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People feel that “cis” is a slur because it puts them on equal footing with trans people.
They prefer to consider themselves “normal” while “trans” people the weird ones whom can only be labelled with anything other than “normal.” Being called “cis” makes them feel as if they can also be labelled as something other than “normal.”
Similarly, one cannot be “straight” without acknowledging existence of same-sex attraction, so people uncomfortable with that won’t describe themselves and expect everyone to assume they’re “normal”. These people don’t teach kids to say “they are straight”, they prevent them from obtaining any knowledge about human sexuality at all to avoid even the possibility of admitting “exceptions” exist
As non-trans person, I can partially confirm. First time when I heard it, my reaction was “why do you need a new word for that?” Now I kind of used to it, but still there is some amusement each time I hear this word - it seems unnecessary, when “non-trans” would suffice if needed to avoid confusion. But slur? That’s nonsense is only in Musk’s head.
To be fair, “cis” comes from latin which means “on the same side of,” in contrast to “trans” which means “on the other side of.”
Why use that instead of non-trans? I don’t know, but yeah, I don’t think the word is a slur.
It’s not an eiher/or. E.g. non-trans could also be non-binary. So cis is more specific and leads to more inclusive language and thinking.
English loves antonyms.
I just love how utterly obtuse the TERFs sound when they say “Trans women are not a subset of women, and cis is just a slur, women are women and trans women are not” or similar, like honestly, the terms are all very simple, tall women are a subset of women, brown women are a subset of women, infertile women are a subset of women, and they are all women. They are just bigots who don’t want trans women to be part of that group, they want to exclude them. It is just hatred and bigotry, the symantics are just a cover.
brown women are a subset of women, infertile women are a subset of women, and they are all women.
You’ll probably find that a significant percentage of TERFs would disagree on those 2 points in private…
Lol, absolutely! Bigots gonna bigot, best we can do is not fall for it and be kind to each other.
TERFs brazenly use their own slurs, TIF (trans-identified female, aka a trans man) and TIM (trans-identified male, aka a trans woman). They don’t care at all about respecting each person’s chosen terms, they only care about ideology and enforcing their viewpoint.
I’m very frustrated by the apologists saying, “well, cis people don’t necessarily identify with that term and we should respect that”. It’s not so simple, what term would they like us to use instead? They never offer one. They want the absence of any term, because they want to enforce an ideology where only they are normal. So they can make up any mean words against trans people that they want, but we can’t even factually describe them with a neutral term?
Well said!
What a perfect example of “when you’re accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.”
It infuriates me when cis people say this. It comes from such a place of priviledge.
Why do I go to the comment sections of articles like this? Why do I punish myself?
Bigots are gonna bigot. My willpower is strong today so I avoided that particular torture.
If we can’t call Elon cis, can we instead call him a pathetic little manbaby?
We can do that and call him cis!
Yeah it’s bad in there.
This further validates my decision to leave Twitter. Musk is a fucking piss baby.
Welp, this is my first time hearing about this whole Twitter debacle so this is just great. What a way to end the night.
Appreciate the author for the thorough overview, though. Thanks for sharing this.
A well-done unpacking.
The way he acts makes me I wish I didn’t need Starlink. I don’t like giving him my business.
If a trans person didn’t want to be called trans for whatever reason would it be reasonable to continue using that term to describe them?
By most current definitions, if a person claims not to be trans they are not trans and by default that means they are cis, regardless of other things; what you would probably mean is something like a person that obtains a gender affirming care not matching their gender assigned at birth who also objects to being called trans, and obvious cases when cis people do that are eg prescribed usage of puberty blockers to slow down puberty of cis kids, or breast reduction for purely aesthetic reasons. As such, the care received is distinct from identity (today we broadly define trans as people who do not feel comfortable with gender role/expression/identity assigned at birth).
There is a gray area of people that are doubting, exploring, fluid, and non-binary and will call themselves “not cis but not sure trans applies” and that’s also fine and follows from contextual usage of these terms. A possible individual’s explanation: a non-binary person that presents more like the opposite sex than assigned at birth (therefore matching the above definition) but otherwise not sharing social experience with most trans people so they don’t want to be called trans even though they are not cis by the above definition. This is however much more specific, individual, and nuanced discussion that happens around the tweets.
The key here is, many words have multiple very contextual definitions and usage patterns and are deeply anchored to different social norms. That’s why there’s so much emotions around questions like “what does being a woman means?” even in purely cis feminist world (it also comes close to other linguistic/philosophical discussions, like Wittgenstein’s “game” - can you clearly define “a game” and contrast it with say “a toy” to make these distinct? What about “a sport”? Vegetables as more taxonomical concept and more culinary concept?) That’s why we ask for precise language: I may be non trans but receiving HRT. I may be a woman legally and experience both misogyny AND privilege from presenting “manly” and having “manly” professional image.
Some people feel like this needlessly muddles things because they claim “they know what the words mean and there’s one definition and languages do not change unless dictionary publishes a new definition”, but honestly, they either have not thought things through, not met enough diverse people, or follow a bigoted agenda".
But again, this is too nuanced for the tweets; the simple answer is “unless there’s a specific other context that forces a different definition, you either claim to be trans, or you’re cis”.
To be fair, as a cis white male, I use cis white male as a slur quite regularly. Right up there with dusty white folk.
If a slur is simply ‘to talk about disparaginly or negatively’ then that is exactly how I was using it and I don’t regret it. (I got the definition from the second definition of the google first result but from duckduckgo not google.)
Does making the negative generalizations about cis white folk like myself make me a bad person? Probably. Is it going to stop me? Probably not.
It certainly isn’t stopping them from dropping N-bombs, or other slurs. Talking shit about people who are just trying to live their lives. Interfering with people who just want to fucking exist in peace.
Am I stooping down to their level? Certainly.
Do they deserve it? Yes.
Should I be bothered that I’m not taking the high road? Not turning the other cheek? No.
These fucks aren’t going to learn unless you slap them in the goddamn face with it. Bigotry hurts. They deserve to hurt. Maybe they’ll learn, maybe we’ll learn. Maybe we won’t. At least it’s justice. I am a cis white male.“to talk about disparaginly or negatively” is a verb form of “slur”, the noun form is a little bit different. You can slur Elon Musk by calling him a privileged phony, but that doesn’t make “privileged” or “phony” slurs themselves.
A more fitting definition of “slur” in the sense that it is used here is “a derogatory or insulting term applied to particular group of people”. “Cis” is not a derogatory term, just like “trans”, “white”, or “Black” are not themselves derogatory terms. You can probably imagine some actual slurs that apply to each of these groups (tbh I’m having a hard time thinking of one for “cis”), but I don’t intend to write them out here.