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.

I am honestly confused as to why so many females (sex term) who identify with being women (gender term) dislike the term Cisgender?

I am a female who doesn’t “identify with being a woman” so the term simply does not apply to me.

If you personally “identify with being a woman” then that is presumably why you refer to yourself as a cis woman but it’s annoying if you then go around trying to force it on others.

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?. I don’t think woman refers to gender, but then what you “identify as” is of no interest to me. Your “identity” when used in this way seems to be a navel gazing exercise that is nothing to do with other people.

So if someone doesn't like 'cis' it's not for you to question that, frankly.

I agree. I will define myself, I don't expect other people to do it within the parameters of a belief system I don't share. It's incredibly presumptuous. You can't have one rule for people to identify as what they like and then impose your meaningless ideological label on people who don't agree.

I’m a woman. I don’t need a new word to describe myself as this.

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

However

Not a great start, OP, to be honest. But okay.

I probably won't be commenting as I can imagine this will be filled with comments

This is what is called 'plopping' on MN, it's considered quite rude.

You can call yourself whatever you please. I am a woman.

As this is all about choosing the terms we wish to be called by, seems odd that anyone would try to apply unwanted terms to other people?

Seems almost like you not only claim terms for yourself and other people and insist that certain words are used or not used, but women are suddenly, after thousands of years, not allowed to use just that one, single, simple, factual word.

You can't claim to define all the terms of identity and forbid other people from defining theirs. It's also very arrogant to impose terms belonging to an ideology upon other people.

It's similar to terms like 'unsaved' or 'heathen' - it's othering, it's causing division and confusion, it's attempting to coerce belief and speech.

In this instance, the word 'woman' is being cast as problematic because it doesn't include male-bodied people. Thus it has to be hacked up, remade as 'womxn', or replaced with 'cervix haver' or 'gestator' or whatever the tortuous term of the day is. All to try to pretend that males can be included in the term 'woman'.

If 'woman' is taken from us, as a word, in legislation, in policy, in everyday speech, we are unable to name sexism, we are unable to protect our rights, we are unable to join together as women.

It's not going to happen.

I think a large part of the population wouldnt even know what cisgender even meant. I didnt til reading this thread. Why do trans women have a problem with that being their identity? Why should those whose sex and gender identity is the same as their biology need a word other than woman?

Surely anyone who is trans knows they are in a minority group and it is something that has to be accepted as part of their situation so others have better understanding of them. It is often clear if someone has been born a biological Male whatever they see their gender and even if they have had hormone and other treatments.

I haven't got any issue with people having differences, everyone is unique and diverse but their has to be balance. An intact biological male who claims they want to be female shouldnt usurp the rights of a biological female. If they have had treatment that transforms them physically and hormonally I might have more acceptance as they have proven their commitment to their need.

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? Shop in stores where clothes are described by gender? Etc.

I'd say this is largely down to the social awkwardness of using 'sex' and 'baby' or 'child' in the same breath. If 'sex' wasn't freighted with other implications, plus residual British squeamishness, there wouldn't be so many knots in the 'gender/sex' conversations.

I've not read the thread, just the op so sorry if it's moved on.
For me cis implies that I identify with a gendered identity, when I don't. I don't identify as a woman I am one. I think the concept of gender identity is regressive and harmful, to men and women. You don't have to identify with a sex, you just are. I'd imagine similar arguments could theoretically be had for race, biologically it's a set of genes that give you your skin colour, but society places relevance to skin colour in a way it doesn't to eye colour and so there are social implications to being dark or light skinned, what you can't do is escape or change those societal expectations by identifying yourself as lighter or darker skinned. For me sex and being female in particular, causes issues due to societies expectations of sex roles. No matter what I look like I can't avoid being subject to the limitations of being female, and the idea that I have any control over gendered expectations is insulting.

Cis means being on the same side as.

Cisgender started as an academic term which both the academics involved and those who brought into the common were clear was for talking on the population level with transgender. Population level, not individuals.

It wasn't meant to be applied to everyone who doesn't identify as trans. The idea that anyone who doesn't identify with our Western-Anglo idea of being transgender is automatically cis is...more than a bit of a problem, before getting into dysphoric people here who don't identify as trans (it's pretty insulting to say someone is on 'the same side as' something that gives them distress just because they don't identify as trans) and people who don't view themselves as on any side of gender due to not seeing gender as a thing or not viewing their self identity through with gender as an important lens.

By the way, scientists and medical professionals have determined this.

Determined what exactly? Science doesn't determine things, it's a process of evaulating evidence.

Gender is originally a linguistics term. It was brought into identity fairly recently and that research is not without controversy.

See we have this little thing called replication crises where many things that are currently being said to be true, particularly about human nature, haven't actually been through the process properly both because of how funding in academia and medicine works has fucked science over and that has led to a lot of lazy psuedo-science.

Psychology is majorly impacted by this. It' joked that the most well researched group is American university students, we know a lot about their minds -- but they're not representative of the entire population even within the US, before even getting to the rest of the world. More and more we're finding that shocker, Western ways of viewing things aren't actually representative of everyone else and basing out understanding of how humans think and work on them causes problems.

So no, they haven't determined anything. Some of them have a pet theories based on a narrow sample size, but that's not the same thing. There is nothing that's been done that actually has determined anything about this.

I don’t like it. It implies being a woman is something I've chosen. It's not. It's a biological reality.

So OP, is your curiosity satisfied? Have you heard anything new or interesting that you hadn't thought of before? Anything you want to push back on?

OP, why are you so determined to force women to accept the word “cis”, when they are telling you in their droves that they reject it?

Are you working on commission or something?

I don’t believe in gender, only sex, anything else is merely personality.

I'm so sick of this debate.

Man and woman denote biological difference.

Anything beyond that is part of the individual personality, surely.

Call yourself anything you like, but stop with the brainwashing that everyone else must adopt a qualifier to enhance the self importance and recognition of those who choose a different path, which no-one is basically objecting to.

We have a centuries old base line that has worked fine up to the last decade or so, it doesn't need amending or improving as it describes a biological difference in fact.

No amount of magickal thinking will change the baseline.

And don't bring in the intersex argument - it's utterly different and we have been asked NOT to bring it into discussions by those affected themselves.

Because people who don’t have a gender identity aren’t cis. I don’t believe in gender identity. I’m not going to describe myself according to the rules of a belief system I do not follow.
Female, adult human = woman. That’s sufficient.

woman means female adult human being. As female is a "sex term" (your words), it therefore follows woman is also a "sex term". It's not about feelings or patterns of behaviour or social expectations.

Haven't feminists been arguing against being defined by gender role stereotypes for donkey's years now? Why are we now being told we are either cis ( gender identity matches our sex) or trans (gender identity does not match our sex) and expected to accept it? It's just so regressive.

because I know many men with vaginas and women with penises

No, you don't. It's very worrying that someone who supposedly works in sexual health believes this (or is willing to claim they believe it for woke points).

I am a woman. A female human. The only thing that makes me a woman is my female body. Gender stereotypes are irrelevant, and the extent to which I conform to them has zero bearing on my sex. Therefore "cis-gender" is deeply offensive and misogynistic because it implies some kind of clinical or scientific connection between sex and conformity with stereotypes that are largely harmful for women. I refuse to be labelled based on this.

Cis is not a term that was created by women for women to use. It has been created by the trans community and they are trying to impose it on women. Nobody likes something which is imposed on them without any consultation.

When a group requires a category to define themselves away from the mass who aren’t affected by whatever it is that creates the sub-category in the first place i.e. transgender, the remaining mass who are wholly unaffected don’t actually also need to adopt a separate name. It’s unnecessary.

Either you’re trans.... or you ain’t.

The problem is TRANS works for what it means,
But the Trans community won't accept it, as they don't want to reveal they are not as presented.

Cis and trans are used in chemistry when a compound cannot be fully described and identified by its chemical name alone. This occurs when two compounds of exactly the same composition and with the same functional groups can be arranged spatially in different ways.

As an example, butenedioc acid can exist in two forms - cis-butenedioc acid and trans-butenedioic acid. The first is commonly known as maleic acid and the latter by fumaric acid.

Butenedioc acid as a name alone is not sufficiently accurate to describe and define the full chemical structure. However, the name maleic acid is.

Likewise, the term ‘ciswoman’ is not needed as the word ‘woman’ is perfectly sufficient to describe every person who is a woman and exclude every person who is not.

In addition, ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ are not simply and neutrally used in gender ideology to divide the category of ‘woman’. It actually stratifies it into a privileged/minoritised relationship which views ‘cis’ women as the privileged class and oppressors of trans women. ‘Cis’ women are viewed as having ‘cis’ privilege and to not acknowledge this is seen as the equivalent of white people refusing to acknowledge their white privilege.

I reject this assertion.

@Helmetbymidnight

i respect your right to call yourself cis.

can you respect mine to call myself woman?

Perfect, Helmetbymidnight

"www.gires.org.uk/resources/terminology/"

Why would any of us need to look up perfectly normal words that we have used every day of our lives in "Gender Identity Research & Education Society", whatever that is?

It sounds like you are the one who needs to be reminded what the words Woman and Female actually mean in the English language.

As you can see in any dictionary, including the Oxford English Dictionary and Cambridge Dictionary

Woman = Adult female human

... where:

Female = Of the sex that can lay eggs or give birth to babies

... again, as you can see in Oxford Dictionary and Cambridge Dictionary.

I'm not cisgender because I don't have a gender identity. Gender identity is not innate. It's just a selection from a range of options, like personality, tastes, likes and dislikes, expression through clothes - these are all aspects of gender that anyone can pick and choose from, and have been doing so since long before you were born - and furthermore, there is no "gender" that innately matches a sex, because this in itself is different in different places and at different times.

Long hair, make-up, high heels and frilly outfits? Typical masculine gender expression of the 1660s. Shaved head - typical feminine gender expression of Maasai women. And so on.

But I also don't match the trans ideology definition of cisgender because my sex doesn't match their stereotyped idea of female gender, but I'm not trans. I'm a woman, an adult female, who likes and wears a range of stuff, sometimes more masculine - sometimes more feminine - sometimes not really either - LIKE MOST PEOPLE!