is doing considerable amounts of harm and precious little good.

I refer you to this thread as an illustration of the real world damage it does at the coal face.

twitter.com/LucyLoveslife1/status/973852316787933184

As to the point of this thread: cis is a term of patriarchal oppression imposed on women by class privileged white males. Use it for yourself if you wish. Don't bring it anywhere near me.

Also, sometimes I mess up, or say things wrong, and it's important to qualify my statements with "I am cis, so this might be wrong, but this is how I see the issue"

This sentence here demonstrates the true purpose of forcing women to describe themselves, and view themselves, as 'cis'.

It is to ensure that we have no subject position from which to speak, and that we constantly doubt our own thoughts and perceptions, and exist in a state of apology for even voicing them.

'Cis' is a way of displacing women from the subject position of our own category of being. In trans ideology, someone born male has, by virtue of his biology, the right to usurp the position of 'woman' and to speak with unquestioned authority about it, but someone born female, by virtue of her biology, has no right to authority over womanhood. She must apologise, qualify her thoughts and opinions as being those of a mere 'cis' woman, which she acknowledges may be distorted or incorrect and always subject to correction by a male.

When a woman calls herself 'cis', she is signalling her acceptance of her subordinate status, her lack of subject position, in this hierarchy. No wonder so many women instinctively bristle against it.

Online dictionary tells me that cisgender means:

"denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex."

I am not sure what personal identity means, perhaps sense of self? My sense of self is just that of me, I cannot say whether it speaks to the whole of womanhood but common sense tells me it does not.

As for gender. I understand gender to be a set of sex role stereotypes. It certainly isn't something I have a natural sense of. These stereotypes vary depending on time and place so are not set in stone. And I, like every person on the planet I imagine, match up to some of the stereotypes associated with my sex in the time and place in which I exist, and not to others. Some of these may naturally be part of my personality, others I will have been conditioned by society to meet. So the whole concept of "cis" seems illogical to me.