Why 'Cis' is unnecessary

[TerfranosaurusVagina]

What a stonking explanation by @jeaux90. Perfectly put. I thought it deserved its own thread as its so succinct.

Women don't need a prefix, Cis is like needing a word for someone who doesn't collect stamps.

🙌

Brilliant

Succinctly put 👍

I think some people want us to be fed up of the term "cis". That way they'll say let's just drop "trans" and "cis" altogether.

Then anyone can identify simply as a woman. So women and transwoman become "women"

I’m stealing that.

Stop force-teaming us in that disingenuous way. Women is sufficient for women. Males who don't want to be called men need to find a different word, not co-opt ours.

Excellent

There's those men in India and the Pacific Islands who dress as women. They are held up by western tras as examples that suit their ideology. The particular facet that their existence supposedly proves will vary.

As I understand it the cultures they are from recognise these men are men and have names for them. Why not use one of those names, the tras are already appropriating so much.

I think we should leave "women" and the word for women.

Cis means "a term used to describe a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth". Given most women do not have gender identities nor had a sex assigned at birth, the word "cis" is clearly not appropriate for most women. I think it should be used as an alternative name for trans women. Given cis women are by definition more womanly than "women" (a group that includes men) then trans women should be delighted to be called cis-women, and have cis-women as yet another descriptor of a subset of men.

I actually think I might start playing dumb. "Oh you're a cis woman are you? I am so sorry you are so oppressed. What do you mean? Real women already have a word, "women", "cis" is another word for trans isn't it?"

Hijira is the term for a transexual in India and Bangladesh, and they are recognised as a "third gender", they are not called women. Why not have a term like that in Western society. (I do recognise the Hijira rights has been and is an issue, yes).

@TerfranosaurusVagina we are giving it too much headspace, too much time to others trying to explain why we won't use Cis right? I'm keeping it simple in my objection handling from now on.

I don't know what's worse, TRAs describing women as cis-women and then themselves as women. Or handmaidens describing themselves as Cis women. If you think about this term logically it's nothing but regressive as it can only mean identifies with gender stereotypes.

But the stamp thing, yes far more succinct.

If ever we do need a special word I have other candidates. There's "common women" in tribute to the American lesbian poet Judy Grahn and her 1970s sequence "Work of a Common Woman". Or "material women" in tribute to Kathleen Stock. Or there's always "boring old cunty women" in tribute to some fed-up MN posters though I'm not sure who came up with it first and maybe Ricky Gervais has claimed it now? But I'm looking forward to seeing their faces at work when I describe myself as a BOC woman and they ask what it stands for .

(And very nice one @jeaux90 too!)

@jeaux90 you're right.
I'm utterly crap at arguing in the heat of the moment and this just puts it so neatly.

Trans-philatelist

@NyanBinaryGhoul 🤣

Wouldn't people just look at you a bit strangely?

I still like this one

Here's another confusing thing about 'cis'. So, on another thread a genderist explained that 'cis' means when your sex and your 'gender' match. So a 'cis woman' is a woman with the female sex and the woman gender (which match, supposedly.) But that surely means that, logically, a 'trans' woman is one with the male sex and the woman gender...but trans women are never happy about being called male. So what does 'cis' and 'trans' actually mean, then? And that's not even getting into the great mystery of what 'gender' is supposed to be, and how one's sex and genders are supposed to 'match'.

We have to be very careful when we start assigning western ideas to those. Wikipedia is very misleading on it.

Personally I believe that in any of those cultures men who don't fit the particular male stereotype are not allowed to be men and they create a new gender for them.

Listening to people who have researched these groups, it's interesting. The Fa'afafine (in Tonga) know full well they are men (unlike trans in the West where individuals believe they are the opposite sex), and they laugh at the idea of having surgery to become women. Men who have sex with them are not considered gay.

In the West, this whole debate is controlled around the use of language, so good luck with trying to get people to use a different term!

But another interesting development is the people who call themselves "trans", and rather say they are "trans" than the opposite sex. Trans in itself has become an identity.

I don't use the term "cis", just like I don't use the term to say that I don't have six fingers.

Absofuckinglutelythis.

Transwomen are not women.

I thoroughly dislike the quote in the OP. I don't think it's true, because I don't think it is the case that people who don't identify as trans do actually generally have a "gender identity that matches their sex". Nobody has ever been able to adequately explain what having a gender identity feels like in a way that can be distinguished from "having been brainwashed with sexist stereotypes". I suspect that there aren't any more genuinely cis people than there are trans people, with the majority not really having any coherent gender identity once all the sexist stereotype nonsense is discounted. So yes the word cis can exist, but it shouldn't be applied by default as a blanket term for anyone not obviously trans. The quote in the OP is labelling me and assuming my gender identity just as much as (incorrectly) calling me cis is.