It’s a term created by a group of people who aren’t me used as a label FOR me against my expressed objections.
Can you tell us more? The purpose of this thread was to ask about why anyone could possibly be offended by such a descriptive and value-free term.
The only reason that I can imagine, off the top of my head, is if someone views the cisgendered state as “normal” and by not just using “normal” someone is trying to say that transgendered people are normal too, and they just won’t tolerate that! That’s a pretty bigoted view, so if you’re offended for a reason that’s not bigoted, then could you explain your perspective?
I don’t know where you get the “continually,” because AFAIK no one uses the term “cisgendered” continually. But ambulatory is a perfectly good word. Let’s suppose you say this: “One thing wheelchair-bound people come across that ambulatory people may not even think about, is…”
Don’t you think “ambulatory” is a perfectly good word there? And isn’t it much better than “normal”? That’s a perfect analogy for “cisgendered.”
Oddly, that is a bad example because lactose intolerance is the normal condition, if there is such a thing, for humans. The mutation that makes some folks lactose tolerant in adulthood is relatively recent and is typically found only in populations whose ancestors herded cows for milk products.
Your preferred descriptive term-were you part of the select team that created that label?
I wouldn’t put anything in the blank. If I was transgendered I would say “As a transgendered male, …” but I’m not so I would just say “As a male,…” why does another label have to be used?
Plenty of people do. In particular, it’s often used to as part of the term “cisgender privilege”. That term is the third auto full-in when you type cisgender. No, I don’t hear the term everyday talking to “cisgender” people, but it comes up fairly regularly in certain circle.
I agree context matters. However, you were missing my point. There are reasonable contexts for which cisgender makes sense too. However, I think they are few and far between. Further, ambulatory, as a term, doesn’t imply a framework and acceptance of a belief set unlike cisgender/transgender.
Well, normal doesn’t really make sense as we are solely describing an ability and a lack of an ability.
I do. It’s just not the only thing I take into consideration. The actual meaning of the word is a big part of it. If a black guy was taking racial offense over being called “niggardly,” I’d say the same thing. Also, my ability to identify with the group being described by the term also factors into it. I’m cisgendered myself. If I don’t find the term offensive, I’m going to be less sympathetic to claims of offense at the term. I’d also factor in the extent to which I perceive the offense to be genuine. A lot of racists like to pretend that they’re just as offended by “honky” as black people are by “nigger.”
If you just say “male” how will they know that you’re not transgendered?
Transmen use male restrooms, they check the male box on forms, they use masculine pronouns – they’re MEN, like you and me. Saying “I’m male” doesn’t say anything about your trans/cis status.
Because if there was some reason for said male to differentiate himself from other males, he would say he was a trans-male. The point is that no one is gonna assume you are in the .015% or so of a given sub group. You have so specify.
That .015% is if you’re meeting someone at random on the street. But within certain subgroups the percentage can be much higher. For example, in my job I often interact with the indie game scene and run into a LOT of people with non-standard genders. I’m not going to self-identify as “cis-male” to the clerk at 7-11, but I might do so during a meet-and-greet at IndieCade.
“One thing that trans-males come across that males may not even think about is…”
Sorry, that just doesn’t work. You sometimes need a descriptive word for a male that’s not trans. Cis-male is a perfectly good word for that. What about it offends you?
Almost all issues surrounding transgenderism are confusing to most people. And I disagree, from personal experience, that it’s not helpful. I’ve found it enormously helpful in discussions of transgender rights, as quoted in the OP.
By that logic, the racial categories on the US census should be “Black, Asian, Hispanic, or Person.”
I’m not seeing how privilege attaches to the term “cisgender” in this situation. Can you unpack that some for me?
It’s not. It’s helpful to a minority of people. What’s wrong with that?
Personally I’ve never heard the word until yesterday and now it appears to be popping up all over the place, being worn on the sleeve by many who seem to using it as some kind of bogus litmus-test.
I suspect it is being dangled out there by some in order to manufacture an opportunity to cry “bigot” when others object. I say bullshit to that. I bow to no-one in my acceptance and championing of the LGBT community so I flat-out resent the implication that my discomfort with a term invented on my behalf but without my blessing has any sinister overtones.
I think everyone gets to define common terms for their own group. To have them imposed is simply offensive. You can claim neutrality for the word all you want but if the group being labelled doesn’t like it, tough shit. Find another or risk looking like a dick when you insist on using it when it is not welcome. That is a simple common courtesy I rather hope we can extend to everyone.
What term would you prefer to be used to refer to someone like you?
Okay. Except that, with one exception, every poster in this thread arguing in favor of the term “cisgender” is, themselves, cisgendered.
So, why do you get to be the boss of our group?
Can you give an example of this? I’ve only heard it as a descriptive term when differentiating cisgendered people from transgendered, in talking about transgender issues. I first heard it probably about a year or more ago, and it’s been simply descriptive when I’ve heard it.
But that’s the point of this thread - on what basis do you object to a term that’s completely value-free?
What word would you suggest for the group of people who are not transgender? I’m not, and I think “cisgender” is fine.
I think this is a very telling set of three words:
-abnormal
-unnatural
-fake
If transgendered people aren’t “abnormal” then the word has no meaning. They are different from the norm. 99.7% of people are cisgender (assuming a random stat in this thread is correct). 0.3% are transgender. It is NORMAL to be cisgender.
That doesn’t mean that I would use the phrase “normal male” to describe myself in contexts when it might be either offensive or confusing. But “abnormal” does not automatically bring with it value judgments the way “fake” or “unnatural” does. Very very tall people or very very short people or people who can hold their breath for unusually long times are all abnormal. Professional basketball players are abnormal.
Okay? Why would you do that, and would it be relevant?
Depends on what they rest of the sentence is. And it doesn’t offend me at all. I just think it’s just tiresome PC overcorrection.
Okay, so you should use the term then I guess. My thinking it’s not useful and kinda dumb shouldn’t dissuade you from using it if you think it’s helpful. More power to you.
Wrong. On almost all race forms, there is an “other” category for races that are too infrequent to mention. Transgender falls into that category numerically speaking, and isn’t worth basing a naming convention on any more that any other medical condition.
Not really worth the effort. Google “cisgender privilege”. In short, I think this is where a lot of the resistance to normal comes from. If 99.7% of a thing fits in one category, normal, natural or something similar is an apt descriptor.
As someone else mentioned in this thread, are we just at a point where the idea of normalcy in any context is inherently baggage laden?
Nothing worth getting too riled up over. However, the fact is that every characterization doesn’t have to cater to everyone’s world view. Should a dropbox for nationality include every possible combination of two countries or territories? Of course not. For example, if you went into a restaurant, and they asked you whether you wanted the vegetarian menu, the omnivore menu, the carnivore menu, the lacto-ovo menu, the vegan menu, the macrobiotic menu, the raw vegan menu, or the pescatarian menu, the large font menu, the braille menu, the cruelty-free menu, the etc., etc., I think at a certain point you would wonder why all this specificity and delineation is necessary. At a certain point, you might wonder why the system of limited menus with people specifically noting their deviation from the norm when relevant was a untenable solution.
Besides, did you hear me say people shouldn’t use the term? All I said was I don’t think it’s particularly useful or logical.
Quick followup: as others have mentioned, it depends a lot on context. If I was hanging out with my queer cousin and issues of sexuality came up, I might describe myself as cisgendered, in the types of sentences that have been mentioned in this thread. I would not feel offended or oppressed or PC-policed if I chose to do so.
On the other hand, if I were in some normal social interaction, I would presumably describe myself simply as “male”, and then if someone else got all huffy and said that I should check my privilege and refer to myself as a “cisgendered male”, I would think they were being douchey and obnoxious. Fortunately, that has never happened to me, and I doubt it’s happened very often to anyone.
This is so baffling for me.
Cisgender is a handy little word that precisely describes a concept that is pretty complex to describe without it. It’s not something that comes up often, but when discussing gender identity, it saves a lot of needless complexity and talking around stuff.
I don’t really care what the actual word is, and if cisgender people want to take up the axe and come up with something they prefer that’s fine. But I’m not typing things like “My transgender friend married a woman-who-was-born-a-woman-and-continues-to-identify-as-a-woman and they faced…blah blah blah and then their man-who-was-born-a-man-and-continues-to-identify-as-a-man friend said…blah blah blah”.