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.

No, because trans men are not women, and they can get pregnant.

What a load of bollocks. Transmen are women.

because trans men are not women, and they can get pregnant.

Only women can get pregnant so this makes no sense

No, because trans men are not women, and they can get pregnant.

Because they are female. In my world an adult human female is a woman. Men don't get pregnant, because they are male. So as I said, thanks for acknowledging their sex.

We were talking about the law. So, no "people saying things" does not establish what the law is.

The law makes clear provision for single sex spaces.

Yes

No. Gender reassignment is a permanent process, not something that happens a few times a week, like many of the people under the trans umbrella according to controversial organisations like Stonewall.

To be protected from gender reassignment discrimination

Unless you have a GRC the comparator for an MTF trans person in terms of sex based rights is another male without the PC of gender reassignment. This isn't new information, Dadjoke.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

We were talking about the law. So, no "people saying things" does not establish what the law is.

The law makes clear provision for single sex spaces.

Yes it does, but people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment are not excluded by default from the space which reflects their gender, except for proportionate and legitimate reasons. We are going round it circles.

Gender reassignment discrimination is things like trans people being sacked on the grounds they are trans. Trans rights aren't more important than those of other groups in law and competing rights exist between them and other protected groups.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

No, because trans men are not women, and they can get pregnant.

Because they are female. In my world an adult human female is a woman. Men don't get pregnant, because they are male. So as I said, thanks for acknowledging their sex.

It's just a shame you can't acknowledge their gender identity. It's ridiculous to say sex isn't real (as some do) but equally ridiculous to say that gender isn't real.

not excluded by default from the space which reflects their gender

I didn't say they were. Women's privacy and dignity is a legitimate reason for single sex spaces.

equally ridiculous to say that gender isn't real.

Gender is real, it's an oppressive social construct based on sex stereotypes. I don't believe it's anything more. You have your ideology, and I have the right to disagree and disbelieve. Legally.

It's just a shame you can't acknowledge their gender identity.

My son identified as a cat named pillow for three years. There’s a white woman who identifies as black. If it’s all about identify why can’t I identify as a size 8 Egyptian. Oh yeah, because I’m not.

Men can play dress up all they want, still men.

A transman who is voluntarily pregnant isn't exactly living according to their alleged gender identity Neither is a rapist. They seem to want to have their cake and eat it, and be wholly unconcerned about women's needs let alone wants.

The huge glaring differences in all the opinions on this thread and elsewhere, is that trans women are not being told by any woman

• not to be a trans woman
• not being told what to name themselves
• not being told how to define themselves
• not muscling in any rights such as not being sacked from work for being trans, or saying we are in fact trans in order to get more rights, when we are not.

No woman is doing that. However trans men are:

• telling women how to name themselves. Not just in conversation. On legal forms, on equality forms, on the census, on data gathering the word ‘cis’ is appearing instead of woman.
• telling women how to define themselves e.g. bodies with vagina instead of woman. Not biological
• telling women that they cannot have their rights, as that is ‘hoarding’, trans women should have woman rights is what is being asserted e.g. using safe women spaces

There is a difference. It is not just different opinions. It is, in fact, bullying and eroding women, their name, their rights.

There are women, and there are transwomen. They're from two completely different groups of people.

@ErrolTheDragon

I honestly believe that years ago when men were at the top of the hierarchy there was none of this.
Now women are being listened to, appreciated, gaining recognition and chances denied to them. Men aren’t happy. They have to do something to make them better, more special, more deserving of women.
Ta-Da the trans man! You can’t say anything or it’s transphobic, he gets more opportunities otherwise it’s transphobic, he gets to go to the news and ply the victim and do everything he did as a man but also gets to put women in their rightful place because obviously a man makes a better woman.

There will be years before people see this, years of women’s rights lost. It’s awful.

I honestly believe that years ago when men were at the top of the hierarchy there was none of this.

Well, no. Oddly enough, males then didn't seem so keen to identify into the lower status class. Whether women wanted to identify as men was immaterial - they couldn't.

It's just a shame you can't acknowledge their gender identity. It's ridiculous to say sex isn't real (as some do) but equally ridiculous to say that gender isn't real.

Their "gender identity" is "acknowledge[d]". The problem you are having is that we are querying why it logically follows that, for example:

• acknowledging that someone male experiences gender dysphoria and that they want to be known as Karen means that we should place Karen in a women's prison,

•that acknowledging that someone male has gender dysphoria and now wants to be called Laurel means they should take one of the New Zealand places for the Olympics,

•that acknowledging someone female has gender dysphoria means they should be able to strip search an incarcerated man who objects to being seen naked by a female person who is not his wife.

extract

The plaintiff [Rufus West] alleges that in 1995 he embraced Islam. He states that Islamic law prohibits him from exposing his nakedness to anyone except his wife. The plaintiff also states that under Islamic law, "males and females are identified and determined by the sex that Allah (i.e., the Creator) created them with at birth." …

The plaintiff says that on July 2, 2016, after a visit with a friend, he went to the strip search area to be strip searched under a policy that requires all prisoners to submit to a strip-search after a contact visit. Several officers were conducting strip searches.

According to the plaintiff, when it was his turn to be strip searched, defendant Buhle, a female correctional officer, approached him and ordered him to strip. The plaintiff states that he asked defendant Buhle how she was able to do that and she responded, "I'm a dude." The plaintiff says he looked at the other correctional officers, "to see if this was a prank," but that they avoided eye contact with him. He alleges that at this point, he "started to panic because he knew that Officer Buhle was a female based on her female features (breasts, face, voice and demeanor) and that exposing his nakedness to her would be in violation of his Islamic beliefs ….

The plaintiff indicates that "[i]t was later brought to [his] attention that Officer Buhle is a female claiming to be a male and therefore is afforded all of the duties that the male officers perform without discrimination."

The plaintiff alleges that in anticipation of another encounter with defendant Buhle, he wrote defendants [GBCI Security Director John Kind and GBCI Warden Scott Eckstein] and requested an "[e]xemption from exposing my nakedness to the opposite sex … because it is against Islam." On July 12, 2016, defendant Eckstein allegedly denied the plaintiff's request: "I have reviewed your correspondence and have also discussed your concerns with our Security Director. I have reviewed the situation and the officer in question is a male and is qualified to complete these duties. If in the future you are directed to submit to a strip search by this individual or any other male staff member it is my expectation that you will comply."

From reason.com/volokh/2018/08/15/muslim-male-inmate-objects-to-strip-sear/

I have reviewed the situation and the officer in question is a male

That is a flat lie.

This is a female person who is demanding respect and compliance with their own protected characteristic while showing not only flat disregard for but active, physical breach of another person's.

This is the point I will not any longer use language or behaviours that suggest in any way that I hold a belief that in fact I do not. Other people have rights too. When one person exploits another, in this case in full knowledge of causing distress and totally dismissing their faith, their identity, while demanding validation of their own?

That is not inclusion. That is abuse.

We are not being asked to merely acknowledge.

We are being asked to submit.

I am a vegan of many, many years. I ask that other people "acknowledge" it by leaving the meat off my plate. I don't ask that everyone else eats vegan food while I'm in the room. In fact, I can make polite conversation with someone at a restaurant while entirely ignoring the rare steak on their plate.

My deeply held moral principles do not give me the right to control other people!

The other slight issue is that if woman/girl = a social identity and nothing else (and always has!).

IE an awareness of a (strongly felt) knowledge that a person identifies as a woman / girl.

Then a massive amount of vagina havers aren't women or girls. By definition. Not trans either. So.. nothings?

This minor issue has never been addressed afaik.

@TheBurmundseyIndustrialEstate

I think ‘cis’ is meant to religate women further down the hierarchy of oppression, so hat a transwomen can reclaim the position that he had when he was born male, - being above the women in the social hierarchy - It’s a way to retain the male privilege that they have lost through transition.

I agree "cis" enables TW to retain male privilege by claiming to be more oppressed and it helps to draw attention away from the fact that it is actual women who are oppressed. "Cis" is also useful to the transcultists in another way. By appropriating the cis word, instead of using terms already incommon usage, e.g. transwomen and "biological women" or transwomen and "natal females", "cis" aims to disguise the fact that they are trying to be something they are not and never can be,. Disingenuous on so many levels.

DadJoke
Yes it does, but people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment are not excluded by default from the space which reflects their gender, except for proportionate and legitimate reasons. We are going round it circles.

We're going round in circles because you keep mixing up sex and gender.
Women's spaces were set up based on segregation by sex. The "space which reflects their gender" isn't a thing; or at least wasn't until people like you decided to pretend that sex-segregated spaces were really "gender segregated" all along.
If people want to access a space which is not intended for their sex, this is surely where proof should be needed that it is legitimate and proportionate to allow them to do so.

It's just a shame you can't acknowledge their gender identity. It's ridiculous to say sex isn't real (as some do) but equally ridiculous to say that gender isn't real.

I don't think gender is "real" in the same way sex is. I recognise it as a phenomenon. However, it doesn't actually matter. This isn't about whether gender is "real". If it is "real" it is separate from sex, and therefore should be using different words to avoid confusion with sex, and underhand attempts to remove sex-segregated spaces by claiming it's all about gender.

However, it doesn't actually matter. This isn't about whether gender is "real". If it is "real" it is separate from sex, and therefore should be using different words to avoid confusion with sex, and underhand attempts to remove sex-segregated spaces by claiming it's all about gender.

This.

If someone has no gender then which hosp ward/ toilet / prison should they go to?