Could we reclaim "cis"?

[rocketpocket]

I am mainly just thinking out loud here and happy to be told to stop being ridiculous.

I know a lot of the women on here are deeply unhappy with the cis label but I was wondering if it's something we could actually work with.

Cis basically just means a person that identifies as the sex/gender that they were assigned at birth, right?

Wouldn't it be better if we reclaimed the label and had ciswomen only shortlists or ciswomen only refuges or ciswomen only sporting categories?

Perhaps transwomen can be women but they can never be ciswomen.

I think I understand the anger at the definition of "woman" being changed and all the rest. I suppose this is an "if you can't beat them, join them" solution. Is it terrible?

Would 'born female' shortlists work?
No, the word 'women' works perfectly well if the law is applied correctly. There really is no need to change it.

*I suppose they'd just get flack for being not being "inclusive"
Well I suppose sooner or later people are going to have learn to ignore 'flak', aren't they? There's already plenty of examples of people doing that on twitter.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=K7gKLWxYfxQ#

Peach Yoghurt knocks it out of the park on this one again. I may have a little brain crush on her 😁 Had one of those facepalm moments watching it - if "cis" and "trans" really do exist as two separate categories then you automatically have a binary with nothing in between. So "non binary" disappears in a puff of logic and all our sparkly special unicorns disappear up their own digestive tracts.

You can't have it all, lads - either there's a cis/trans split OR there's no binary. You can't have it both ways.

No. No way. My phone keeps trying to correct "cis" to "cod", which is very much more useful and appealing.

Cis was invented to make women into a subset of our own sex. The word - and the concept - can fuck right off.

How can we reclaim something we have never lost?

I am a woman... never been known as anything but WOMAN. I didn't lose anything or add anything to my person to be a woman... I am a woman.

NO! cis is not something we should claim or accept. It's conceding isn't it? Women do not need rebranding to satisfy the egos of a small minority... you either work with woman or find another label for yourselves... like trans it's perfectly suitable.

Ridiculous!

It is not ‘reclaiming’ to accept something that is imposed upon you, it’s capitulation.

Sometimes it just feels like we're fighting a losing battle. Sometimes it feels like it's a battle that has already been lost. At the moment men who say they are women are in women's prisons, women's sports, women's shortlist's and safe spaces and toilets and anywhere else they want to be. It's disheartening.

I am sure a lot of us can relate to thise feelings.

I remind myself as much as I can that all this has been done by stealth. Things are changing. Man Friday and other people are getting this out into the public arena. There will always be a proportion of people saying 'live and let live. What harm are trans people doing?' But there will be a far greater proportion saying 'there is such a thing as a lady penis? Are you shitting me?' The whole movement is based on ridiculous religious beliefs. I think the Jess Bradley story is a bit of a gift just as the consultation is being kept quiet. We just need to keep talking about this and loudly.

Not cis.

And please can we not have patriarchal snark about 'boring' men. Men constrained throughout their lives by toxic masculinity are taught to aspire to certain ways of beine which are often entirely negative for themselves, for the women, children and men who love them and for the culture. There are some social payoffs for them as well of course, but there is also the high suicide and self medication rate. Men are not boring, they are fantastic, and they don't have to put on a dress to be interesting.

Would "born female" shortlist's work?

As soon as one piece of ground is yielded in an attempt for good will, the next piece of ground is immediately targeted. A month or two back it was all about not misgendering by intentionally using wrong pronouns. Now that has been achieved, the use of a name or 'they' is under attack, with the goal being to compel further compliance and obedience.

Seriously, the only way to deal with this relentless shit is to just not buy into it at all. Re read the relationship board and the book Toxic Inlaws and Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That? It's text book stuff. You cannot get to a reasonable solution with someone who is not reasonable, and who is not willing to take equal responsibility for the social contract with you. Having a vagina does not make you everybody's mummy, you do not have to make them happy, you do not have to find a solution they're happy with, you do not have to give more than you ask. You do not have to gain the consent of the other party before you tell them 'no'.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Just no.

As PP have said, the word woman works just fine, as it has done since the dawn of humankind & the beginning of language.

The word 'cis' legitimizes and codifies the idea that gender is something innate. It isn't, gender is a social construct to describe stereotypical sex-roles. If some people want to live their lives in accordance with a gender-based belief system, then I wish them well same as I do people of all other religions. But I object, in the strongest possible terms, to having any belief system imposed upon me; especially by the democratic state to which I belong to as a citizen.

So, whilst I appreciate your efforts to think of a solution that works for everyone, the answer is no.

And more to the point, I will not add to anything that validates this particular sign from the recent SF Dyke March, which I found appalling. I will not be marginalised out of my own identity.

If anything makes me want to laugh in the faces of the more deluded TRAs and say "who do you think you're kidding " it's rhetoric like that. They are women like I'm a duckbilled platypus.

But no I absolutely will not validate this misogynistic ideology.

And it's another reason why I won't refer to them as any kind of woman, or accept the word woman in the collective noun they have adopted. Because it is why we are here arguing our right to even be called women without a qualifier.

I’m not a cis woman, I’m just a woman. I don’t see why girl/woman labelled female at birth because of having a vagina (the majority) should have to change because of a minority of trans women.

I truly don’t understand what’s so important about being labelled a woman? This is mostly due to lack of education on it (I’m genuinely not trying to be offensive or goady!).

Its not about having it for themselves. Its about taking it from women. Stealing it from us, whilst we're meant to simper and let them.

Over

My

Dead

Body

I am mainly just thinking out loud here and happy to be told to stop being ridiculous

Stop being ridiculous.

Woman = adult female human.
Cis is for isomers.

Simply no.

As most have said, we have a perfectly good word: women. Just calling me a woman is fine, I don't need anything else.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And to the next suggestion: 'born female' implies you can become female post birth. Which you cannot. Not to mention that there are plenty of deluded men now claiming that they were born female and their bodies are just what we previously, ignorantly conceived of as male.

Bullshit thread.

Nope.

I'm not cis anything. I don't conform to any gender roles. My sex is female. Just woman will do

Reclaim? Reclaim?

It was never 'ours'.

Why would we 'reclaim' something we don't need and don't want?

Just to please a small minority.

Hell no...do this and they'll only come up with some other stupid f'ing idea that they can get off to.

So. If being misgendered is actual violence, perhaps every time we're called cis that's actual violence?

It is not ‘reclaiming’ to accept something that is imposed upon you, it’s capitulation.

That really is the core of the issue, isn't it. Adopting a pejorative is self harm and submission.

And what would a thread about the verbal abuse women experience without someone admonishing us to think of the poor men and how they suffer from verbally abusing us.

Cis basically just means a person that identifies as the sex/gender that they were assigned at birth, right?

'Assigned' is an awful word. I wasn't arbitrariy 'assigned' the female label. It suggests that babies are born and then, without rhyme or reason, placed into a pink or blue cot and are then brought up and socialised accordingly.

It also suggests that this is a meaningless way of categorising humans as some of us will 'identify' as male and some of us will 'identify' as female. The assumption being that how we 'identify' is based upon our acceptance of the gender stereotypes attached to each sex and that these are fixed and immoveable; inherent; and natural law. They are not.

It also suggests that it is simple and basic luck whether we are happy with these gender stereotypes (in which case we are cis) or unhappy with them (in which case we are trans).

When, in reality, we are identified as male or female for all sorts of reasons largely based upon biological need/differences.

The 'gender' stuff is nonsense. It's about stereotypes and social control. It's essentially a way of shaming women into behaving in certain ways and empowering men to behave in others.

The interests we have/pursue; the alcohol we drink; the clothes we like; the level of personal grooming we are interested in; the way we speak; the careers we pursue; the films/TV shows/music we like; the instruments we play; the art we create; the food we enjoy are down to 'individual differences'; personality; characteristics... some people adhere very strictly to the gender stereotypes associated with their biological sex and we can see them all around us but most of us do not.

This does not speak anything of 'cis' or 'trans'. That is just people.

Believing your gender was assigned to you at birth probably makes it a hell of a lot easier to believe that your reproductive parts, congruent with the sex of all the cells in your body, are a minor birth defect.