What’s the difference between this and a straight woman? 
Actually, it is. Look, the person using the term doesn’t get to decide whether his term is insulting or pejorative, only be person to whom the term is being applied to can make that decision.
If you read the wiki page, you can see the endless edit wars on it, and a whole page in the history
Where many many, consider it a slur.
"Clearly, this term is considered a derogatory term or a slur by many cis / non-trans (I only use that term to make sure that I am understood) individuals. A section is needed to let the reader know that this is the case. I don’t think this should be controversial. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the use of the term knows this to be a major issue with the use of the term… I’d agree that it is insulting, and limiting…Cisgender is not used by anyone outside the transgender community, by anyone who is not transgender, save for what might be a handful of gender studies graduate students in an ivory tower or two. The neutrality of this article needs to be seriously addressed, or the article must be considered for deletion, for supporting and validating what equates to nothing less than hate speech. In practice, a natrual born “man” or natural born “woman, indeed any human being, would never even hear the word cisgender or the Latin prefix “cis” in reference to gender identity anywhere outside of 1, the internet, 2, various online and social media fora such as twitter, where “cis”, and especially “cisphobe” and “cisphobic” are commonly used by transgender people in rants about, essentially, hating privilege of 1, natural born heterosexual women, 2, natural born heterosexual men, 3, members of the “mainstream” gay community, and 4, basically any outsider who even asks what the word “cis” means and why they are using it. Since “cisgender” is not in dictionaries, and because Wikipedia is not a dictionary, this neologism ought to be described as a hateful hate speech charged slur that it is.”
“cis” is a recently made up word with little use, other than in lists like this and as a way to insult people.
Yes, certainly "cis’ is not on a level with "Nigger’ but it is quite a bit like “negro”.
The people who claim “cis” to be a slur are transphobes and bigots who are often nasty, harassing, and violent.
We don’t describe “homophobe”, “racist”, “bigoted”, etc, as slurs, and those are actual value-negative. “Cis” is value-neutral, and the people who claim it’s a slur have been pushing that they deserve to be called “normal” - because anybody who isn’t like them is a freak in their eyes. Just because some random bigot on wikipedia has posted blatantly false information (the word “cisgender” has been around a LOT longer than he claims) doesn’t mean it’s true. Unless we’re going to start doing things like citing the KKK and Nazis are reliable sources now.
The bit you quoted is literally outright, factually false, in multiple ways. Posting a factually false quote from a wikipedia talk page to back up an opinion is a pretty low standard for GQ.
To be fair to DrDeth - though ‘cis’ is value-neutral by denotation, in many circles it is used with a negative connotation. Like some circles use ‘breeders’ to describe straight people, with contempt.
By that definition, “Christian” is a slur, and nobody should ever identify as it.
They want their physical gender to be male but they are attracted to other males, as opposed to a straight woman, who wants her gender to be female but is attracted to males.
Here, you are then calling me a nasty, harassing, and violent transphobe and bigot, just because I object to a slur being used against my gender choice? Think about this.
Stop trying to make fetch happen.
I don’t really see why we should. He’s demonstrated multiple times that he’s not interested in anything but claiming persecution when it comes to this topic.
Certainly “more than a few people” use the full range of terms within city populations, younger populations, more liberal populations.
I have two questions about it, one following upon the other:
-
Once there are that many categories, aren’t the practical reasons for identifying gender irrelevant?
-
Hmm… how often were the purported practical reasons for identifying gender as M or F really relevant?
Moderator Note
This thread is straying a bit too far outside of the scope of GQ. Since there appears to still be some factual questions to be answered I am going to leave this open, but let’s drop the debate and argumentative parts of this topic and focus only on the factual aspects of it.
Those who wish to discuss other aspects of this topic are free to open a thread in the appropriate forum (GD, Pit, etc).
My friend, I’m from Chicago. EVERYTHING is politics to me! It’s our favorite spectator and participant sport. But I will abide by the mod’s decision.
As a chemist, I always do a little double take when I see “cis” used in the context of gender identity. How long has that been a thing?
But while we’re at it, I think you should start borrowing other nomenclature from chemists*. If there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s systematizing nomenclature. We’ve found that “cis” and “trans” are not sufficient to describe all situations where they might be applicable, so we invented E-Z_notation. For chirality, we originally used (+) and (-), but then invented R/S to be more specific. Of course, that breaks down in octahedral complexes, so Lambda-Delta formalism was created. I joke a little bit, but with the proliferation of gender identities, it seems like a little organization wouldn’t hurt.
*I realize that chemists do not have a monopoly on the Latin words for “on the same side” and “on the other side”, but the chemical sense is still the most widely used, judging by Google search results.
From the top of my head, mid-90’s.
Wikipedia gives a few sources:
I began to saw it commonly used in internet trans communities the mid 2000’s though.
You’ve leaped past the logical analogy into the unrelated absurd. I didn’t see him saying that **nobody **should identify as cisgender, only that **he **didn’t wish to be identified as such. I can very easily imagine an analogous person who follows the teachings of Christ who does not want to be called Christian.
Post 37. I will not continue this hijack, I just wanted to defend myself.
I remember the week after one of my trans friends came out to me was my first introduction to double-bond nomenclature in O Chem. I had wondered, basically as a joke, if anyone used “cis” to describe people too. It seemed logical enough at the time. Little did I know…