And the majority of accidental deaths have nothing to do with drunk driving. Does that mean that drunk driving should be dismissed with the same airy disregard? Do you understand the concept of a “risk factor”?
Repeating the same nonsense in different words doesn’t make it true. If you don’t get it by now, the salient matter at hand is the risk factor for the LGBT community for bullying and suicide. When you can identify a demographic that is at significantly higher risk than the general population, especially among youth, then you have actionable information that would be recklessly irresponsible not to address, even if it upsets someone like yourself who thinks they’re being coddled or something.
The problem is, just saying “I don’t care, let them have whatever it is they want, just please, shut up about it” isn’t good enough - the activists want everyone to wholeheartedly embrace the [thing] and champion it as much as they do.
Even if we over-generously assume for every obviously trans person I’ve met, there were another three who were trans but I didn’t recognise it, we’re still talking about, at most 20 people. Across my entire life. From a statistical perspective, that’s nearly microscopic.
There just aren’t that great a number of transsexual people in Australia and while I believe they deserve the same rights as everyone else, I do admit to the surprise at transgender rights being the lefty cause du jour - and scorn being directed at anyone who says anything along the lines of “Sorry, I really don’t care about this a great deal, since it doesn’t affect me or anyone I know.”
How do you know that’s what they want, and why is it important what activists want, anyway? Every cause has its activists, and some activists sometimes go obnoxiously overboard in promoting their cause. That doesn’t mean the cause isn’t worthy, and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cohort of people who are genuinely at risk and genuinely need help. In this specific instance, it’s activists who promote the use of the stupid term “cisgender” that I object to, and probably other stupid ideas, but that doesn’t change the fact that the LGBT community is subject to social discrimination and risk factors for abuse.
Marvelous! So your attitude is “this doesn’t affect anyone I know personally, so to hell with it, I don’t care about it”. That isn’t how one builds lasting and peaceful societies and a shared commonwealth. Regardless, that isn’t even the immediate problem. The immediate problem is that attitudes like yours are inciting bigots to active discrimination against vulnerable members of society.
No, you haven’t. The Advocate says they’re opposites, which they are; Miller already pointed out to you that things being opposites is different from them being the only two options, but you were too dumb and angry to catch it.
Cambridge was written precisely to show you why you’re dumb, but you missed it. Perhaps you are also angry.
Time was almost as sloppy as you, but not quite; a little dumb but they don’t seem angry, at least.
Them being roughly opposite in meaning is different from “cisgender” imparting additional meaning that “non-transgender” does not. If it does – which it does – then your conspiracy theory about the team of dicks and dickettes who made up a new word specifically to tell you hey wolfpup, you’re a piece of shit is… non-good.
You seem to enjoy putting your ignorance on parade.
The way to test for a linguistic opposite is to see if negating one of the terms conveys the same meaning as the other. Thus, the opposite of “visible” is “invisible”, and we know this because “not visible” means “invisible”. A child in first grade could understand this but apparently you cannot. Miller tried to support your case with a flawed example of black vs. white and I patiently explained why it wasn’t a valid example. “Not black” does not mean white, and they are therefore not linguistic opposites any more than blue and yellow which are chromatic opposites in the RGB color model but are not linguistic opposites.
But I provided three examples citing cisgender as meaning the opposite of, or “not”, transgendered. No one has ever said the black was the opposite of white or blue was the opposite of yellow, but three sources say cisgendered is the opposite of transgendered. This is exactly like the visible / not visible analogy. Nobody gives a fuck about something maybe being indistinct and just barely visible; semantically, visible and invisible are opposites and if something is not visible it is linguistically unambiguously invisible according to what words mean.
Likewise in the context of language nobody gives a fuck about anything in between in the realm of transgenderism because it has nothing to do with the semantic discussion at hand. It has nothing to do with the fact that “not transgendered” or “non-transgendered” has the same linguistic meaning as the stupid term “cisgendered” according to the cited mainstream definitions. Sucks to have multiple authoritative sources contradicting you, I know, but that’s not my problem. If a bunch of lunatic activists want to give it a special-snowflake meaning different from that, they’ve done a very poor job of it because no one seems to know what it is. You can discuss androgyny and intersex matters til the cows come home, I don’t care – but by definition the cited two words are opposites and therefore the stupid invented word is both redundant and ugly.
And I also cited a professor of gender studies stating that not only does the word not contribute anything useful, it’s actually counterproductive, and I agree.
You appear to be too stupid to understand any of this, or maybe you’re so wrapped up in trying to push a political agenda that you can’t see the plain and simple language issue in front of your face.
You’re embarrassing yourself.
It’s not complicated: Cisgender is the opposite of transgender.
Cisgender is a word that applies to the vast majority of people, describing a person who is not transgender.
cisgender: used to describe someone who feels that they are the same gender (= sex) as the physical body they were born with … Opposite: transgender
Also, you can take it up with your pal Miller:
@Jimmy Chitwood: I thought you were just feeble-minded and hard of understanding, but apparently you’re some kind of reality-denying psychotic. Had I realized this I wouldn’t have wasted my time actually composing the previous post where I went through the obvious reasoning step by step, assuming that there was a functioning brain on the other end of the dialog.
I’m still confused too; can someone put it simply? Words are good…
Because, raventhief, yes, if you were to say “Jan is not transgender,” I would definitely assume that meant “Jan is cisgender.” Should I be thinking that Jan might be of no gender at all, gendernull? But either Jan was born that way or transitioned into it, so the possibilities are still limited to cis and trans. What am I missing?
Some genderqueer individuals reject the label of transgender. My understanding is that not all intersex individuals embrace it either. (I am sure Una will correct me if she happens to see this and if I am wrong.) My point is that there are more than just 2 possibilities, so “not transgender” isn’t necessarily helpful in identifying “cisgender.” It’s a bit like saying “Jan is not blonde.” Ok, so is he or she brunette? Most people in the world are. But there are other hair colors, though less common.
[QUOTE=Trinopus]
I’m still confused too; can someone put it simply? Words are good…
[/QUOTE]
I would assume cisgender. But that would be an assumption, in the same way that if you told me someone was “not Christian” I would probably think they weren’t religious at all. Somebody who is “not Christian” isn’t an atheist, though, even if Christian and atheist are functionally opposed to each other.
Where we came from here is that wolfpup said that the word “cisgender” was invented specifically by transgendered people to belittle and alienate people who aren’t trangendered. In fact, cisgender refers to people who are not only not transgender, but who, as the Cambridge cite explains, conform to the gender-normative mode of identifying as the same gender as their sex at birth.
So: cisgender and transgender are functionally the opposite of each other. But not being transgendered doesn’t mean you’re cisgender. It means you probably are, statistically speaking, but cisgender is a specific instance of a person who isn’t transgendered, not all people who are not transgendered. And as such, it doesn’t make sense to have a little temper tantrum about how the word was made up to make you angry.
So, from your link, "such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered (LGBT) youth, **youth with disabilities, and socially isolated youth—may be at an increased risk of being bullied. **
Being trans is one of, by my count, 1 of 6 factors that may lead to bullying. Sorry man, failing to see that being trans is a significantly higher factor in bullying than being any other person that doesn’t fit in.
Next time read cite, bring pie.
I’m not saying being trans is easy or should be discounted as a factor in making life worse for them than it needs to be. I get that life is harder for them than for many others.
I am saying that life is no harder for them than it is a for goodly portion of the population who are also bullied / beaten upon for their differences. Your cite would seem to support that assertion.
All I’m saying is that:
trans-people are in no way special they just have their own shit that gets dumped on them. Others have theirs. Ostracism, mockery, beatings and murder don’t do degrees. A kid that can’t go to school without fear of beatings because he can’t fit in is no different than a kid that can’t go to school without fear because he/she is not gender normative.
Trans people ought to thank blacks and gays for making the pathway to, legislative, acceptance much easier. Society takes much longer - but you know what others have and still do deal with pointless persecution so suck it up buttercup.
Here is a challenge - show that trans people are more likely to suffer bullying and/or more susceptible to suicide than any other ostracised group.
Anecdote doesn’t equal data (except when it does) but I knew three suicides growing up and they were due to bullying based on “weirdness.” None were gay, none were trans. I’ve wanted to be dead for about 35 years because of bullying and I’m neither gay or trans.
I’m not saying life is easy for trans people. I’m not saying that the world lays out a red carpet for them. I am saying that it is just one of those things that the individual needs to deal with and if it sucks it sucks.
All rights have been conferred upon them. They have the right to be and do as they need to. Are there assholes? Yes. There are assholes everywhere and assholes will be assholes. Getting thumped for being trans is not better or worse than getting thumped for being black, gay, or just plain weird.
Punches hurt, isolation hurts, it doesn’t matter who you are.
In fact - just to pull the Trump double down - I’d say that trans-people have a leg-up in that there are specific groups they have at their disposal in order to support and help them. There are school clubs (granted not in all schools) there are community groups there are supports.
Again: I support transsexuals, I feel for them since they have an extra hardship, I in no way hate or denigrate or fear transsexuals.
I do think that their struggles are in no way harder or worse or more destructive than those experienced by a multitude of other non-normative people.
As such I don’t believe they should be singled out as somehow extra worthy of societal coddling.
Bigotry sucks, meanness sucks hatred sucks regardless the target.
I’ve nothing against trans-people. The OP was incited by a confluence of trans stuff all in a big ball on a bad day.
But since this is the hill I seem to have chosen I will claim it.
Trans-people have already “won” the rights that they already had and the shit that they put up with for being trans is in no way different than the shit black people put up with for being black, fat people put up with for being fat, and weird people put up with for being weird.
People, as Mrs. Zeke just opined, are dinks. They will be dinks to whomever for whatever reason.
Those of you that can’t read for comprehension may feel free to continue accusing me of hatred - yeah Tom… you fucking drool-chimp, I’m talking to you and yours.
Those who can read without assistance I hope you at least see that this is not coming from a place of hatred.
I just think that there are significantly bigger fish to fry. Trans is a battle already won.
Androgynous implies an ambiguity, someone like SNL’s Pat whose gender is uncertain to the observer or occupying roughly a middle state between the extremes of male and female. Genderqueer could mean that OR it could me an extremely effeminate man, or very butch woman where a person has mostly the opposite traits of their biological gender. It could mean someone asexual. It could mean someone who is at one extreme for part of their lives and another extreme for others.
As far as I can tell - I’m not going to hold myself out as an expert on this.
Sure there are. I mentioned several of them. That has nothing to do with the meaning of language and the definitions of words.
It’s perfectly helpful since all the authoritative sources I’ve found say that “cisgender” means precisely “not transgender” and that seems to be the way that everyone uses the word, notwithstanding the desperate attempts that we’ve seen here trying to redefine it on the fly to mean something else.
It is precisely like creating a neologism to mean “not-blonde” because, for some reason, the condition of being blonde or not-blonde is important to you. So when you apply the neologism to Jan, you know that she is not-blonde and satisfies the meaning of the neologism. The fact that there are many hair colors is completely irrelevant to the linguistic discussion at hand. It was indeed the creator of the neologism who dismissed those different variants and decided that there was some basic distinction to be made between blonde and not-blonde. The further analogous comment one might make is that one shouldn’t judge people based on their hair color and it’s stupid to have a neologism for “not-blonde” unless one is trying to start a culture war between blondes and not-blondes.
It’s a bit like homosexual v heterosexual, in my opinion. Is heterosexual the opposite of homosexual? I would say so. But those are not the only two options, so both words serve a purpose. Otherwise, heterosexual would “non-homosexual, non-bisexual, non-asexual, etc.” Bit clunky, I think. Heterosexual, like cisgender, has an actual definition that includes “non-” but goes further - is attracted to members of the opposte sex, has a gender identity conforming to biological sex.