That’s not easy at all. Most trans people have “typical” genders – “gender typical” (male or female) would seem to include them.
If you don’t like prefixes, then how about as a suffix? Is “gendercis” okay with you? If not, how about “gendersas”?
How about gender-typical? “Representing the state where biological sex matches gender identity”
But most trans people have typical genders! Why on earth would they be excluded from being “gender-typical”? Why not choose something that wouldn’t be so confusing?
It’d be like calling straight people “sex-typical” – that’d be incredibly confusing, since most straight and gay people have “typical” sexes (as well as “typical” sexual activity).
transgender people have a biological sex that matches their gender identity? If not, then no, they wouldn’t be gender-typical.
Most trans people are male or female. That’s their gender. And those are “typical” genders. Most trans people have typical genders. Having a typical gender shouldn’t be different than being “gender-typical”, unless you want to cause confusion.
It makes no sense to use a phrase that is so confusing when it’s not necessary. It makes no sense that having a typical gender would be different than being gender-typical. Why not pick something that isn’t so confusing?
Yeah, like stereotypical. Why’s that so confusing? Doesn’t have anything to do with stereos, and it’s not like everyone would have the SAME type of stereo.
And inflammable? What’s the deal with that? Can it burn or not? So confusing!
And “marriage” Used to be between ‘a man and a woman’. Now it’s between ‘two people’? Why did that have to change? So confusing!
And ‘polish’? don’t get me started! Capitalize the first letter, the pronunciation changes? WTH? so confusing!
:rolleyes:
There’s already a totally non confusing term. I get that you don’t like it. But there are plenty of non confusing alternatives.
Good luck trying to get a confusing phrase to catch on when there are non confusing alternatives.
I’ve presented several alternatives. What’s wrong with the ones I suggested? They’re shorter, too!
You can use it. I won’t stop you, and I doubt anyone else will, either.
Know what’s even shorter? Having no word. Have no word that is necessary to describe someone whose sex matches gender. That’s the typical way everyone is. People who are NOT that are transgender or whatever. Why is one for the way humans typically are necessary anyway? Just to have a label for EVERYONE?
So you don’t think it’s necessary to have a word for straight, or heterosexual?
I find those words quite useful.
This might be seen as stigmatizing, but why can’t we just call you abnormal?
Sidebar: some terms are only offensive depending upon the geographic location. Having just returned from my second trip to Thailand, where I dealt with or encountered kathoey working at an engineering firm, in a shopping mall, and in the streets and sex clubs, “ladyboy” in Thailand, does not appear to be offensive in any context I have encountered.
This is actually rather difficult for me to accommodate myself to, because IME in the US it almost always is very offensive. So I still refused to use the word, and preferred to use the Thai “kathoey” instead. Which of course translates from Thai into “ladyboy,” so I’m not really making it better for anyone but myself. :smack:
I’m left-handed, and that’s about as picayune a minority as you can be, and I’d STILL be a bit pissed if people described handedness as “normal” and “abnormal.” And I’m sure cmkeller can think of a different minority s/he belongs to whose description as “abnormal” would be irritating as shit.
jsgoddess:
Obviously, you can call anyone anything. But isn’t it reasonable to say that a person whose body and brain are in harmony, who needs no sort of therapy or surgery to achieve such a state, is “normal” and one who requires medical intervention is not?
Sure it’s reasonable, if you want to be stigmatizing.
In my long years of participating in these sorts of debates, online and increasingly IRL, I find that 100% of the time those who plant their feet against the word “cisgender” are in fact not supportive of either transgender persons as individuals or the community as a whole.
Given the diversity of humanity, there will be *some *cases where a person who fights the good fight to abolish the word “cisgender” is also an ally who helps, works with, is friendly to, or otherwise materially or substantively supportive to transgender persons. In other words, a person who is honestly bothered by the systemic and systematic discrimination we face, about our abominable unemployment and underemployment rates, lack of access to health care for transition, scarily high depression and suicide rate among unsupported individuals, and the violence, sexual assault, and murder of us.
I suppose it’s possible.
I’m cisgender and I feel wholly comfortable with the word. I won’t use it for people who have said they don’t like it, but one or two internet people aren’t enough to indicate to me that it’s a slur for a group that I’m a member of. It’d be different of it was a group I wasn’t a part of - but since I’m cis, my opinion on the word cis is just as valuable as any other cis person.
That doesn’t make sense to me. If they support them, why would they use a stigmatizing word as “abnormal”? If they are against trans discrimination, why would they actively engage in a form of discrimination, calling trans people a word that has a history of being used to say that there’s something wrong with them? I mean, it’s in the definition: “deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.”
I don’t get why that’s even a response to the question. FP asked about “heterosexual.” A word created to describe what people used to just call “normal.” Yet the anti-cis crowd doesn’t object to that term. Nor do they mind saying they are “straight.”
Plus it’s just inevitable. If a difference is observed, there will be a term made both for the less common and the more common variation, if one does not exist. Let’s say that it’s discovered that some things actually travel backwards in time. Such items are called “backtravelers.” Not long after, the word “fronttravelers” (using a prefix that is the opposite) will be created, and it will describe what we previously thought of as “normal.”
The objection you described is just an objection to how words work.
BigT:
They wouldn’t. But they would use “normal” to describe what is now called “cisgender” and “transgender” to describe one who is transgender. Of course, the implication of calling one group “normal” is to label the other group “abnormal”, but they wouldn’t use that word specifically. They’d say, “This person is a normal woman” and “This person is a transgender woman” without meaning to be insulting.
I’m sure that in less sexually tolerant climates this is true as well. Once upon a time, homosexuality was clinically considered a mental illness, and I’m sure many heterosexuals would have been taken aback by the “new term” to describe what was simply “normalcy” to them.
OK, but let’s suppose that “backtravelers” have all sorts of issues with their back-traveling existence and would happily pay for some sort of surgery to turn them into “foretravelers.” Does that not suggest that the condition of “foretraveling” is the normal state of travel, to be desired above the other state?
Perhaps, but I think it is the reason that a lot of cisgendered folks don’t like the “cisgender” label, even those who have no animus against the transgendered.
Oopsie! You bigoted out loud!