# "Don't call me 'cisgender'!" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 30, 2015, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903 "2015-04-30T15:23:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/441 "2015-05-06T01:32:03Z")
> [@JR\_Brown](#): > > Wrong, sorry. Gender variance / typicality does _not_ consider gender identity or sexual orientation. You can be gay and gender-typical (buch gay man, femme lesbian), and you can be trans and gender-typical (buch trans man, femme trans women), and you can be trans and gay and gender-typical. The three things are completely separate. Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Which means that **manson1972** ’s arbitrary redefining of the word “gender-typical” to mean “heterosexual and not transgender” is even **more** technically incorrect than I thought. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/442 "2015-05-06T01:41:11Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > Now that you mention it, we should stop calling people right-handed, since that implies that the others are wrong-handed. That’s only true if one assumes an artificially limited definition of the word “right”. Sarcasm aside, I still fail to see the problem. “Cis” will either become generally used in discussions relating to sexuality/gender or it won’t. If it doesn’t, some other term will take its place. Taking offense at the mere existence of such a term (“cis” or otherwise) appears to me as both immature and narrow-minded. The human race is not about to go extinct from lack of reproduction, so heterosexuality isn’t even really all that important anyway, certainly not in need of being “defended” against people using words in a mean-spirited way. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/443 "2015-05-06T01:45:04Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > Now that you mention it, we should stop calling people right-handed, since that implies that the others are wrong-handed. That ship has sailed, oh, about 1500 years ago, give or take a few centuries. That’s why being sinister is a bad thing, while being dextrous is a good thing. Hell, that’s why “right” is used to mean proper/good/correct in the first place. It’s also why, up until very recently, left-handed kids were browbeaten - or plain beaten - and forced to write and do things right-handed, which naturally caused a number of issues (besides, y’know, the ethical one). ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/444 "2015-05-06T04:17:40Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > So now you have a cite to the usage in the transgendered community saying the word is used in a derogatory way It’s used, perhaps, in a derogatory way, but not as a slur, any more than “white” is a slur when a black person says “white people can never understand the issues faing the black community and shouldn’t talk about them.” > [@Slash1972](#): > > you have people in this very thread who object to being called cisgendered But they haven’t been able to explain why. I find the objection very thin-skinned of them, particularly coming from people who let “abnormal” and “unnatural” roll right off. > [@Polerius](#): > > Agreed. > > We now should say “Jill, you should meet Bob. He is cisgendered, neuro-typical, unipolar, uniphrenic, body cismorphic, and attention-typical”, just to clarify what Bob is exactly and not offend anyone in the minority categorizations. Why would you need to go through all that if none of those things are relevant? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/445 "2015-05-06T14:51:11Z")
I don’t like cisgender. I don’t like the way it sounds. It’s a hissing sound (as in “boo, hiss”) attached to the word gender. Now part of that may be that I first encountered the word in the writing of SJW feminist types who clearly had a problem with heterosexual males and perhaps heterosexuality, period. I suspect I picked up the underlying anger and contempt with which they used it and associated it with the word. In any event, “no sale” here for cisgendered. I see no signs that the word has made any inroads in the mainstream community and suspect that it won’t. I’m fine with that. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/446 "2015-05-06T14:54:47Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I don’t like cisgender. I don’t like the way it sounds. It’s a hissing sound (as in “boo, hiss”) attached to the word gender. > > Now part of that may be that I first encountered the word in the writing of SJW feminist types who clearly had a problem with heterosexual males and perhaps heterosexuality, period. I suspect I picked up the underlying anger and contempt with which they used it and associated it with the word. In any event, “no sale” here for cisgendered. I see no signs that the word has made any inroads in the mainstream community and suspect that it won’t. I’m fine with that. That’s okay – you don’t have to use it, and if applying it to you offends you, I won’t do that (and I encourage others to also not use it for you if it offends you). But us cisgender folks who have no problem with the word will continue to use it in applicable discussions as the technical term for those people whose gender identity matches their biological sex, except when referring specifically to individuals who have expressed that they don’t want to be called “cisgender”. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/447 "2015-05-06T21:19:52Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > What we’re saying is that **if we’re trying to deliberately _select_ a specific technical term to mean a specific thing, why would we pick an ambiguous word that already means something else instead of a non-ambiguous word that already means the specific thing we’re talking about?** I don’t know…seems to have worked okay in the case of “phobe”. As I said before, I have no objection to trying to come up with a stand-in for ‘normal’, it’s just that I don’t like cisgender. But it seems to me that the real problem isn’t with the word normal, but in the way some people choose to apply it. There are all sorts of things that are abnormal that carry no negative baggage at all. People can be abnormally tall, abnormally gifted athletically, abnormally beautiful, etc., etc. So why not set about trying to deal effectively with those people who use abnormal as a criticism or insult instead of all this dancing on the head of a pin trying to come up with something that means normal but doesn’t say so? If people can be brought around to accepting homosexuality and transgenderism it doesn’t seem that much of a stretch to me that people can be persuaded not to use ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ in a critical or insulting way but more in line with the other ways I mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/448 "2015-05-06T22:40:07Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > So why not set about trying to deal effectively with those people who use abnormal as a criticism or insult :dubious: “Those people”? You mean, pretty much the entire population of English speakers, including the ones who compile dictionaries of recognized standard meanings of English words? Sorry, but your desperate quixotism is fixated on a doomed quest. The word “abnormal” **does** have a generally recognized sense of “wrong, pathological, unhealthy”. That recognized meaning is not going to change because a few people who are weirdly opposed to the technical-term neologism “cisgender” have decided that they’d like to try to reclaim “normal” as a purely descriptive neutral term meaning “majority” or “typical”. That’s some “Mr. Bean”-level hapless bumbling you have in view there. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/449 "2015-05-06T22:49:53Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > So why not set about trying to deal effectively with those people who use abnormal as a criticism or insult… Instead of just accepting a new word, you’re seriously proposing that we just call transgender people “abnormal”? And if anyone objects to the inferior connotation, you want to just tell them that they should accept your definitions of “normal” and “abnormal,” because the way you want the word to be defined, it’s without value judgments? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/450 "2015-05-06T23:35:50Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Instead of just accepting a new word, you’re seriously proposing that we just call transgender people “abnormal”? Of course not. :rolleyes: I’m proposing that people acknowledge that normal is not a term exclusively reserved for insult, as **Kimstu** would have us believe, and that rather than go to ridiculous lengths to avoid using it, emphasis should instead be placed upon persuading people to view transgenderism as little different from other qualities that fall outside the norm, such as height, beauty, genius, etc. “Normal” is not a bad word. Neither is “abnormal”. The problem is that too many of you are willing to cede it to those who would use it as a base for insult or belittlement rather than challenge them on the legitimacy of their use of those terms. You’ve had no problem convincing people that certain people are various types of ‘phobes’ when in fact they’re nothing of the sort, so I shouldn’t think it would be all that difficult for you to persuade people that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the word normal, nor with those who have may have qualities which fall outside the norm. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/451 "2015-05-06T23:39:41Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Of course not. :rolleyes: > > I’m proposing that people acknowledge that normal is not a term exclusively reserved for insult, as **Kimstu** would have us believe, and that rather than go to ridiculous lengths to avoid using it, emphasis should instead be placed upon persuading people to view transgenderism as little different from other qualities that fall outside the norm, such as height, beauty, genius, etc. “Normal” is not a bad word. Neither is “abnormal”. The problem is that too many of you are willing to cede it to those who would use it as a base for insult or belittlement rather than challenge them on the legitimacy of their use of those terms. > > You’ve had no problem convincing people that certain people are various types of ‘phobes’ when in fact they’re nothing of the sort, so I shouldn’t think it would be all that difficult for you to persuade people that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the word normal, nor with those who have may have qualities which fall outside the norm. ETA to add once again that I have no problem with coming up with some other word to apply to ‘normal’ people, I just don’t like ‘cisgender’. And I’m not advocating that transgender people be called abnormal any more than I’d be advocating that unusually smart, intelligent or tall people be referred to that way. I just think it’s silly to be jumping through all sorts of linguistic hoops to avoid the use of it. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/452 "2015-05-07T00:21:36Z")
I think “normal/abnormal” is a pretty unusual case. First of all, either one can be clearly an insult… “What do you think of Jane?” “She’s so… normal” “What do you think of Jane?” “She’s so… abnormal” Either one of those could clearly be an insult depending on the context and intonation. At the same time, “abnormally” can be clearly used as purely an intensifier, as SA points out. “Abnormally tall”, “Abnormally gifted”, “Abnormally athletic”. It would be hard to argue that those seeming-compliments are actually insults. On the third hand, plenty of people who (unlike me) have actually had to deal with being trans or gay or members have other oppressed minority groups have reported that the word “abnormal”, at least as applied to their group, has implications of exclusion, disdain, bigotry, negativity, etc. And on the fourth hand, a statement like “as a normal sister of a transgendered brother…”, whether or not it’s offensive or hurtful, is absolutely not as distinctly and unambiguously clear as “as a cisgendered sister of a transgendered brother”. So I don’t think that it would have been some horrible catastrophe if a phrase like “normally-gendered” had become the standard and broadly understood way to mean “identifying as a gender matching one’s biology”. But it didn’t, and instead we have “cisgendered”, which is a useful and unambiguous term. So… what’s wrong with it? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/453 "2015-05-07T01:46:42Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > You’ve had no problem convincing people that certain people are various types of ‘phobes’ when in fact they’re nothing of the sort, so I shouldn’t think it would be all that difficult for you to persuade people that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the word normal, nor with those who have may have qualities which fall outside the norm. Oh well, in that case, problem - from the greek pro- meaning forward and ballein meaning to throw, as in ballistics. So you can’t use problem except in the sense of throwing something forward. convince - from the latin com- an intensifier and vincere meaning to conquer. So a decisive conquering. So no using that except to establish ownership of some land. certain - past participle of the latin cernere meaning to sift or distinguish so no more adjectival use, bucko. type - from the greek typtein meaning to strike or beat. And so on and so forth. Like you think we don’t know about the etymological fallacy? Or did you think this was the magical 8 billionth time someone would try to pull this tired crap and it would work? Don’t bother answering; I don’t care. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/454 "2015-05-07T02:23:50Z")
The thing is, you are all focussing on the wrong thing as the problem. “Normal” is a perfectly good and accurate word to apply to traits belonging to the vast majority of the populace. The problem is that some people use it as a basis for bigotry and abuse. So the solution you so brilliantly come up with is to invent some ridiculous anti-intuitive word to use in its place in the hope that it will thwart bigotry and lend some sort of comfort people falling outside the norm. Trust me, people who have physical or character traits that place them outside the norm are fully aware of it and they will continue to be aware of it for as long as they either live. Calling the word ‘normal’ something else isn’t going to magically make them feel the same as everyone else. The proper solution is to work to stop the bigotry rather than trying to circumvent it through the invention of new words, which, as we’ve already seen in the cases where “cis” is morphing into an insult, don’t work anyway and just result in new ammo for bigotry. The key to feeling good about yourself if you’re gay or trans or whatever is for there to be no criticism or bigotry attached to it, just as there is no criticism or bigotry attached to exceptional tallness, beauty, athletic ability, intelligence or eye color. And that isn’t going to be accomplished by cooking up new words rather than confronting the bigotry itself. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/455 "2015-05-07T03:32:43Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Trust me No. If “cis” (or something of similar meaning) serves a purpose, it’ll last. If not, it won’t. ---
**Author:** ![Teach-me-not](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a4c791/32.png) [@Teach-me-not](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teach-me-not)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/456 "2015-05-07T05:11:03Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > The thing is, you are all focussing on the wrong thing as the problem. “Normal” is a perfectly good and accurate word to apply to traits belonging to the vast majority of the populace. The problem is that some people use it as a basis for bigotry and abuse. So the solution you so brilliantly come up with is to invent some ridiculous anti-intuitive word to use in its place in the hope that it will thwart bigotry and lend some sort of comfort people falling outside the norm. It’s a bit more complicated than that: [Norm vs normal (vs normative) from a socialist’s perspective](http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/07/08/norms-normality-and-normativity/). (I should add that I don’t fully grasp the _normative_ bit myself. Also, I am not endorsing that page; it just happened to be the first search hit.) Maybe in popular usage, “normal” could be used in the statistical sense. But it’s clear that there’s a scope for misinterpretation as well as malicious distortion of meaning, so I think it’s best to avoid that word like the plague. Seriously, that word’s got to be one of the most abused words ever. [I mean, take a look at this Wikipedia disambiguation page for its bajillion uses!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal) ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/457 "2015-05-07T10:49:00Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > ETA to add once again that I have no problem with coming up with some other word to apply to ‘normal’ people, I just don’t like ‘cisgender’. And I’m not advocating that transgender people be called abnormal any more than I’d be advocating that unusually smart, intelligent or tall people be referred to that way. I just think it’s silly to be jumping through all sorts of linguistic hoops to avoid the use of it. So, what don’t you like about “cisgender”. How is it worse than any other neologism? Is it just that you want to be called “normal”, rather than some other term? Do you object to heterosexual? (Or “sighted”, or “ambulatory” any other of the myriad terms used for people who are normal in one way or another?) ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/458 "2015-05-07T13:35:32Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > And on the fourth hand, a statement like “as a normal sister of a transgendered brother…”, whether or not it’s offensive or hurtful, is absolutely not as distinctly and unambiguously clear as “as a cisgendered sister of a transgendered brother”. Know what is even more succinct than that? “As a sister of a transgendered brother…” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/459 "2015-05-07T14:27:28Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > And on the fourth hand, a statement like “as a normal sister of a transgendered brother…”, whether or not it’s offensive or hurtful, is absolutely not as distinctly and unambiguously clear as “as a cisgendered sister of a transgendered brother” Again, “as a non-transgendered sister of a transgendered brother” is clearer – in that, to a lot of people, “non-transgendered” means _“non-transgendered”_, and “cisgendered” means _“What does that mean?”_ and _“I wonder if it means non-transgendered?”_ ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903/460 "2015-05-07T14:30:08Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Again, “as a non-transgendered sister of a transgendered brother” is clearer – in that, to a lot of people, “non-transgendered” means _“non-transgendered”_, and “cisgendered” means _“What does that mean?”_ and _“I wonder if it means non-transgendered?”_ It’s almost like _it depends on the context._ Imagine! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903.md?page=22) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-call-me-cisgender/718903.md?page=24)