What is the “standard” then?
I have heard this time and again- only the person who the term is being used against can say whether or not it’s hateful- **the person using it doesnt get that vote. **
No, die nigger scum is not okay. Neither is die black scum. The fact that you can plug either term into the sentence does not make the two terms semantically equivalent.
What are you talking about? There was no such admission in that article.
…because I’m rational?
Ok then- who gets to decide? You or the person who doesn’t like that term being applied to them?
Holy shit.
I think I’ll go have another beer.
I have to assume that DrDeth is upset because someone, somewhere, told him that tranny is offensive and he shouldn’t use it.
This just isn’t honest and genuine argumentation.
I don’t have any problem with the word.
That said, the only time I’ve seen it used outside this message board is on another message board, by someone who was telling someone else their opinion doesn’t matter because they are a ‘cis-gendered white male’
On the subject of ‘normal’ the way I look at it is ‘normal’ is relative. From a strictly biological perspective, the vast majority of what we humans do is not normal.
Normal.
It’s a perfectly useful and accurate word. Transgendered people are not of the norm. The same way albinoism is not normal.
People are losing their freakin’ minds.
By this measure, Native Americans are not normal. “Normal” carries a moral connotation, especially in matters of sexuality and psychology, whether one likes it or not.
I really like the term “cis gender”. I think they’d because the first time I saw it, I remembered my organic chemist course, and figured out both the meaning and the etymology, and that made me feel smart. 
True, but “cis” only comes up in those contexts, in my experience.
new words gotta come from somewhere. And since a lot of trans issues have been in the news, lately, it’s handy to have words to describe the players.
As a cis woman, I have mostly heard it used simply and descriptively, and I’m fine being called that.
ER, …
I think I love you. 
“Normal” is an accurate word for you to use, inasmuch as it conveys both the denotation and connotation you intend; it helps the audience understand your particular unsavory attitude toward transgendered people.
It is not, however, precise. If you describe someone as “normal,” I don’t know whether you’re trying to say that they’re white, or straight, or religious, or meat-eating, or what. If you said “cisgender,” the word would be a little less accurate for you, inasmuch as it wouldn’t carry the unpleasant connotations you’d like it to carry, but it’d be far more precise.
For folks who don’t want those ugly connotations, “cisgender” is both more accurate and more precise than “normal.”
I’ve run into about half a dozen trans people in the last few years, one of whom is a close friend who recently came out, and is still struggling with his issues around the subject. So I’ve perhaps had more occasion to use the word than most people.
YVW.
Non-responsive.
I estimated that only 1-10% of the population would recall encountering “cis”, and I think the 10% is probably way too generous.
Ahhh…
You “would expect”.
Love that deftly expressed skepticism.
You went to MIT and Harvard? I went to an elite prep school near you. I expect you literally brushed elbows with many graduates while you were in Cambridge.
FYI my HS class (of less than 50 graduates) produced 3 MDs and 2 scientific PhDs (engineering, chemistry) that I know of. Plus another PhD in English Lit. Sadly I was nowhere near that level as a science student. On the other hand I did wrangle 4s in the AP European History and AP English Lit exams, and a Phi Beta Kappa in college, so maybe I did have some brains after all, even though I ranked within a place or so of academic last in my “reasonably good” HS class.
And oh, skipping class, not paying attention in class, and failing to at least try to do the homework was absolutely unheard of at this “reasonably good” HS of mine. It would have been viewed as disgraceful not only by the faculty but also by your fellow students, an attitude which our public schools could certainly use a heavy dose of! Anyway, if I did see “cis” after all, I have forgotten it in the intervening decades.
If gay/straightin reach the point where they are standard English then they should be used in preference to a sort of private vocabulary for a sort of private scientific priesthood. On the other hand gay/straight do not convey which gender is the object of desire, so other terms are needed for that sense. “Gynephilia” and “androphilia” might be reasonable due to widespread familiarity with the prefixes, my point being that science should want to be as accessible as possible to non-scientists, and one way to further this would lie in vocabulary selection. “Cis” does not pass the familiarity test.
So what drastic social consequences do you predict if “cisgender” becomes a ordinary and banal (if context-specific) word? Will it cause disaster in forty years, as you predicted for gay marriage?
Until very recently without breeders no homosexuals would exist, heterosexuals either.
Someone has to do it!
So what? It’s currently the preferred term among people who care about gender issues, and it’s easy to deduce what it means from context when you encounter it for the first time.
There’s no Board of Language that adjudicates what words people use. People coin new words that suit their purposes, and learn other people’s new words through hearing them in use.
You’re welcome to try to convince people to use another term. Good luck with that.
Whenever there is the coining of a new term to try and provide a ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ wording to describe any aspect of human behavior, there will be those who misuse it, overuse it or abuse it. On both sides. A common example is the pejorative use of “retarded”, originally a clinical term(*)
So the term “cisgender” which is absolutely good and useful for a context of discussion of gender identities, gets abused by some as a tool to dismiss the position of others? Or maybe a small fringe may propose the vast majority of the population be referred to as “cis” all the time?
Well, about the first issue the same can be said for just about anything. The usage of “that’s so gay” to mean something’s lame or stupid does not lead gays to reject the term “gay”, but to fight the insulting usage. OK, I hear you, we never “adopted” “cis” to refer to ourselves in the first place so it’s not “ours” to reclaim or retake… look, it’s there just as other terms are, that ship sailed. Do the most of it. And yeah, yeah, sure, it’s asymmetrical and the majority/establishment group is assumed to be fair game for taking shots at… well, that comes with being the majority/establishment group. Deal.
And as to the second issue: IMO there is* really no need to change our everyday language*… unless you insist in specifically differentiating trans people when it is not relevant. All should have the right to say “Jen is a Woman” or to write “Bob is a Man” without it being expected or demanded to specify “Jen is a gay trans female” or “Bob is a cis het male” when that’s not on-topic … and yes, that means recognizing that that you must accept Jen is a Woman, full stop, no need to qualify it; and at the same time, that Bob is a Man and it is *not *a microagression to state it and leave it at that.
…or is my privilege showing? 
(*speaking of which, the “clinical” term “heterosexual” seems to be perfectly acceptable to virtually everyone, while the equally clinical “homosexual” [and yes, it’s “homo” as in the Greek for “the same”] became, at best, obsolescent)
Wrong. We the lactose-intolerant (I prefer the term “milk-farty people”) are the majority, it was the minority who gave us that term.
And as a female born with typical female plumbing, I find “cisgendered” pretty cromulent. I don’t see why anyone would take offense.
Michigan Music Festival (a women-only affair) announced recently that only womyn-born womyn, a term that describes women who were assigned female at birth and raised as females, would be permitted entry in future.
Remember that guy in Monty Python (Chapman, I think) who would interrupt a sketch which had become too absurd by saying authoritatively, “This is all very silly. Stop it!”?
Society badly needs him.
My premise is that esoteric terms should be avoided and familiar terms preferred, and “cis” is surely esoteric.
This remark would best be directed at those among the people who care about gender issues whose adjudication has foisted the esoteric “cis” upon the rest of us.
I have already suggested the accessible and logical “heterogendered” and “homogendered”.
I realize, however, that mine is probably a losing cause given the usual interest group determination to yield nothing once a position has been staked out.
I believe that has always been the rule there, and they’ve caught a lot of flak for it over the years (rightfully so).