Really stupid question about the term 'cis'

[Spottybluepyjamas]

I've recently become very vocal about the sex and gender debate amongst some of my friends and family and can normally hold my own when someone is telling me that 'trans women are women' and that it doesn't hurt anyone else for someone to be able to switch sex, so why does it concern me.

However, I can't articulate why I disagree with the word 'cis'. In my mind I shouldn't have to give up the right to use the plain and simple word 'woman' without a prefix just to appease men (men shouldn't be front and centre in feminism), but I think there's more to it than that, something more insidious but I can't put it into words. Can anyone help me please?

I find it offensive because there already is a word to describe women. WOMEN. Trans women are trans women. Not women. They are male bodied and likely still have penises

I find it offensive in 2 counts. One it insinuates that wonen and girls identify onto everything that happens to them.

And 2 I refuse to be re defined in someone else's ideology that I don't even believe in.

"Cis" pisses me off.

I'm not a cis woman. I am a woman. It is a biological reality.

The discrimination I face is because of biology. Not how I choose to identify.

Whatever "identify" even flipping means.

Cis can get in the sea, it's offensive as fuck imo.

Firstly as pps have said, if you don't subscribe to genderism then it's an utterly meaningless term and should not be used as a default term.

Secondly it places actual women, the cunty kind, as oppressors of males with trans identities which gives you a situation where for e.g Caitlin Jenner is more "oppressed" than Malala Yousafzai with her cis privilege - an utterly idiotic position by any measure.

By accepting the term "Cis" you are buying into the belief that "Cis" and "Trans" women/men are both types of woman/man. You are implicitly affirming a belief in gender ideology by agreeing to be labelled in this way. I've been called Cis in the past, and I've just said that I'd be happier accepting the term if someone could please explain the thinking behind it coherently and in a way that wasn't self referential, trivial or tautologous. I have yet to see such an explanation. They often seem to boil down to "cis=not trans" and "trans= not cis". Which gets you nowhere. You could as easily say that "kerplonk=not ptui" and "ptui=not kerplonk". You have to have some kind of idea of what the terms mean in the first place before you can say one is not the other.

But there is no coherent understanding of what a woman or a man is in gender ideology. The only attempts at a non sex based definition seem to focus on gender stereotypes which have been associated with the different sex categories. So a "woman" is someone who is submissive, weak, needing direction and a man is someone who is dominant. strong and self directed. The terms cis and trans reinforce these stereotypes. They have to, because there is no other way of doing it. If you are not going to base the definitions on sex, then you have to base them on stereotypes, because, quite simply, stereotypes are what gender is.

To base the categories of man and woman on sex leads to the gloriously facile assertion that ciswomen are women who are women and transwomen are women who are not women, and nothing else. Which is something I would agree with, but which the gender ideologists have to reject, or their whole belief system vanishes in a puff of logic.

That's my current understanding of the issue, and if someone with more knowledge and better reasoning ability than me could rip it to shreds, I'd be very grateful.

Just no.

There is no need to create a hierarchy under the word woman where females become a subset woman. The noun that describes adult human females. It is also being forced by those seeking access to the word.

They often seem to boil down to "cis=not trans" and "trans= not cis". Which gets you nowhere. You could as easily say that "kerplonk=not ptui" and "ptui=not kerplonk"

It might work with an objective definition of trans like "someone who portrays themselves socially as being the opposite sex".

In which case you could say you're a "cis woman". But then men who portray themselves as women are "trans men".

So if we want to accept them as "trans women" then we have to say trans means "a person who is really of the opposite sex" - making it a not-what-the-noun-says adjective like "fake" or "counterfeit".

Which automatically means "trans women are not women". Because "trans" is a form of "not". There's no way we can possibly accept "trans women are women" any more than "fake Rolexes are Rolexes".

We cannot accept cis meaning not-trans, for any definition of trans where "trans women are women" is accepted.

It's ultimately "trans women are women" that blocks it.

To be clear, in the final formulation above, "trans women" would be women who say they're men, which certainly is a subset of women, like the classic "black women", "Jewish women" they come up with.

Women-who-don't-say-they're-men is a reasonable subset of women we could maybe agree to a word for.

Women-who-really-are-women is not a subset of women.

Oops, in the first formulation above, I mean. Sigh. Edit function?

I'll shut up now before I turn into NiceGerbil.

It is used as part of the offensive pretense that ‘trans women’ and ‘cis women’ are just different types of women, ‘because adjectives’, ‘just like black women and disabled women’.
The correct terms are women, and transwomen (no space).
And if a transwoman claims they are actually a kind of woman, in my book they forfeit the right to the courtesy term.

Cis as a prefix means that you're a subset of your own sex.

It's designed so that you can have two subsets to the set woman, transwoman and cis woman. If you don't subscribe to transgenderism, it's a belief system that you simply don't adhere to. You don't believe that men are women.

It's also highly sexist. It's saying that you're not a transwoman. A transwoman is a man who identifies as a woman. So you're actually being defined as 'not a man who...'.

It really is the outside of enough that the entire female sex has to be redefined because a handful of men need you to be defined in relation to them. Or, if you don't believe it's driven solely by transwomen, that both sexes are completely redefined, by a handful of trans people.

The other explanation for this is that it means you're comfortable with the gender assigned to you at birth. The feminist stance is that gender stereotypes assigned to men and women are sexist.

Therefore calling you cis is supposing that you accept sexist gender stereotypes. No thanks.

Generally my answer is no, I'm not a subset of my own sex. All the disbelief in transgenderism is implicit in that sentence.

Since the Maya Forstarter judgment, a legitimate answer is, I don't believe in transgenderism, please respect my legally protected rights.

It's rather like telling a black person that they're "cis black" rather than just black. And that it distinguishes them from people who are "trans black" ie white people who identify as black, but are more oppressed by virtue of being trans.

In terms of gender ideological beliefs, I'm an atheist. Requiring me to use the terminology is like requiring me to take part in group prayers professing a faith and set of beliefs, or to genuflect to an altar. In my case it wouldn't just be a case of requiring me to perform a political and quasi religious belief that I don't hold, it would be requiring me to pretend to beliefs I find actively oppressive and offensive. I don't require others to state a belief in the reality of biology and sex being a fixed fact if they personally don't hold it; I require equal tolerance and social respect extended my way.

And that's before I get into the unpacking of the political content and purpose of the word 'cis', not least that it subordinates female people into a subclass of their own sex class in order to benefit people born male in more flexibility of personal choice, freedom and self expression; it also, unbelievably offensively, implies that female born people must fit certain stereotypes instead of having only their biology in common and being free to do and be anything while still being female, and that any female who obediently uses the political terms and labels themselves in the way this political movement designates, has embraced and accepted a subordinate, submissive position to other politically grouped people in the movement.

And in a nutshell: Fuck. That.

@NecessaryScene,
They often seem to boil down to "cis=not trans" and "trans= not cis". Which gets you nowhere. You could as easily say that "kerplonk=not ptui" and "ptui=not kerplonk"

It might work with an objective definition of trans like "someone who portrays themselves socially as being the opposite sex"

Yes, but then you're basing it all on sex, so that ain't going to run.

The problem is that there is no concept of gender that is coherent and not based on stereotypes. And until someone can actually look at a brain scan and say "Yup. There it is. Your gender. Hiding just behind your amygdala..see?" that's how it will stay.

Oh and it enables the bending and distorting of linguistic reality in order to establish a new belief that male people are just another type of woman; I forgot that bit.

And that's the reason female people are being sexually assaulted in female prisons by convicted male sex offenders, being the victims of indecent exposure in spas by known serial male sex offenders, being told they cannot be homosexual because of causing distress to male people who would like sexual contact with them, cannot have any groups or spaces where male people are not present, and a significant number of female people are now without escape from abusive and life threatening relationships, rape crisis support, access to leisure facilities, access to public toilets, and may have to discharge themselves or exclude themselves from vital medical treatment. So male people can have their preferred choice of all the spaces and facilities with their right to be men or women depending on preference.

'Cis'..... has a very great deal to answer for.

Someone who is 'cis' has a gender identity which matches that of their sex.

I don't have a gender identity because I believe that outdated stereotypes (& gender is just stereotypes) is harmful.

Also, I'm not a subset of my own biological category.

@DancesWithTortoises

I didn't consent to being relabelled.

I'm a woman. Born and biological.

It's up to those not in that category to name themselves but they don't get to name me.

This! Absolutely and completely this! This should be on the side of buses, not some stupidity about a passenger who likes to be naked. I have no problem with people who are gay, trans, don't want a label at all, but I was born female, I both like being a woman and I am proud of being a woman. I don't care what other people want to be known as, just don't try to take away my identity. Oh, and I breastfed my babies, from my nipples, and I was lucky enough that they were born through my vagina.

There's two typical arguments against using 'cis', although neither sound like exactly what you want.

1. That it's not a word you're comfortable with. Of course, that raises the question of why. But putting that aside for a moment, it is reasonable to ask people not to refer to you with words you're not ok with. The logical consequences of this argument are that a) you need another way of saying explicitly when someone isn't trans (which could just be 'not trans'), and b) you also need to accept that some women are fine with being called cis.

2. That 'cis' is unnecessary because women are 'not trans' by default. This is a weaker argument. We often need language to make things clearer; language doesn't develop on the basis of using the minimum possible words, it's for maximising communication. The idea that there is such a thing as a default person is also a hard one to argue in a multicultural society.

Looking at the other arguments in this thread:

3. It's like calling an atheist a heathen. This isn't a good comparison, because atheists aren't proposing that 'human' should mean non-believing-in-god. They're fine being called 'atheist', and they're fine accepting that religion exists even if they don't subscribe to it. If someone wants to propose a word that means 'person who doesn't believe in gender' (which is similar to what Gender Critical means), that's valid but doesn't have the same meaning as cis, especially when there are GC trans people.

4. That it incorrectly implies everyone has a gender identity. This argument can go two ways: either that people don't have a perception of their own identity or that gender doesn't exist as a social construct. Generally these arguments are based on a misunderstanding of what identity, gender & social constructs are.

5. Cis makes women a subset in their own category. The main problem with this argument is that it misuses 'subset' as it applies to set theory (things cannot be sets, they are contained within sets), and the argument is incomplete because it doesn't describe what harm is supposed from being in a subset. VIPs are a subset of concertgoers, sprinters are a subset of athletes, cars are a subset of vehicles - no harm is being done to people within these sets by describing them as such. Considering the set of women, trans women and cis women are subsets, but so are old women, blonde women, tall women etc.

Dead simple: accepting the concept of the "cis" woman is accepting there is some meaningful quality - meaningful enough to supercede the importance of sex and all the physical and social consquences that go with it - that is found in both cis women and trans women but found in no other females and no other males.

When someone is able to define this for me and show why this thing should supercede sex for all legal and social purposes, then I will consider accepting "cis" as having any meaning outside an expression of ideological belief.

Considering the set of women, trans women and cis women are subsets, but so are old women, blonde women, tall women etc.

Way to miss the point. Subsets can only include things that are in the same set. Accepting the concept of trans and cis is accepting that the set of Woman includes male people.

Of course depending on how you define the set of Woman that might be true.

BUT

All the definitions of woman that can include trans women mean changing the definition of woman from the one used to understand and fight against society's endemic sexism, anyone who has truly thought about the impact of redefining the set of women to include males without a parallel redefinition of woman-only provisions, rights and protections to be female-only will reject the label cis as an act of oppression and disempowerment against females.

I understand that some people use it without intending to be offensive - I accept that.

Cis exists to try to establish a world that nobody can claim their sex is a fact about them that is unmodified by their gender identity.

If 'trans woman' were used to mean a woman who is trans, cis wouldn't be needed. Steohen Whittle would be a trans woman, I would be a woman. Christine Burns would be a trans man, Boris Johnson would be a man. No problem.

The political decision to name men as women and women as men is why cis exists. I don't agree with that political decision.

@MsBlue

Thanks for that post. Interesting. But there's also the argument that man/woman are sex based categories, and that allowing the term "cis" denies this. Could you please comment on that?

And surelt your #4 goes three ways, not two. The third way is that the concept of gender identity is so ill defined that it is not possible to identify it in any meaningful way.

@RoyalCorgi

It's rather like telling a black person that they're "cis black" rather than just black. And that it distinguishes them from people who are "trans black" ie white people who identify as black, but are more oppressed by virtue of being trans.

Or telling Korean people they're "cis Koreans" and "trans Koreans" have it worse.

It's just a piece of POMO bollocks that seeks to acquire spurious credibility by misappropriating a piece of scientific jargon.

Not entirely unlike racism.

I have never figured out what is wrong with simply sticking to Women and Trans Women?

To me cis always feels like another way of saying "real"
That seems offensive to both in my opinion.

I do believe that TWAW but my definition of Trans is probably not very PC