A thought about 'cis'

[Fleek]

I was just lying in bed thinking last night and wanted to share what popped into my head with people. I'm sure this has occurred to others (everyone else?) because it's pretty obvious but I haven't seen it written down explicitly anywhere else.

It's about the word 'cis.' Activists are so insistent we use that term ourselves and are labelled that. I've seen women be very articulate about why they hate it and I've nodded along with everything written. All the stuff about how I don't 'identify' as a woman, I am one because of my sexed body, and about how we don't want to be tied to any gender stereotypes that redefine being female as having swishy hair or loving housework or being submissive, etc. etc.

But there is another layer to it. The mantra is transwomen ARE women. If TWAW, then why would this movement want to force a label on us that actually distinguishes us from TW? Surely that's an own goal?

I think actually, it's a way of forcing us into being seen as/taking the position of oppressors. We aren't being branded as 'cis' in order to separate us as just a different type of woman (like the awful way they use 'disabled woman, black woman, trans woman') or just to change the idea of woman into being a gender and not a sex, it's also about firmly telling us we have privilege and are on a higher rung than TW. If we look at oppression Olympics generally, the only way to be a good citizen is to make supplication by publicly labelling your privilege isn't it? Saying 'I'm inadvertently an oppressor but I renounce my sin.' If you are an oppressor it's your job to shut up and sit in the corner. It's your job to hand over your power. You also need punishing, perhaps, if you take this idea to absolute extremes - threatening with violence, assaulting, eliminating, even? Look at Twitter handles. One vocal American actress had on hers for a long while (it might be there still) - 'I punch Nazis'. It's vital we are segregated by this label 'cis' so we can have some of the power we've gained over the last 50 years stripped from us.

It just interested me to think about it.

Sorry , an extra not crept into the mushroom subset , should be “but not that men and women are subsets of mushrooms.”

@DadJoke

*No, trans men and cis women are not subsets of women

I mean trans men are not a subset of women, sorry. Oh to be able to edit!

I am having trouble with my nots today too, if your not had been ok I wouldn’t have written about mine!!!!

Actually just read your other post, and yes I would have written mine.

Reminds me of the linguistic abomination, "apple cider."

Cider is by definition made from apples. Pears make perry, not 'pear cider' which is as much of a thing as orange lemonade.

@DadJoke

I read the paper. I have a question.
On page 1, it states a definition of gender identity as

a person’s deeply-felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or a male; a girl, a woman, or a female; or an alternative gender (e.g., genderqueer, gender nonconforming, gender neutral) that may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth or to a person’s primary or secondary sex characteris- tics” (American Psychological Association 2015).

On page 2 it then says Every person has a gender identity.

How can this be true? I certainly don’t have a “deeply felt sense” of being anything, so therefore I can’t have a gender identity. Yet it claims everyone must have one.

It’s contradictory. Can you please explain how this works?

@DadJoke

*No, trans men and cis women are not subsets of women

I mean trans men are not a subset of women, sorry. Oh to be able to edit!

It is difficult to lie consistently! 😂

You didn’t answer my question though. You confirmed that there is a connection between transmen and women (all born female, both subsets of women).

Now tell me the similarities between women and men who claim they are women. We’re not talking souls here, or equally unproven concepts such as “gender identity” which most women don’t have. Tell me what characteristics links those two groups which you claim belong together.

[quote GreenAndPurplePeople]@DadJoke

I read the paper. I have a question.
On page 1, it states a definition of gender identity as

a person’s deeply-felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or a male; a girl, a woman, or a female; or an alternative gender (e.g., genderqueer, gender nonconforming, gender neutral) that may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth or to a person’s primary or secondary sex characteris- tics” (American Psychological Association 2015).

On page 2 it then says Every person has a gender identity.

How can this be true? I certainly don’t have a “deeply felt sense” of being anything, so therefore I can’t have a gender identity. Yet it claims everyone must have one.

It’s contradictory. Can you please explain how this works?[/quote]
If you answer the question "are you a woman?" "yes", that's your gender identity. What you attribute that to is unimportant - your body, your mind, it makes no difference. I'm really not sure why you are asking me something so basic - you are clearly capable of looking it up. You can say "I don't have a feeling of being attracted to a particular gender" - that wouldn't mean you didn't have a sexuality.

Gender identity is a very, very straightforward and almost universally recognised concept in psychology. It seems bizarre to me that you have an almost religious resistance to the idea of it. Why would that be?

@AnyOldPrion it's one thing to say you disagree, it's quite another to call me a liar, so I don't see any point in engaging with you.

Of course you won’t engage. You have no rational answer because there isn’t one.

Nice try though!

If you answer the question "are you a woman?" "yes", that's your gender identity.

But that’s not what you originally said. You posted a link to a paper that gives an accepted definition of gender identity. Now, you’ve changed your mind and given another definition. Why is that?

“If you answer the question "are you a woman?" "yes", that's your gender identity.”

Nonsense! I answer yes because I was born female and grew up and until about two years ago, nobody was pretending anything different.

Stop trying to force false language changes on a world that doesn’t agree.

It’s more that the socially defined sets of men and women are two circles that overlap one another with trans being within the overlaps. So transmen and transwomen, are both simultaneously a subset of men and of women.

In barest of terms:
Transmen are biologically women but live socially as or identify as men
Transwomen are biologically men but live socially as or identify as women

Of course, this is almost a religion in a way because the emphasis on identity is being placed on internal belief, not external biology. So it’s upside down to scientific thought since the 1700s.

Hello @DadJoke

What puzzles me is that the difference between men and women is biology, I’m no scientist but I’m not aware of any other differences. So women and trans men share biology and men and trans women share biology. What do cis women and trans women share that makes them all women?

@DadJoke

If you answer the question "are you a woman?" "yes", that's your gender identity.

I think you are missing the point. Please listen because this is so important.

I can answer the question "are you a woman?" With "yes" only if the word "woman" means an adult human female, ie a simple physical decriptor that has nothing to do with identity.

But if you then tell me that "woman" is not a simple fact of the physical body, then my answer to the above question has to be "I don't know, what is a woman and how can I tell if I am one?"

Do you see the problem? By removing the basis on which most so-called "cis" people would call themself a man or a woman, you make the term "cis" meaningless in practice. It's not enough to say what a woman is not (not a female bodied person, not a social stereotype, etc etc), if you really want cis, and indeed trans, to be a meaningful concept you need to be able to say what she is, so that I, who by your definitions cannot be a woman just because I have a female body, know how to tell if I am one or not.

This is not sophistry. This is not me playing word games. This is a real question I am struggling with. It as important to me as a trans woman's gender is to her. If I am not a woman by my body which is the only reason I previously thought myself one, what is it that I could recognise in myself that would make me one?

I definitely agree, OP. 'Cis' forces us into a regressive gender box, then tells we are oppressors because they think we belong in a box marked 'cis women'.
'Cis' only works as a concept if you don't recognise women as individuals, and instead see us as natural conformists to some nebulous stereotypical identity. It's bloody awful and sexist AF.

I will never accept the term and shall correct anyone who refers to me as such. I am an adult human biological female.

@DadJoke

If you answer the question "are you a woman?" "yes", that's your gender identity.

I know what’s bothering me about your answer. There’s a problem with this definition.

The meaning of your question is “Do you have a gender identity of woman?”

However, I would be answering a different question: “Do you have a sex of woman?”

Therefore, you couldn’t know my gender identity that way. They are two completely different meanings and concepts. Just doesn’t work.

To me cis is the Construction Industry Scheme from HMRC (helpful )

Trans women want to transition to being women. Therefore no extra labels needed for them.
And certainly not for anyone else. I find the idea that because someone else wants to join womanhood, they insist on labelling me, utterly offensive and discriminatory.

It's the manipulation of language in three stages stages:

1 Insist that women be referred as 'cis women'.

2 Insist on being referred to as 'women' to differentiate from 'cis women'.

3 Insist on being called 'cis women' so that 'cis women' will be referred to as 'non-men'.

Anyone who uses the term 'woman' to refer to an adult human female will be labelled a transphobe and a bigot.

Ooops. Sentence should read three stages.

Gender identity is a very, very straightforward and almost universally recognised concept in psychology. It seems bizarre to me that you have an almost religious resistance to the idea of it. Why would that be?

Reminds me of a lesson I was taught as a young girl in a religious school. But we were talking about souls. While the concept of souls was almost universally recognized by Christians, this lesson was a way to show that the non-Christian souls were lost to Satan. But then I grew up and stopped believing in souls, but I'm sure that doesn't stop some Christians from thinking I still have a soul and that my soul is lost.

Och the whole gender identity is so much shite.

Unbelievable that anyone spouts this stuff and even more unbelievable that people belive it

Just nonsense

@DadJoke

If I turned up to operate on you, say for a vasectomy, put a camera up your urethra or to conduct a heart transplant, would you let me go ahead if said I feel like a surgeon, I identity as a surgeon, oh but I am not qualified and have no recognised training?

If not why not?

@littlbrowndog

Och the whole gender identity is so much shite.

Unbelievable that anyone spouts this stuff and even more unbelievable that people belive it

Just nonsense

And how much energy do we waste on these people trying to get them to explain their nebulous nonsense, knowing full well they don’t really believe it either. They remind me of the flat earth society - it’s all just a load of posturing to see how much guff they can actually spout as belief and get away with. My 17 yo DS likes to talk to me about imaginary numbers in further maths, almost like he enjoys the complexity making my brain hurt

I know raised. It’s just so much blah blah identity blah blah bleat bleat

Like toddlers and crusts on bread

So tired with the toddlers and the blah blah bleat bleat people

My 17 yo DS likes to talk to me about imaginary numbers in further maths, almost like he enjoys the complexity making my brain hurt

The difference is, 'imaginary' numbers are real, and extremely useful. (I taught my dd the basic idea of imaginary and complex numbers in about ten minutes with a scrap of paper and pencil. )