Gotcha. Well, non-binary people are a tiny minority, both of the overall population and of the people who use the term “cis”, and I have never known them or any of the many other people who sat “cis” to use the term in a derogatory fashion.
I would suggest that you might be wrong about this. Considering how I base my opinion on having spoken with trans people and read their writings on the topic, rather than a vague feeling, I would also suggest you might want to take my suggestions seriously.
I’ll even go further, and share with you why - in my younger days, before I had listened to what Trans people were saying about the topic - I used to be uncomfortable with the term.
See, as a straight cis man, I was used to being the default. You didn’t need to specify that I wasn’t trans, because that should just have been your default assumption. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was preferential treatment; and when I was being treated like everyone else, that felt like persecution.
But as I examined these feelings and understood their source, I was able to overcome them, and realize that there was nothing derogatory about the term “cis”.
Right. You are a woman. So is a trans woman. In most circumstances, you don’t need to specify that she is a trans woman.
Consider the phrase, “That woman asked me for directions to get downtown, but I’m a tourist - could you help her?” It doesn’t matter if she is trans or cis, so in this context we don’t need either the trans or cis prefix.
IMO, saying “I’m not cis, I’m a woman” is sort of like saying “I’m not white, I’m normal”. It’s operating from a position of privilege (as much as I hate using that term, because as a straight cis white male who was born lower-class I certainly don’t feel privileged even though in a broader perspective I am) where cis has long been assumed to be the default.
Not that I’m accusing anyone of being sexist or transphobic or anything else, just something to keep in mind.
In most threads, you are correct, both you and a trans woman can say “I am a woman”.
In a thread about trans issues, you don’t have to participate; but if you choose to, and your participation is “I’m a woman, not a cis woman!” - then as @Smapti says, this is akin to adding an unspoken “I’m a [NORMAL] woman”.
Really? So you are only a woman, that’s the only thing you are?
You’re not a human being? A mother? An American? A Christian?
Or can you be multiple things at the same time? For example, can you be a woman, which is a type of human, as well as a mother, which is a type of woman that has a child?
Could you not also be “a type of woman that was identified as female at birth”, which is a bit of a mouthful, so can be shortened to “cisgendered woman”?
When you say (explicitly or implicitly) that you are “normal”, you imply that others who don’t share your traits are not “normal”. “Normal” (and “abnormal”) is a term that inherently comes with value judgement.
Why on Earth do you keep bringing up furries? I didn’t say anything previously, but you’ve done so multiple times now. “Furry” refers to a fetish, or a community built around a fetish; it doesn’t really have anything at all to do with pronouns, sexual orientation, gender, trans people, or anything else under discussion here in this thread.
How about, it makes trans people feel less suicidal, and the only downside is some people feel confused, have to learn something new, or can ignore it altogether if they choose. There may be some consequences, but no one’s getting arrested or sent to reeducation camp over it.
It makes some people’s worlds immensely better.
I think you probably mean trans people. Can you give an example of it being used that way?
I’m sure it has been used that way, but I’m also sure that some people see any use of it to be pejorative.
For the same reason we don’t refer to “ethnic Americans” and “non-ethnic Americans.”
I’m blanking on the right word here, but I’ll try to just describe what I mean.
Ethnicity is like the name of a type of variable, not the variable itself. And everyone has a value for it. You can’t just be non-ethnic.
For trans-ness, the prefix trans- as relevant here means change or movement. Being transgender means a state of gender identity and assigned gender at birth incongruence. To have incongruence, you also have to have congruence. So now there’s a new variable type: degree of congruity between gender identity and AGAB.
Bigger picture, it is well-established by now that defining minority groups by the way they are different, and treating the majority as so much the default that it doesn’t even have a name, or, if it does, it doesn’t have to be named, is super harmful.
Though we do refer to “non-binary” individuals. Right here in this thread, even! But, more to the point: we refer to smokers and nonsmokers, to voters and nonvoters, to citizens and noncitizens; to the employed and the unemployed, to theists and atheists, to combatants and noncombatants — to half-a-hundred other such groupings!
When I say “cis” in real life, I sometimes get met with blank looks until I clarify by saying “non-trans”. When I say “non-trans,” I — get no blank looks.
Which only means the new term has not yet achieved as a deep a market penetration as the older term has. If you had said “non-trans” to nearly anybody 40 years ago they’d have stared equally blankly back at you.
In general it’s better to refer to what things are rather than what they are not. After all my car can correctly be referred to as a non-boat. It’s not a terribly useful way to refer to my car, but is it a correct way.
But when we are pushing against an entrenched mostly unconscious mindset of unspoken “normal” versus explicitly labeled “abnormal”, having an inclusive (what it is), not an exclusive (what it isn’t), name for each is a way to break out of the cycle.
Which of course really upsets the folks who want desperately to cling to the normal/abnormal dichotomy because it gives them something to hate or to feel superior to.