What's wrong with 'Cisgender'

[ASugar]

As someone who identifies as a cisgender woman and works in sexual health, I am honestly confused as to why so many females (sex term) who identify with being women (gender term) dislike the term Cisgender?

Now I'm not here to tell you what to say, I am genuinely curious.

However, here is my opinion for those who may be interested.

Cisgender just means you are not transgender. That your sex links you your gender and you assign any gender terms (ie. Pronouns, Gender identity, sometimes gender expression but not always, etc). I personally don't like to think that just because I was born with a vagina means I am a woman because I know many men with vaginas and women with penises. Additionally those who don't have a gender identity, then that would mean you wouldn't use women and men as they're gender terms (according to medical professionals). It would make you non binary or agender.

I understand that the term 'Cis' has been used to insult others which for that I am sorry.
My view is that if you can't allow trans women to be accepted in society and identified as women (without the need for 'trans' infront of it constantly) then we should be using cisgender. It is a medical term that professionals such as the NHS recognize. But I understand that is just my opinion.

I probably won't be commenting as I can imagine this will be filled with comments and I don't want to disrespect anyone's views. Just a cisgender woman who wants to understand more...

And as always I would appreciate if you respect my view as I'm going to be respecting all of yours.

@NigellaSeed

Doesn't bother me. I don't understand why people are so scared society is "taking way from" naturally born females. The reality is we are all just trying to give to those that face sooooo much adversity.

If I had to tick a box that says CIS I would, and then be grateful I was born looking like how I identify

Check your privalege

@NigellaSeed

What? Being a woman means one is in the most vulnerable group, and suffers THE most adversity. A person with male genitals has the most privilege!

@GertiMJN

ASugar You wrote being female doesn't always mean you are a woman. Many people who are born female don't then identify as being a woman

Following this logic, I presume this means that when referring to a transgender person, you would happily use the words male and female to reference their innate biology, and man and woman to refer to their 'identity'. E.g a female man or a male woman?

I tried that one a few posts ago. Try writing a sentence about men and women, trans and binary included, using gender teminology! It's senseless!

@NigellaSeed

Doesn't bother me. I don't understand why people are so scared society is "taking way from" naturally born females. The reality is we are all just trying to give to those that face sooooo much adversity.

If I had to tick a box that says CIS I would, and then be grateful I was born looking like how I identify

Check your privalege

But Nigella - what are you identifying with when you say 'born looking like how I identify'? What does that identity consist of? And why can't it be embraced within the norm of a person's given sex?

Thank you ASugar for the links to the GIRES and NHS definitions/inclusive language- I assume these were to support the ‘medical term’ and ‘scientists have agreed’ etc.

I’m afraid they don’t prove that - they just show that for the NHS in specific circumstances it is important to distinguish in language who we are referring to, and that further in some specific circumstances, like a service concerned with gender identity issues, there’s a greater need to be respectful of service users by using terms that are agreed to be neutral.

Language is very important, but those links are not scientific proof that medicine agrees ‘woman’ is a gender term.

I think if you work in sexual health you probably do come across these anomalies of sex/gender quite frequently, and clearly have absorbed the current teaching that there can be gender identity & gender expression different to biological sex. I just hope you haven’t absorbed it uncritically, without thinking if it’s entirely logical and plausible.

Check your privalege

Yes, this is the clever trick, isn't it? With the word 'cis' we magically have created an ideology that posits women as in a more privileged position than males by virtue of sex.

@NigellaSeed As someone said - it could have been this thread or another one, this transgender thing is soooo first world problems.

Ask girls in countries where they are forced to undergo FGM is they feel 'privileged'.

Men and transwomen are the most privileged groups there are.

The reality is we are all just trying to give to those that face sooooo much adversity. You are going to have to quantify that.

Make a nice simple list of the adversities you are referring to. You don't even have to add links, just a list! Just one, single solitary item...

Check your privalege

3 women a week, on average, murdered during lockdown in the UK.

Worldwide femicide which means there are around 150 million "missing" girls and women

Female genital mutilation.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

The reality is we are all just trying to give to those that face sooooo much adversity. You are going to have to quantify that.

Make a nice simple list of the adversities you are referring to. You don't even have to add links, just a list! Just one, single solitary item...

And could you compare and contrast with similar stats for women.

My label is woman. It was my mother's label, her mother's before her and so on down through the centuries.

I don't need a new label. The one that was used by my ancestors is just fine. 'Cis' woman is offensive and unnecessary. If there has to be a label then other people can find one and label themselves. Mine is woman and it's staying woman.

If I find Ciswoman used by any NHS staff to 'classify' me or find it on any documents relating to me, I will be ensuring they never make the mistake of using the term again.

Woman, that's me. That's all you need to know.

By the way @ASugar as a person who is in the NHS, what do they now use if they come across a male or female skeleton and need to say whether it's male or female. Because you can't tell gender from a skeleton - only sex. Male or female, man or woman. No Cis. You can alter the outside, use whatever terms you want. But when they dig me up they'll say 'this was a woman' and they'd be right.

I’m afraid they don’t prove that - I do wonder at that, I too read the NHS link and even quoted some of it, upthread. The lack of care taken to actually be right is staggering. Like we are not expected to have the wherewithal to check or understand!

I don’t have a ‘gender identity’ because ‘gender’ is an utterly meaningless set of stereotypes that has no relevance to me.

I am a woman. Plain and simple.

@ArabellaScott

Check your privalege

Yes, this is the clever trick, isn't it? With the word 'cis' we magically have created an ideology that posits women as in a more privileged position than males by virtue of sex.

Yes, and that's the MRA/TRA goal. To strengthen male privilege and make us WOMEN more vulnerable than we already are! Unfortunately people who stab women in the back really make me feel hateful towards the trans movement. And I don't want to feel hateful. But fancy saying being born a girl is 'privilege'. Does the OP have any knowledge or education of women's rights around the world? There is a special place in hell for women who knife women in the back and sell our hard fought for rights as woman out to MEN.

Oh, it's OK @TheRabbitOfCaerbannog I am quite happy to save @NigellaSeed the hassle of giving us actual proof. I just want to see what they think the adversities are!

Has anyone actually worked out what it feels like to be a woman yet? I'm a biological one, but I'd like a checklist to see if my gender matches. If it includes heels,makeup and tight trousers, I'm a 19th c man.

Many people have stated that they don't agree or believe in gender. Although I disagree I can respect that decision. An additional question I'd like to ask is then why do we have to know the gender of our child?

To explain this, I'm nicking an analogy from someone else.

Female is the observed sex of your new born baby, gender will be the pink blanket she's wrapped in.

Cis is not a neutral descriptor because it assumes a belief in gender. I don't 'feel' female, and I am a woman because that's my biological sex. I find the word cis offensive because it suggests a belief in gender I don't have. I respect others' beliefs; I would ask for my beliefs also to be respected.

I think it’s elitist

I think it is for the privileged few only

I think it is classism

For ordinary people like me we never hear that word being used in our ordinary identity free lives 🤷‍♀️

@Spidder

Has anyone actually worked out what it feels like to be a woman yet? I'm a biological one, but I'd like a checklist to see if my gender matches. If it includes heels,makeup and tight trousers, I'm a 19th c man.

It feels like period pain, to me.

I was born female. I am an adult therefore I am a woman.

I will not change how I identify myself to accommodate others.

I find cis offensive.

Check your privalege

I would like to know from posters telling us to check our privelege, what privilege do you think that females have?

And OP maybe you could expand on this too because yes, the word c*s is often used in connect to privilege.

"I personally don't like to think that just because I was born with a vagina means I am a woman."

But that's literally all the word woman means though. The reason you feel uneasy about it is that you have bought into traditional (harmful) gender stereotypes and internalised them to the point where you can't dissociate the word woman from the stereotypes in your mind, so when you hear "woman = adult human with a female body (usually including a vagina save for very rare exceptions)" you hear "vagina = [insert list of stereotypes]. But that's not what we're saying. We're saying the word woman simply means adult human female, the way vagina means "the muscular tube leading from the external genitals to the cervix of the uterus in women and most female mammals" (oh look, the first dictionary definition I came across also uses the word woman) so saying "I don't like to think I'm a woman just because I have a vagina" makes as much sense as saying "I don't like to think of myself as having a vagina, just because I have a muscular tube leading from my external genitalia to my uterus". Being a woman doesn't mean you have to be or act a certain way, apart from being being female.

"Additionally those who don't have a gender identity, then that would mean you wouldn't use women and men as they're gender terms (according to medical professionals)."

What? This just isn't true. When you are walking down the street and see a man coming towards you, do you need to know how he feels about his gender before you register him as a man? No. You do an instantaneous, automatic and instinctive recce of his external visible secondary sex characteristics, which takes less than a second, and identify him as an adult human male.

In sentences such as "in 19th century England, the majority of workers in textile factories were women"; "In Ancient Greece women had few rights"; had anyone asked them about their gender identity? Of course they hadn't. This is just nonsense.

I used to be OK with the term cis, and think "what's the big deal", but now I reject it. Because the fact is, the very vast majority of people do not have a "gender identity". They just know they have a male or female body, and everyone they have every met has treated them accordingly (for good, bad and neutral) therefore they know they are a man or a woman. I am a woman, but I can honestly say I have no idea what it feels like to be a woman, outside of the experience of having a female body and being treated in a certain way by everyone I have ever met because they can see I have a female body. When I am alone at home I don't go round doing the laundry thinking about how much of a woman I feel.

Indeed, in order to know what "woman" feels like, I would need to know how other women feel about being women AND how men feel about being men for comparison (otherwise how do we know the feelings we assume are "womanly" aren't common to all humans?). But no one can know how anyone else feels.

Therefore, the males who claim that they DO know what "woman" feels like are mansplaining harder than any man has every mansplained. They are claiming to know more about what being a woman feels like than any women!

The reality is we are all just trying to give to those that face sooooo much adversity.

Lots of people face soooooo much adversity for many, many reasons. You give to who you choose to, by your values and your decisions. That does not give you the right to take things forcibly from other women and give them on their behalf because you say your views and beliefs are 'better' or more righteous than theirs. Not agreeing with them or you not knowing or understanding the world through their eyes does not make them 'wrong', does it?

If I had to tick a box that says CIS I would, and then be grateful I was born looking like how I identify

Again, your choice. You do what you feel best. But don't inflict this on other women against their will, or shame them for not being as perfect and righteous as you.

Look.

Either it's wrong to label people in ways they do not choose, identify or agree with - or it's not. Which is it?

Either everyone's identity matters and is important and shouldn't be questioned or shown contempt - or it doesn't. Which is it?

Either everyone gets included and treated with respect and regard to intersectionality and diversity - or they don't. Which is it?

If you want to extend these values to all then compromise and mutual respect is going to be needed, and you're going to have to do a bit of letting others live who don't share your beliefs and aren't going to, but are very happy for you to have and live your beliefs so long as you don't step on their own rights and needs. Different religions have managed this way in the UK for centuries.

If you get into splitting society into those who get to choose their words, be treated with respect, have their feelings taken into account, get to be included - and those who don't. Those who get told to accept their lot and be grateful?

It's positively Victorian.

'Cisgender' is as valid a term as cisplant, cislation, cisport, cisition .
'Transgender is related to 'transition'.
It's a fake construction to try to make women a subset of our own class.

I gave it a whirl in the 80s! Went all Bananarama and then a bit Annie Lennox.

But I found that it was all bollocks anyway and now live in far less gendered clothing as a matter of course than I did with great deliberation back then!

Basically I am to lazy to be feminine!

But apart from the song, and not having heels, fishnets and long hair to flick around, Man, I have no idea how it feels to be a woman!