Why would the word cis be banned?
I’ll bite because it will keep my hand out of the chip packet.
“Cis” suggests two things in this brave, new world of Humpty Dumpty language.
The first is that biological women are a subset of their own class. It puts the terms “trans” and “cis” as subsets of “woman”; creating the peculiar nonsense idea that the class “woman” contains men. At that point the word woman is rendered meaningless and the idea of woman, as a category, disappears. And once the category of woman disappears as a material reality, the biological basis of our oppression disappears also. If we can’t name ourselves, we can’t liberate ourselves.
The other is the idea that being a ciswoman is some kind of mythical state, where the reality of being born in a woman’s body is in accord with female socialisation. Somehow, this implies, ciswomen are those who never struggle to be allowed the freedom of full humanity, but carry the yoke of femininity without question.
A ciswoman, in this narrative, has no interest in mechanics or power tools, but expresses her deep love for her state through long hair, nail polish and an expert eye for separating colours in the wash.
My material reality is that I am a vertebrate, a mammal, a human and an adult, human female. A woman.