What does CIS mean?

[Babysharkdoodoodood]

I mean really?
I was discussing (ranting) about this with DH today. Trying to explain why I'm a woman and not a cis female.

Then he come out with this beauty (not being nasty): Doesn't it just mean Cunt In Situ?

I was absolutely howling mainly because it's true

It means "shut up, I'm talking"

It’s negging without a compliment

It means that as a women you identify with and therefore have chosen to be paid less, to be sexually objectified, take on the majority of caring, to be vulnerable to rape, to be sexually harassed, to die in menstrual huts, be married at 9 if you are unfotunate to start your period then, to be denied an education, to be sacked because you might get pregnant, to be talked over in meetings, to be pimped, etc etc. Because if only you identified as trans then none of these things would have happened to you.

No he meant as in women have a cunt. Men don't.

Not negging. He doesn't do that.

Channeling Inner Stepford

Think your husband has made a very valid point 😂

Cis is tautological. It’s the concordant sex-based prefix to the sex-based nouns man and woman. It’s used to legitimise the logical fallacies of male women and female men, as trans is the opposite sex (discordant) prefix to sex-based nouns.

Your DH has it about right, OP. It's an unnecessary, rude label for a woman.

@Babysharkdoodoodood

No he meant as in women have a cunt. Men don't.

Not negging. He doesn't do that.

I got what he meant and laughed. In practice the term is used to belittle people. "What would you know, you're cis" etc

Trans means that you have an internal sense of your gender and it is different to your sex.

Therefore cis means that you have an internal gender and it matches your sex.

There are loads of issues with this.

When it comes to an internal sense of gender ID, it has been accepted that the vast majority of people have this sense. This I assume is based on the experiences of trans people, who have this sense by definition.

I'm not sure that there's ever been a wide study of people who aren't trans, including a clear definition/ explanation of what this sense feels like, to understand if it's true that most people have it.

So that's a bit of an issue.

Most people I've discussed this with don't. The response to (women) who say they don't is generally that they are so comfortable with their internal sense of gender ID that they don't notice it AKA women don't know their own minds.

There is also the phenomenon where any woman who is GC, or over a certain age etc MUST be cis. So not everyone gets to self ID.

the annoying thing is we could have been allies. Break out of the gender boxes etc. Problem is that in order to be trans, in many cases, it seems to rely on men and women in general adhering to sex role in terms of clothes behaviour etc.

What a shame.

Oh and a non trivial point for you and DH.

It facilitates the claim that cis people are privileged over trans.

In practice this means chaps with long hair and a bit of nail varnish get to tell women who talk about male violence etc that they are 'weaponising' their experience against trans people...

I thought the question was more on the origin of the term than the interpretation of it, for example is it an acronym?
Anyhow I looked it up and apparently it’s a chemistry term, where two or more atoms are on the same side of the molecule, and the opposite of the chemistry meaning of trans, where the atoms are on opposite sides of the molecule. Nothing to do with biology or, originally, gender. Every day’s a school day!

Literally just means "not trans."
Opposite prefix.

If you and I were talking about women, it'd be assumed that, as neither of us are trans, we're talking about either both cis and trans women or exclusively cis women.

If two trans women were talking about women, it'd be assumed that as neither of them are cis, they're talking about either both cis and trans women or exclusively trans women.

Being specific is necessary some times. "Cis is a slur," is the same thing as the "straight is a slur, I'm just normal" shit that straight people have been known to pull out, lol.

It facilitates the claim that cis people are privileged over trans.

We are.

How do you know I'm cis?

I assume that reply is to me as you quoted a piece of my post.

Yeah, my understanding is it’s to do with the structure of molecules as they exist on a 3D plane. Cis isomerism is where functional groups are on the same side as each other, relative to the carbon chain, where trans isomerism is functional groups on opposite sides of the carbon chain.

@NiceGerbil

How do you know I'm cis?

I assume that reply is to me as you quoted a piece of my post.

The part after your quote was, yes.

Because someone being cis is generally assumed unless otherwise stated. Well, outside of trans spaces.

Same way I'd assume that people posting here are women unless given indication to the contrary.

We're all anonymous.

We don't share loads of stuff.

I thought it was not on to assume gender but maybe you don't subscribe to that.

I also thought it was bad form to expect people to share in case they weren't sure if weren't out yet.

This is the problem with gender identity subscribers.
No-one’s gender can be assumed, because the individual is the authority of their own identity.
Unless they consider you cis, then they have zero problems misgendering you.

The original Latin definition is “ on this side of”. It was only applied to gender in the 1990s - unsurprisingly by a man.

The original Latin definition of Trans is “a cross, beyond, through”.

Both Cis and Trans could be added as a prefix to many words.

Cis- and trans- meaning this side of/ the other side of only works when speaker and listener are both in the same place; cis-alpine or trans-atlantic depend entirely as concepts on where you are in relation to the Alps, or the Atlantic.

It means you have two functional groups on the same side of your molecular structure. The fact I have neither functional groups or a molecular structure doesn't seem to matter any more then the fact I don't have a gender identity.

I’ve only ever seen 2 posters compare “cis” to “straight = normal” on here and neither were GC indeed they post as trans allies.

What I see called “just normal” is that the vast majority of people would qualify as non-binary as the vast majority of people have interests shared with both sexes.

I see anyone comparing “straight” to “normal” when it’s not in response to anything any other poster says to be of concern.

@Hibari

Literally just means "not trans." Opposite prefix.

If you and I were talking about women, it'd be assumed that, as neither of us are trans, we're talking about either both cis and trans women or exclusively cis women.

If two trans women were talking about women, it'd be assumed that as neither of them are cis, they're talking about either both cis and trans women or exclusively trans women.

Being specific is necessary some times. "Cis is a slur," is the same thing as the "straight is a slur, I'm just normal" shit that straight people have been known to pull out, lol.

It facilitates the claim that cis people are privileged over trans.

We are.

It doesn't just literally mean that though

“Literally” is another of those words that has been given the postmodernist treatment.

Literally just means "not trans." Opposite prefix.

Observe here the genderologists attachment to binaries. Everything is X or not-X.

Genderologists are obsessed with binaries in a way that the GC crowd are not - we know that things are not denoted by their opposite. Women are not "not-men".

This is akin to religions, which often have their own terms for non-believers - gentile, kaffir... People who don't subscribe to the religion are generally not going to be terribly happy with being described like that - even if it's objectively true that they're a nonbeliever - favouring one particular religion's term for them.

Genderology is a bit more complex in that you have the priest class - those who believe they have a "different" gender, then the lay people - those who believe in the religion but believe/assume they have a "matching" gender. So the "opposite" term here is doubling up - it means "not a priest" inside the religion, but they also extend it to nonbelievers.

Maybe it's more like a caste thing - everyone outside the religion is treated as if they were the lower caste of the religion, despite not being part of it.

It's this dual meaning of "cis" that's the problem - it's simultaneously applied to "people who believe they have a gender that matches" and "people who don't believe in gender". If the definition was made super precise - "people who don't believe that they have an inner essence contrary to their sex" - making it more atheist-like - you might get away with it, but that's not a definition you ever see, and it's not how it's used in practice. The definitions seem to have the "gender is a thing" assumption built in.

It's worth noting that we are objecting to being called "cis" because genderologists call non-believers cis. If they called us "trans" we'd be objecting to that too. (Actually, there is some transing of the dead happening, and yes we do object).

It's not using that specific word it's classifying us within your binary. We reject your cis/trans binary. It's a social construct that does not correspond to material reality or our lived experience (as the cool kids call it these days).