I know I am male, and I am comfortable being male; I am cisgender male.
I appreciate what you’re doing, Peremensoe, but when it comes to complex social terms and phenomena, the dictionary is not really a reasonable thing to use for definitions. I really hate the current trend of explaining things with badly drawn comics, since it feels patronizing, but this one does a really good job of articulating why it’s not a great idea (albeit it’s about the word “racism”).
Dictionaries are overly terse and non-nuanced, and often curated by people without the necessary personal or academic context to understand all the real baggage, usage, and meaning behind complex social terms. This isn’t limited to social things either! Nobody is going to go to the dictionary for the definitions of esoteric STEM terms or in-vogue managerial buzzwords either.
I think citing the dictionary for words like “cisgender”, “racism” or “homophobia” in discussions like this just leads to people talking past each other.
It’s not a difficult concept; cisgender means gender identity that conforms with a person’s biological sex. “Not transgender” includes cisgender but it’s not limited to it.
Well, I guess that’s why I also tried to put it in plain personal terms.
There’s nothing to be scared of or insulted by in the word, guys. It’s just a simple, factual description.
I don’t know, something equivalent to the current context in which we’re discussing “cisgender” and “ladyboy”?
Sure (although of course that doesn’t get you anywhere unless there’s unanimity). But you’re dodging my point entirely, which is that there are patterns which lead a reasonable person to suspect, although this is not definitive, that “pillow biter” is a slur, while “autoandrophile” probably isn’t… just based on the way the terms are constructed. If you actually don’t think that’s true, please say so, but constantly quibbling about the hypothetical is just a waste of all of our time.
It really sucks, because “ladydude” is like the best half-jokey casual term to use to refer to women, but takes on an unfortunate connotation with transwomen.
That’s not at all what I said.
The best judge of whether there’s a need for a word is whether people have invented a word. Necessity is the mother of invention and all.
People have invented the word “cisgender” and used it a fair amount.
People have not invented the word “monosexual” and used it a fair amount.
That’s plenty of evidence that the need for one word, but not the other, exists.
Your claim by fiat that “cisgender” is an unnecessary word–despite the fact that it’s been invented and entered into circulation–is completely unpersuasive.
I contend that “cisgender” was invented just so people have a label. There is no NEED for it, just like there is no need for many words.
I fail to see why we need a word like “cisgender” when we don’t have a word for, say, someone who is NOT diabetic. I would assume if I was attending a conference on diabetes, and someone asked me if I was diabetic, I would simply say no. Similar to if I was attending a conference on gender issues, and someone asked if I was transgender, I would say no. I would consider it rude if someone just came up and said “Hey, what label are you?”
Furthermore, this line of talk is moving past my original point of the offensiveness of words and their usage leading to mod warnings and the like. I really just wanted to explore WHY a word is offensive, even though the only thing in evidence that it IS offensive, is a couple of posters saying that “Yes, it’s offensive”. But, inexplicably, that same standard doesn’t seem to apply to words deemed offensive by gender-typical people, and I wondered why that double standard existed.
People invented a word to talk about a group of people just so they could have a label that let them talk about that group of people? HOLY SHIT!
You capitalized “NEED”. What do you mean, “need”? Is there a need for any word at all?
If diabetic nurses discovered that such a word made their lives easier, you bet your bippy they’d come up with a word. The medical profession makes up words all the goddamn time, or haven’t you noticed? The lack of such a word isn’t a sign of their moral superiority over the trans community or anything; it’s just a sign that diabetes care professionals haven’t found such a word to be particularly helpful.
But I don’t understand… How do they know that someone doesn’t have diabetes without a word to label that person as a “person who doesn’t have diabetes”?
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen in my entire life.
Ugh, I’m almost reluctant to post here, but I just wanted to say the first several (or more) times I saw the word cisgender (and it was always online), I had no clue what it meant. I half-heartedly tried to figure it out in context, couldn’t, and figured that based solely on the sound of the word that it was something icky. I couldn’t help hearing ‘cyst’ in the ‘cis’ part.
When I finally looked it up, I was all “oh, that’s all it is.” I still don’t like the sound of the word – it’s really an ugly word – but I’m certainly not all bent out of shape if someone uses it in reference to me. It is what I am.
I agree with your general point here, but I have to pick a nit regarding the word “monosexual”. That is in fact the answer (or at least *an *answer) to manson1972’s question about the term for people who aren’t bisexual.
“Monosexual” has a (surprisingly) long history as a term for people who are either heterosexual or homosexual but not bisexual. The term is also used in other ways, such as to describe single-sex groups, but I just checked the OED and the earliest cite for “monosexual” in the sense of “Sexually attracted to members of one sex exclusively; not bisexual” is 1922. Personally I think I’ve probably come across “monosexual” in print more often than I have “cisgender”, although I am seeing about 10x as many Google hits on “cisgender”.
I wouldn’t claim that “monosexual” is a commonly used term, but people have sometimes felt the need for a word that means attracted to one sex and in these contexts “monosexual” does pop up.
I appreciate the clarity! That was my best guess as to what word would be used. I kind of wish it were, in analogy to “bicycle’s” counterpart, “unisexual,” but that sounds too much like you want to fuck undergrads.
So there you go, manson. When people found a use for a word, they created it. It’s like that’s how language works or something.
Which is not quite the same as non-bisexual.
True, but those trisexuals can piss up a rope.
Literally. It’s creepy.
This not-quite-binary situation is analogous to transgender and cisgender, isn’t it, inasmuch as there are some people who are neither?
To the best of your knowledge, has any poster on this message board been Warned for using “ladyboy” in a pejorative fashion? I’ve searched and cannot find any instance.
I have not see a warning for it, no. If, in fact, no warning would be issued for calling someone a ladyboy, then I don’t have a problem with being called cisgender.
Can we get a mod ruling on it?
I mean, there are asexuals. And pansexuals, but that’s more bi+open to trans/nb/agender.
It is going to be based on context. If ladyboy is used with the intention of being insulting, it is liable to get a Warning. Regardless of how it appears in Thailand, (where it is simply a poor transliteration of a Thai word for people who might not consider it insulting), it is not a common word in North America where beliefs regarding the sex trade in Thailand along with the implication that the person is seeking homosexual activity, possibly as a prostitute, would render it insulting when directed at a person who was not, indeed, seeking such activity.
If used in some other context in which it does not carry that baggage, ladyboy will probably be ignored.
Cisgender carries none of those implications and, while one may ask that other posters refrain from using the word cisgender when referring to you, it is claerly a neutral word that is not going to invoke a Mod Note or Warning.