#CisIsNotASlur trending on Twitter

[Slythermum]

I'm assuming through the garbled wordfuckery I'm seeing on twitter that this is people who don't understand language who are using that this is in response to:

a) The BBC article about Lesbians
b) Women objecting to the word "cis"
c) Shut up women
d) Dinosaurs
e) Shut up Lesbians
f) fannies

Meanwhile, my daughter has said girls in her class are saying "down with the cis bus" "cis people are evil", "cis should die" etc

OP back to your post and a) the BBC article about lesbians and e)shut up lesbians, I was moved by Kat Howard speaking about exactly this at the weekend. She was one of the lesbian victims interviewed for the BBC article. At university she was attacked by a TW when intoxicated. There were only 4 lesbians in her University LGBT group and 3 of them, including her, were singled out (not the larger number of Bi women). So... a university LGBT group where lesbians are being targeted precisely because they are lesbians.

If somebody says they are GC I would expect them to question what the concept of identifying as a woman means.

Even if CIS wasn't a slur, I don't understand why I can't object to being labelled with a word I don't use for myself and have a personal objection to, without somebody coming along to insist that my feelings on it don't matter and that I am of that label, no matter what.

There is a massive cognitive dissonance there that they're either not seeing or are purposefully ignoring. I reckon the latter.

Millicispud, please share citations for use of cis in gender context pre-1921. Should be straightforward if, as you claim, it's been used that way for over a century. Interested even to see any such usage pre-WWI, or pre-WWII for that matter. Thanks in advance.

@NewlyGranny

Millicispud, please share citations for use of cis in gender context pre-1921. Should be straightforward if, as you claim, it's been used that way for over a century. Interested even to see any such usage pre-WWI, or pre-WWII for that matter. Thanks in advance.

That's going to be difficult, seeing as the term cis in relation to gender was first used by sexologists in the 1990s. (And they meant it strictly in the sense that accepting the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with your sex is healthy and good for an individual while rejecting them leads ro distress and mental health issues.)

I would like to add that the framing of compliance with sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes as healthy and beneficial for an individual should be seen in the context where that was most often discussed, which was male homosexual transsexuals, whose gender-non-conformity often led to social and familial censure. Because stereotypes are typically not as restrictive for males.

If you're female, sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes work against you much more markedly. So if you're gender-non-conforming you risk social or familial censure, but free yourself from stereotypes holding you back. And if you're gender-conforming, you're living within the confines of those stereotypes, which can be punishing on an individual level while but not on a social level.

That framing of cis as good and healthy then only works if you don't consider the effect stereotypes have on women.

Thanks, Charlie - I couldn't find a citation pre-1994. I did a search after posting as I was so surprised to read it had been around for over 100 years!

It’s typical of children pushing the buttons, isn’t it?

They know it’s a slur; they know many people reject it. They will keep pushing it just to be aggravating.

[quote Millicispud]@Iveputmyselfonthenaughtystep

It's weird being the only sane person in the thread.

Feeling like Winston from 1984 here.[/quote]
Yet you give no explanation, no definition, no logic.

It's quite typical of both gender ideology and posters who think they are being clever.

Somehow I don't think you are either.

Demanding a yes/no answer is sometimes rather bullying, though. I had a bulk letter from the TV licence people years ago that asked, "Are you still watching TV without a licence?" and complained at the wording. Truthfully my answer was no, because I wasn't watching TV at all and didn't have it need one. The person I spoke to didn't get the problem until I framed it as, "How would you feel if I asked you, 'Are you still shoplifting?' "

In this case, I would have to say no, because I don't "identify" as a woman, I just am one. Likewise the prefix cis because no prefix is needed. If I prefixed woman with anything at all, it would only be to refine what I am by perhaps race, nationality, education, profession, disability, religion or age group, if any of those were relevant in the context. Vaccination status, even! But never cis.

Oh, thank you, Samphire, I could prefix woman with sane, of course! Quite a claim, but I'm currently identifying as clinging to rationality.

I view cis much in the same way I might view being labelled infidel. It's a label coming from a group whose belief systems I do not share. I defend their right to hold their beliefs and respect them but I would not apply the label to myself because it does not have any universal meaning in the way the word woman has. Or used to have.

@Iveputmyselfonthenaughtystep

“Oh gosh, it is funny watching one person try and explain nonsense to a whole group of other people as if they're the ones who are dense.
Why make everything so complicated? Humans are binary. Sex is binary. Wear what you like. Use whatever proper noun for yourself you like, but stop trying to bend the world around to fit your notions.

Don't you get tired of the doublethink and wrong think?“

Exactly! I am just shaking my head reading the nonsense.

One of my favorite English words is “gobbledegook “ .. that’s what pops into my head whenever I hear “cis” or anything to do with “gender identity “… I’m trying to work thru the word salad of pro cis explanations in this thread and all this nonsense of them trying to explain what gender identity is and why we need to be ok being called “cis”. I’ve yet to see a clear explanation.

Funny how every single explanation of gender is based on sexist stereotypes and performative femininity and masculinity.

Pink is for girls and blue for boys? Wow.. so steeped in their own nonsense they just are amazingly regressive.

And when trans women start identifying as “cis”?

Then what words will women have to describe an actual biological woman? Since saying woman is not appropriate or enough to say you are a biological woman.

@MarshmallowSwede

And when trans women start identifying as “cis”?

Then what words will women have to describe an actual biological woman? Since saying woman is not appropriate or enough to say you are a biological woman.

People say this sounds ridiculous but they have started taking the word female, which is a biological descriptor of sex. I would have said that is a preposterous idea if people had said that would happen.

Already been claimed, iirc! MB, possibly!

@MarshmallowSwede

And when trans women start identifying as “cis”?

Then what words will women have to describe an actual biological woman? Since saying woman is not appropriate or enough to say you are a biological woman.

There has already been transitioned males declaring themselves ‘cis’. I believe I Willoughby has described themselves this way.

But so what? How you identify is irrelevant to anyone asking isn't it? What you are is the important question.

I can't say anyone has ever asked me how I identify? Not sure how I'd answer tbh!

Looping back to the above, it reminds me as this stuff often does of Alice in Wonderland.

"You are sad," the Knight said in an anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to comfort you."
"Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
"It's long," said the Knight, "but very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'."
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed.
"That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man'."
"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways And Means': but that's only what it's called, you know!"
"Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On A Gate': and the tune's my own invention."

And the song itself is also vaguely reminiscent of the way some people drop in to "debate" here:

I'll tell thee everything I can:
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.

He said "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread –
A trifle, if you please."

But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.

(ramblings continue, with the narrator thinking far too deeply to actually listen to the person he started conversation with)

Ah! I remember that and yes!

Butterfly pies

And a new battle cry

Come, tell me how you live!

[quote Millicispud]@titchy

No, you said.
Explained implies that you're correct, which you are not.

You baselessly likened a well known term that's been used in various sciences and in gender for over a century to a racist insults.[/quote]
Presumably over a century ago ‘Cis’ women were the ones who identified with the gender expectation that they shouldn’t wear trousers, vote, be educated or earn a living?

@SinoohXaenaHide

How do you explain the other 98 gender identities? A BBC film for children claims 100 identities, not just male and female.

Now the most unambiguous way to answer that [do you identify as a woman?] is to say "I am a cis woman", because a trans woman would also say "I am a woman".

I am still toying with this one. Both individuals in this case wouldl be lying, buying fully into gender idology, believe that a man can become a woman, that human beings can change sex and, to continue channelling Alice, six other impossible things before breakfast.

Now, to channel Douglas Adams, I am off to Milliways...

”gender identity is […] a deep-seated and overwhelming psychological desire to have access to something that others have. Which goes some way towards explaining the rage and frustration when this is thwarted. "Woman" gender identity isn’t “I am”, it’s “I want what she’s having”.”

This is brilliant @Awiltu. One of those perfect moments of clarity where something previously felt, but not spelled out, is put into words.

May I use it elsewhere please?

Out of interest is anyone else seeing an advert for the New European featuring a big photo of JK Rowling on this thread? It’s really cheered me up!

Not RTFT but some posts are basically the new world version of:
"If you're not a believer you're a heretic"
"No I'm an atheist, I don't believe in religion at all"
"Well that makes you a heretic"