I suppose nearly everything we discuss on the SDMB has been addressed in some committee somewhere. Should we just all stop talking about anything?
No, I think you would just decide that he was offended by it, and move on without an in-depth discussion requiring reasons that YOU deem appropriate enough to be offended by.
Sort of like this:
“Please don’t call me black, I prefer African-American”
“Oh, ok. No problem”
as opposed to:
“Please don’t call me cisgender, I prefer gender-typical”
“Why? what’s offensive about cisgender? It comes from biology or some other science. It’s a perfectly cromulent word. Why would you be offended? You better have some good reasons that meet MY offensiveness scale or else your offense is baseless and stupid”
See the difference?
No, but maybe we shouldn’t treat something that’s over 40 years late as if it was breaking news. For the record, that short dude is still dead.
Yes!
That isn’t what wolfpup said! What he actually said was the word isn’t allowed to exist, and nobody should use it to describe anything. Then he was apprised of whether or not he is stupid.
OK, let’s do a harder one. I don’t mean to sound like a douchebag, but I was always crazy good at these in Highlights magazine when I was coming up on the block.
He didn’t request not to be referred to as “cisgender.” He argued that the word was inherently offensive, and should not be used to describe anyone.
No imagination is necessary, here, because I told you explicitly in the post you were replying to. If it’s expressed as a personal preference, sure, I’ll go along, even if I think the reasons are kind of dumb.
Again, in the threads you’re talking about, people were trying to argue that the term was inherently offensive on the level of a racial slur, and that it was never an appropriate term. That’s different from expressing a personal preference not to be described by a term. I don’t like the term “bisexual.” I’ll sometimes use it to describe myself, because it’s a commonly understood term, but it grates on me. But I don’t argue that, based on my personal dislike of the word, it’s now a slur and nobody should use it ever.
Also, thanks for just assuming, without any evidence, that I’m a hypcorite. Asshole.
There are lots. Here are some:
“I prefer African-American” vs. “I prefer gender-typical.”
Do YOU see the difference?
Another:
I’m cisgendered. When you tell me that something I consider myself is an insult, of course I’m going to ask why.
And when people of a group that I’m a part of make a claim about my group, I’m going to push back when I don’t think it’s true. When someone makes a claim that women will be offended if you try to shake their hands and that it’s best not to offer, I push back against that. I have some basis for my understanding, what with being a woman and all.
Another:
If you think I wouldn’t ask someone why black is offensive to them, you’re nuts.
Another:
I’ll tend to try to call someone by whatever they like, but I will only change my terminology for a group if the reasons make sense to me or it’s a widespread issue. If there is no other term I find appropriate, any shift will be very slow.
Another:
If I meet someone casually and the request is reasonable, I likely would say “Oh, okay.” I will do my best with titles and name pronunciations and specific ways of introducing them, quirks, etc. I will not call a friend of mine a nutritionist because she prefers dietitian. But this has limits, and I won’t do it if the request is unreasonable. Who gets to decide? Me.
And another:
Half of the arguments against cisgendered I’ve seen put forward do fucking offend me. Just as if you said “Please don’t call me white; I prefer ‘Standard-American.’” If you have a different term that you want me to use, it has to pass my offense filter first.
I see. So if someone objects to the term “ladyboy” then they are not allowed to say the word is “inherently offensive”?
The fact that you require or think about the REASONS someone would be offended is the problem, instead of just accepting at face value that they are offended. I don’t need to know the reason a guy would be offended by being called ‘black’ instead of African-American. I would just accept it and move on.
WOW! A misspelling AND name-calling. Nice!
I do not see the difference, no.
This isn’t complicated, and your attempts to make it seem complicated… well, remember when we talked about how wolfpup is dumb?
If you call something “inherently offensive,” your reasoning is inevitably going to come into play. You don’t get to govern other people’s interactions with other people for stupid reasons.
If you say that you personally prefer not to be called something, your reasoning may or may not be of interest, but sure, whatever, that’s just a request for courtesy.
It’s been addressed in many different threads over at least a couple of years here. I’ve provided links with citations in those threads. I’m not certain there is anything new to be added at this point, so search and you will find.
No one is going to call you gender-typical, because the whole point of that word is to label trans men and women as being gender-atypical. They aren’t. They have the same gender as everyone else. You don’t get to choose a term that lessens others.
You also don’t get to arbitrarily declare a term to be offensive. Back it up. Prove that most uses of the term cisgender are derogatory. Since it’s the scientific term, using the scientific perfix “cis-” that’s pretty hard. It’s like saying that you find “heterosexual” offensive. Most people don’t find either one offensive.
Still, even then, if you could find a term that would work and not devalue trans people, you could try to get it to stick. But, seeing as it’s a new thing, you wouldn’t get to complain when people used other terms. You can voice your own preference, but that’s it.
Sorry, but I disagree. I chose “gender-typical” specifically because it DOESN’T lessen others. It is typical for human beings to have the same sex and gender. I trust I don’t have to link to definitions of the word “typical” I specifically avoided using ‘normal’ or variations of the word ‘normal’ for this very reason.
Very well. How should a term become offensive then? How many online dictionaries have to have the words ‘disparaging’ or ‘offensive’ as part of the definition before you will say it is offensive? That seems to be the deciding factor I guess.
I still don’t see how gender-typical devalues transgender people. Please explain. Unfortunately, I don’t see any definitions of ‘gender-typical’ that include ‘disparaging’ or ‘offensive’ in them, so YOU don’t get to decide that it is offensive to use gender-typical, or even gender-atypical.
Because most trans people also have a single gender, just like you – they are also “gender typical”. Perhaps you mean something like “biological sex/gender typical”? I think you’re saying that your biological sex matches your gender, which is typical, but “gender typical” only includes gender and not biological sex.
The same way that transgender and cisgender only include gender and not biological sex?
The words “trans” and “cis” refer to the relationship between gender and sex for those individuals. Unlike “typical”, those are prefixes (not words) that do not have other very common meanings in every day language. “Typical” is a very common word and not a prefix, and “gender typical” just sounds like it means that one has a typical gender (i.e. the vast majority of everyone, whether they are trans or not).
Do you just want a different prefix? How about “tygender”? Or “picgender”? Or “calgender”? Do you object to any prefix followed by “gender”, or is there some special significance for “cis”?
manson1972, how about “sasgender”? In this use, “sas” is short for “same-as-sex”. Would you object to that?
Sure, because it is. I’m not sure what your problem is, here. Some terms are inherently offensive. Some terms are not. Whether or not a term is inherently offensive is not determined by one person saying it’s so.
I have very little trouble believing that you don’t like to think about things.
And again, I’m not going to interrogate someone about their personal preferences about what people call them. I am going to question someone who tells me that a term I use to identify myself is supposed to be offensive to me, because that cuts directly across my experience with the term.
Yeah, you insult me, I insult you back. Funny how that works, innit?
Fretful Porpentine:
I think the problem is that a lot of people don’t like the fact that people whose brain-genders match their genital-genders aren’t simply called “normal.”
I understand that dividing between “normal” and “abnormal” might be seen as stigmatizing, and therefore transsexuals would like a more neutral-sounding term to describe people whose brains and genitals match in gender. But to many, many people, even those who fully support the rights of transgendered people to not be discriminated against, there’s something that rubs them wrong about needing to invent a new term for the condition that they think of as simply the default state of a human being.
Good thing I don’t use “typical” as a prefix then, isn’t it?
Why the hang up on prefixes? Why not suffixes? Gender-typical - Representing the typical match up between biological sex and gender identity. Seems pretty easy to me.
So “ladyboy” is inherently offensive? According to who? I find no dictionary that lists “ladyboy” as disparaging or offensive.
I see no place where I’ve insulted you.