This. So much pointless rage over adding to the diversity of language. The mere existence of a word is not compulsion.
When cisgendered becomes “widely used” then we’ll know that many people find it useful. That is not currently the case. Frankly, I can’t see that it will ever become useful to anything other than a tiny minority of people. In everyday speech, I can’t imagine where I would find the need to use it anymore than I would need a word to describe people who don’t have foot fetishes.
You’re telling me what I get to say or not say? I’ll say whatever the hell I want to say. And I’ll send you nice thank-you note if I ever find myself in a situation where I have to specify that I’m not trans. In the odd chance that I do, I can always fall back on “not trans”. It’s better understood by more people than is cisgendered.
Just to be clear, I couldn’t care less if some people find the term useful Knock yourself out using it if you find it useful. But don’t expect me to use it just because some folks thought they needed a special term to define 99.99% of the species.
This is more a problem of literary terminology than scientific terminology.
“Hetero” means “other”, hence there is a logical sense to “heterosexual” meaning attraction to the other sex.
“Homo” means “man” or “male”, and here the logic breaks down completely, because “homosexual” does not apply at all to the largest set of people who are attracted to males, namely heterosexual females. Rather, it is reserved for men who are attracted to men and women who are attracted to women, although the latter are virtually always called “lesbian” in English.
“Trans” has a number of meanings which might convey its modern sexual usage; I can’t think of any prefix that would serve better.
“Cis” is another matter, though. “Cis” means “on this side of” and I am guessing it is is used in its modern sexual context simply because of the irrelevant ancient Latin (Cisalpine-Transalpine) pairing. In another case, during the 19th century contest over papal supremacy those who favored somewhat limited papal powers were termed “Cisalpinists” but those who favored absolute papal authority were not called “Transalpinists”, they were called “Ultramontainist” probably because it was more emphatic and decisive. “Ultrasexual” sounds like something that isn’t a word, but ought to be one, although I hesitate to suggest a definition before thinking about it for a while.
The point to adopting hetero-homo-trans as prefixes for gender is that all three terms are familiar to most people. “Cis” on the other hand is totally obscure and would not be familiar to any but a few people with wide interests in historical topics. Better to use something familiar if something familiar is available, as it is here.
Well, look at the thesaurus listing for “normal”. Especially the “antonyms” and “near antonyms” section. Meaning #3 is the one you seem to be basing your argument on:
Quite a lot of the possible opposites of normal have meanings that are explicitly negative. If “peculiar”, “outlandish”, “strange”, “bizarre”, “unnatural”, and “weird” are among the opposites of “normal”, can’t you see how it is offensive to define only non-transgendered people as “normal”?
Not really, no. Along those lines, I’m always tickled by the fun fact that ancient Akkadian speakers used the phrase “the black-headed ones” (salmat qaqqadi) as a metonym for humanity in general. Their ethnotype was so, um, black-hair-normative that it was linguistically identified with human beings as a whole!
Imagine what they would have thought about our attempts to cope linguistically with the normalization of rare variants in hair and eye color: blonde, redhead, chestnut, auburn, tow-headed, platinum, carroty, ginger, mouse, strawberry blonde, October blonde, copper, golden, ash, hazel, grey, grey-blue, grey-green, emerald, china, amber, forget-me-not, cornflower, sherry, HELP!! 
So no, I don’t think that coining new words for different psychical variants and their counterparts is going to swamp us linguistically. Distinctions that are very uncommon or over-specific will drop out of ordinary usage (who could identify the difference between “titian” and “copper” in hair shades these days?), and those that are found useful will just be considered a natural part of language.
But then, as a member of Team Neology I would say that, wouldn’t I? 
Sure, if we’re talking about relative privilege between two differently privileged groups. Why wouldn’t it be?
Exactly. People are much more ready to recognize that they’re lucky for not having a disease than they are to recognize that they’re lucky for being part of the “default” group with respect to race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Medical opinion these days seems to suggest that being trans is much more like being homosexual or left-handed than like “having a terrible disease”. I.e., it’s a non-default group that’s less privileged than the default group, rather than a form of pathology.
Well, it’s the gender-identity norm in human society, in the sense that it’s what most people are. Being heterosexual is also the norm, as is being right-handed, or brown-eyed.
But that doesn’t mean that being homosexual, or left-handed, or light-eyed, or transgendered, isn’t normal.
Given the severity of the “disadvantages” in this case, I don’t think so. We’re talking about transgendered people frequently being disowned, threatened, fired, beaten up, even murdered just for being transgendered. That kind of prejudice and oppression confers on the “default” group of non-transgendered people a pretty high level of comparative privilege, IMO.
Whose “expectation”? All you seem to have come up with as evidence that anybody’s “expecting” you to use gender-identity language in irrelevant contexts is one totally optional category on Facebook.
Right. That’s exactly what everyone is saying. “Cisgendered” is really only useful in the very narrow context of discussing transgender issues. Nobody really uses it outside of that context, and nobody is demanding that anyone use it outside of that context.
The anger you’re expressing over this issue is absolutely bizarre, John, and I genuinely don’t understand where it’s coming from. “Cisgender” is effectively a term of art. It’s like getting upset because it turns out lawyers have some special term for members of the general public that you’ve never heard of before. It’s a useful term for people who are discussing a very specific issue. That’s it. Why is that so infuriating to you? If you don’t want to use the term, don’t. Nobody is insisting on its use, and nobody is judging you for not using it.
But “cis” / “trans” isn’t remotely restricted to “a few people with wide interests in historical topics”; the prefixes are widely used in the natural sciences. Cis-isomerism vs trans-isomerism in chemistry. Trans-acting elements vs cis-acting elements in biology. If you paid attention in your high-school science classes you’d already know the prefixes; I knew that cis was the opposite of trans years before I ever heard the term cisgender.
Actually, the “homo” in homosexual comes from the Greek, not Latin. In Greek, “homo” means “the same,” as in “homogenous.”
It seems to me that there’s a whole slew of words/concepts/terms that have originated in academia or other specific groups that people are now trying to use in a wider context. Many of these are perfectly fine terms or concepts with a specific meaning in their point of origin. However, it then seems that some people then try to take these terms and run with them in the larger world and react with hostility if someone does not immediately agree with the use of such a term or usefulness of a concept or even argues with the premise. It feels like a very Internet-specific phenomenon heavily influenced by Twitter mobs and Tumblr activists.
I think a reasonable parallel might be a number of terms that come from the sciences that have either become business-speak buzzwords or otherwise not used properly in general culture. These are specifics terms used for a specific reason inside the sciences. But then people take them and twist and abuse them out of the original meaning and often into complete meaninglessness.
I think this is actually exactly the wrong line of argument. Transgendered people deserve full rights and recognition as equally valid and important citizens. That does not depend on some learned institution determining whether or not being transgendered is or is not a “normal and acceptable variant of the human psyche”. If research is published tomorrow that shows that transgenderism (what’s the usual noun form?) is caused by a particular gene failing to express itself in the 7th week of pregnancy, something that very clearly SHOULD have happened, that doesn’t mean that suddenly it’s OK to discriminate.
Heck, blindness is absolutely and clearly a defect. There is something wrong with blind people. That doesn’t mean that they are less valuable or less human or less deserving of equal treatment and equal respect. We should give that same treatment to transsexual people because doing so is fair and just and right, not because we somehow know something about how biologically natural it is to be transgendered.
Who’s angrier in this thread? The people arguing in favor of the term “cisgender,” or the people arguing against? Is anyone on the “pro” side reacting with a fraction of the hostility of mason1972 or John Mace?
This is more a problem of literary terminology than scientific terminology.
“Hetero” means “other”, hence there is a logical sense to “heterosexual” meaning attraction to the other sex.
“Homo” means “man” or “male”, and here the logic breaks down completely, because “homosexual” does not apply at all to the largest set of people who are attracted to males, namely heterosexual females. Rather, it is reserved for men who are attracted to men and women who are attracted to women, although the latter are virtually always called “lesbian” in English.
“Trans” has a number of meanings which might convey its modern sexual usage; I can’t think of any prefix that would serve better.
“Cis” is another matter, though. “Cis” means “on this side of” and I am guessing it is is used in its modern sexual context simply because of the irrelevant ancient Latin (Cisalpine-Transalpine) pairing. In another case, during the 19th century contest over papal supremacy those who favored somewhat limited papal powers were termed “Cisalpinists” but those who favored absolute papal authority were not called “Transalpinists”, they were called “Ultramontainist” probably because it was more emphatic and decisive. “Ultrasexual” sounds like something that isn’t a word, but ought to be one, although I hesitate to suggest a definition before thinking about it for a while.
The point to adopting hetero-homo-trans as prefixes for gender is that all three terms are familiar to most people. “Cis” on the other hand is totally obscure and would not be familiar to any but a few people with wide interests in historical topics. Better to use something familiar if something familiar is available, as it is here.
That’s a very weird way of putting it. The term “cisgendered” isn’t defining people, it’s helping describe people.
And FFS, John, we come up with “special terms” to help describe very high percentages of our species all the time. For example, it’s estimated that about 1 in 10000 people (yup, that’s 0.01%) have the ability known as “absolute pitch” (also known as “perfect pitch”). But we don’t merely say that the other 99.99% of people “don’t have absolute pitch”: we also describe them as having “relative pitch”.
Similarly, something like 0.005% of the world’s population are blind: the others are called not only “not blind” but “sighted”. So why should a term like “cisgender” be so angrily rejected just because it also happens to apply to a very large percentage of all humans?
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Of course not, but it might affect whether being non-transgendered gets its own distinct nomenclature. That’s all I was talking about.
No it doesn’t, not in this context.
The “homo” in “homosexual” is from a Greek root meaning “same” (as in the mathematical terms “homomorphism”, “homology”). It is not the same as the Latin word “homo” (as in “Homo sapiens”), which is derived from a word for “earth” (hence “earth-born”, “human”).
And the Latin “homo”, though frequently translated “man”, actually means “humans” in general. The Latin word for “male human” is “vir” (as in “virility”).
So the word “homosexual” is in fact etymologically appropriate for same-sex couples of either sex: it has nothing to do with being attracted to males specifically.
I guess? Seems like it will or will not get a nomenclature that actually ends up more or less catching on with the public as a whole based on whatever bewildering variety of factors influence the evolution of the English language. Clearly “cisgender” has made some headway, and is experiencing some backlash. How commonly used and accepted will it be in 20 years? Or will another word have taken its place? Beats me, but I doubt it has much to do with with whether the DSM does or does not define transgenderism as a “disorder”, or any other “official” designation.
I’m not calling transgender people abnormal or feel the need to make any distinction. You rather make my point for me here. I don’t like the term “cisgender”, I don’t wan’t people using it in reference to me. If you think that says something about my views on transgender people then you are horribly wide of the mark. My posting history on transgender issues is small but visible and consistent.
What are you getting at? I used “common” in reference to a choice of term only. i.e. what is to be the most-used word when referring to something. Are you concerned that the other words in the dictionary are going to feel slighted by this? I feel you’ve been rather disingenuous here.
or in other words, “unless you use the word which I dictate is acceptable then of course you must be aching to use a term that I consider derogatory so hey…draw your own conclusions people.”
It is quite possible to avoid and dislike using “cisgender” without having any other agenda at all. It may come as a shock to you but I’m still able to use other words in a non-discriminatory and thoughtful manner.
This particular misunderstanding would likely make your head explode if you came to Canada.
Homogeneous (and homogenized), homologous, homophone, homonym, homograph, etc.
The English words derived from the Greek ‘ὅμος’ rather outnumber the English words derived from the Latin ‘homo’.