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

In other words, "I am what I say I am. You are what I say you are."

Exactly that. I reject this label. I do not wish to define myself to "help trans people". I have nothing against trans people but I am also allowed autonomy and my own sense of identity. If your "reality" involves demanding that other people redefine themselves against their will, then I start to suspect what your motives really are.

@JustTurtlesAllTheWayDown

Objections to the word "cis" are way more offensive than the word itself could ever be.

In other words, "I am what I say I am. You are what I say you are."
If you genuinely believe that people's internal beliefs about their own gender should be respected, then you need to stop insisting other people use labels they don't identify with.

Then don't call trans women men.

That doesn't make sense. Is that a request or are you claiming that is a logical conclusion of your beliefs - compelling someone to do something?

Not RTFT but -

as a chemist, cis- & trans- are used to describe the positions of functional groups on isomeric molecules (nice pic hopefully attached of cis and trans butene-2)

What the Gender Identity movement have done, quite cleverly, is use this to change the original meaning of Trans.

Trans used to mean "trans" in the sense of changing from one thing to the other - transformation, transition - so transsexual was a change from the male to female sex or vice versa. Transvestite = someone dressing themselves in the clothes of the opposite sex, etc.

However, now "trans" has been subtly changed through Gender Theory to mean not a journey from A to B but "trans" in the sense of two things being misaligned (cf. the butene molecule) - so which two things are misaligned? Well, biological sex and gender identity. So what do we call people for whom those two things are aligned? Well, look at the butene molecule - cis.

It's a very clever, very subtle, example of language meaning being changed deliberately to assert an ideology. And there are disagreements about this within the trans community - as some still see themselves as transsexual, in the original sense.

@Evarish

Hibari's explanation is largely right.

A cis woman is a woman who was, to use the gender critical terms, observed to be female at birth.

A cis man is a man who was observed to be male at birth.

There are people who aren't trans who aren't cis (a portion of non-binary people, as well as other genders in other cultures, such as the Tahitian/Native Hawaiian māhū, who do not neccessarily perscribe to Western culture).

It says nothing about how someone presents, if they fit or enjoy stereotypes, what their interests are, or adhering to sex roles.

Oh give me strength. A trans woman was also "observed male at birth" and a transman was "observed female at birth" If it were not for those observations they wouldn't be trans would they. You don't need "cis" in front of a word to describe a person who doesn't become trans. You just keep the word.

Everyone knows what female and male are and everyone knows a woman is an adult female and a man is adult male. Otherwise, what on earth are trans people transitioning to?

Then don't call trans women men.

I will consider people according to my beliefs, as you do to yours. Politeness aside, I don't believe in gender identity ideology, so for me women are female. I won't be using the gender identity ideology term "cis" to self describe, as I don't believe in gender identity ideology like you do, so I don't accept its labels as they presuppose a belief I don't share. Do you see how this works?

Then don't call trans women men

I can call Miranda Yardley a man who is a transwoman. She's fine with that.

If I told Blaire White she is a female she'd tell me I am wrong.

You don't get to choose how other people describe themselves.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

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.

Someone once tried to convince me that Cisatlantic was a phrase in common usage

OK, this is getting meaningful. So "cis" is a deictic term. It has a conceptual meaning but its actual referent depends on who is speaking and where they are standing, Or the direction they are looking in. So it can only mean "people who aren't us" and nothing more. It refers to no other quality or characteristic. So to talk about "cis attitudes" or "what cis people believe, do or feel" is intrinsically meaningless. You cannot be "cisgender" because by definition it means every possible gender other than that of the person speaking. No further definition is possible.

It has no defined referent at all. And that is how it differs from "straight". Thanks to all for clearing that up for me. The penny has dropped.

@NecessaryScene1

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).

Brilliant! I'm plagiarising bits of that at every opportunity.

A quick question Chemistindisguise, I'd always assumed that cis-trans isomerism necessarily involves the presence of a double bond, ie C=C (although not sure about a triple bond) because C-C bonds allow relative rotation. Is that right?

Circular Incoherent Shit

IMHO

Fabulous post Necessary. Definitely not incoherent.

I'm very happy not to call TW men - that's a label they have rejected and I respect that. (I'd appreciate not labelling me with words I dont agree with either.)

There are times in which to be able to stand up for the rights of others, that it is necessary to be specific that TW are male. And that the needs of female people and male people cannot always be combined into one, because people who are biologically female have sex based needs.

I am happy not to call someone a man who does not identify as one. I cannot avoid that sometimes I must refer to biological reality when I require mine to be respected. And if respect was shown to female people with sex based needs then female people wouldn't be driven to the discourtesy so much of having to be plain about sex based realities.

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).

Well said, and an excellently explained post Necessary

It needs to be accepted that not everyone is going to be willing or able to fit into the narrow prism of gender identity, and other people need their freedoms to continue living peacefully alongside it.

Thanks for the praise, but I think I'm mostly just channelling Jane Clare Jones. Do read the link in my post - it's one of my favourite JCJ pieces. It's a bit dense, but there's so much there.

The effect of laying a binary on top of a difference is that it effectively denies being to, or erases, the inferior pole of the binary, because the inferior term in defined only as a negative mirror-image of the superior term, and is not granted reality, or given worth, in itself.

There she's mainly talking the harm of thinking of "woman" as "not-man". And to challenge that you have to "spend a lot of time thinking through what women are".

But it clearly applies to thinking of "cis" as "not-trans" in exactly the same way. It's another binary hierarchy indignity piled on top of the not-men.

I’d like to ask the gender advocates on this thread: I’m fairly sure I know what my sex is (I have the female package of boobs/periods/vulva etc), but how do I know what my gender identity is? I personally feel I don’t have one, but I’m happy to look at a checklist or descriptions to see where I fit best. I really don’t “feel” like a woman, except maybe the times I have bad period cramps. What is it about someone that makes them womanly (or manly)?

Also, how do I know whether or not my gender “matches” to my sex? If even sex is a spectrum, and some arbitrary thing, ditto gender identity, how can even “cis” and “trans” be a thing? Surely then all humans would form a nebulous distribution cloud of random body parts and personality traits, therefore it becomes impossible to discern some axis along which humans might aggregate into two contrasting classes. There’d be no alignment or disalignment between the physicality of their bodies vs the cultured expectations and practices that coalesce around that physicality, if all humans fall into that amorphous cloud of possibilities.

If gender is something “inner”, how do I know whether or not I share it with someone of the same reproductive system type? How does something so “inner” affect how I am perceived and treated as I navigate through the world? How is it possible to build a liberation/equality movement about something so ethereal, and why is it necessary to have a movement based on an inward feeling that has no verifiable outward definition? That might make for an interesting social club, but what makes that inner feeling something of political importance, i.e. affecting power relations between two groups of people? How are those groups defined? Can the oppressors and those who seek to harm me with violence read my inner thoughts, or is there some immutable, outward manifestation about me that is instantly readable and hence how they react to me? Why is my husband read and addressed differently from me when being served in shops, even when we’re dressed similarly in jeans & hoodie, and facemasks covering most facial hair (or lack of) and features? What is that tangible thing that marks the difference 🤔

Good questions. I've already asked the first two. They don't know.

@nauticant

A quick question Chemistindisguise, I'd always assumed that cis-trans isomerism necessarily involves the presence of a double bond, ie C=C (although not sure about a triple bond) because C-C bonds allow relative rotation. Is that right?

@nauticant it's used in any circumstance where the functional groups referred to are fixed in their positions relative to each other and the main group which connects them, as a reference point, and cannot change position. Chemically the cis & trans isomers are the same but the different relative positions of the groups may give them different properties or they may react differently so you need a way to distinguish the two. In organic chemistry, where you mainly see geometric isomerism because of the sheer number of possible organic compounds, yes it's most common to see this as functional groups across a double bond as you say. For a C-C triple bond the functional groups are linear to the bond so there is no cis/trans possible. However you can also have geometric isomers with other organic structures for example rings (groups can be above or below the plane of the ring). And it's also possible in inorganic chemistry - nitrogen-nitrogen double bonds can have cis/trans functional groups attached, and also metals where the ligand structure is planar can have geometric isomers. Thanks for the question

how do I know what my gender identity is? I personally feel I don’t have one, but I’m happy to look at a checklist or descriptions to see where I fit best.
I'd very much like to see this checklist too.

Cis-Women is a subset of Women. Trans Women are the ‘real’ women now.

Transwomen = Women
Natal Women = Cis Women.

C construction
I industry
S scheme
So without CIS, everything else falls down

Thanks for your answers Chemistindisguise. Yes, of course, ring structures. I wonder what it actually is that causes the groups to be fixed in place and rotation not possible, for example in butene? (Well, maybe they're not fixed and flipping is possible but there's just not enough activation energy at RTP.) I hadn't thought about inorganics so that's interesting to know.

I have always been suspicious when scientific concepts having an established meaning get appropriated by people from the social science to create weird partial analogies, which then get turned into a thing.

Then don't call trans women men

Then don't call people who don't believe in gendered identities cis.

See how this works?

@nauticant

Thanks for your answers Chemistindisguise. Yes, of course, ring structures. I wonder what it actually is that causes the groups to be fixed in place and rotation not possible, for example in butene? (Well, maybe they're not fixed and flipping is possible but there's just not enough activation energy at RTP.) I hadn't thought about inorganics so that's interesting to know.

I have always been suspicious when scientific concepts having an established meaning get appropriated by people from the social science to create weird partial analogies, which then get turned into a thing.

You'd have to break the pi-bond, which would take a lot of energy.

chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/54520/why-does-rotating-a-double-bond-break-the-bond

How does it help trans people? No one is suggesting the word trans is done away with. No one wants to erase trans identity (except for some TRAs ironically).

If male and female is assigned AT BIRTH is it a lie to say girls are aborted in societies that do not value girls/women? They have not had anything assigned yet!