I'd rather have a more honed argument than what I provided. I hate the arrogance and presumptiveness and bubble-world aspects of "don't say 'cis' because normal is just normal" 
style arguments so I'm seeing red here.
Cis people are anything but normal. No group that contains such a vast number of utter perverts who obsess over what random strangers could have in their pants deserves that designation. Nobody who has seen how unbelievably weird these freaks can get as soon as a trans person happens to merely exist in their vicinity would ever call cis people as a group normal.
The sheer arrogance of that poster comparing cis "normality" to sunrise versus the rise of other stars really pissed me off. That user's bubble world is apparently light years away from trans people.
I also love how he feels called out for being boring just because gay and trans people exist.
There's even a tiny hint of potential chaser in that word choice: that user as default/normal ("boring") and maybe seeking excitement from distant exotic (but still otherfied) beings.
It is a question of Boolean logic and linguistic clarity. All cis women are women but not all women are cis. All trans women are women but not all women are trans.
Most of the time the distinction between cis and trans is irrelevant so you dont mention it, other times the general gender category is not precise enough so you mention the more specific trans or cis categories to communicate clearly and precisely.
Insisting on not using the term cis is as nonsensical as insisting not to use the word car because a car is the "normal" motorised vehicle and only "anomalies" like motorcycles and trucks should have their own specific identifiers.
Insisting on not using the term cis is as nonsensical as insisting not to use the word car because a car is the "normal" motorised vehicle and only "anomalies" like motorcycles and trucks should have their own specific identifiers.
That's excellent. I may use that later.
"How'd you get here?""The normal way."
Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged
If you really want to help them though you should understand that, for the people making this argument, probably 99.99% of people in their lives are cis. If 99.99% of travel was done by car, then yes it would be the "normal" way of travel and there'd be no need to distinguish.
Maybe a better example would be EVs? We've never needed to specify an "ICE" car before because they've had dominance. Now though, EVs are becoming more common and all of a sudden what used to be just a "car" is an ICE car. It was always an ICE car but there was never a need to say it because nobody ever had EVs. Well, not anymore! And same for gender.
the cynical part of me thinks this person already made up their mind and the best thing you can do is call them a shithead and be on your way. they're fighting ghosts for literally no reason
the framing of "normal" reminded me of this passage
Whiteness is also an imaginary concept and a figment of the racist imagination, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less real, or deadly; whiteness is a thing because people insist that it is, and use force and violence to make it so. Whiteness is a thing because white supremacists needed a name for their violent subjugation of others, and so they gave it one. In this way, whiteness is a uniquely virulent and pathological form of social identity. It cannot survive its loss of supremacy; it cannot abide competition or mixture or “impurity.” Created by racial slavery and given a second wind by European imperialism, whiteness depends on the violent subordination of all others. Celebrate your Irish heritage if you must, or your Pennsylvania Dutch grandparents; that has nothing to do with the whiteness that names me, now, but which (partially) excluded my Irish and German ancestors when they came to this nation. Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch can and will survive incorporation into a multi-ethnic nation, but it is the sine qua non of whiteness that it cannot and will not. Inextricable from racial subordination, whiteness has no other content at all: whiteness is what’s left in the melting pot after everything else has been burned away. Without that xenophobic fire, it has no meaning, no substance, no fundamental.
This is why “white genocide” actually does have a meaning beyond “racial integration.” If you take away a white person’s ability to live as the undisputed master of the universe—to take his own experience as normal and privileged, and to presume all others to be debased copies of his own primary existence—then you take away his whiteness.
from Buffalo Skulls
That quote makes
even more appealing now, thank you for your service o7Good find.
Bigots are terrified of being seen or treated the way they treat the targets of their bigotry. It's a core motivation for them.
The real reason for the argument is that they do not want to give trans people a higher stage of social recognition, which has happened to other minorities before. Maybe pointing out that people said the exact same thing about the term "straight" would work? It is also pretty easy to make fun of them by making them say they are not cis, and then acting like they just came out to you.
Good insight. I will keep that in mind if I have to run into more cissues.
We love to see it
I think that loser is mostly just deserving of PPB tbh, like if you're so fucking caught up in cisnormativity that you can't even understand why the term "cis" exists, that's gonna be a mighty long stay in re-education.
answer in my head:
"how compelling, now please face the wall"
real answer:
sex and gender are different, trying to lump them in together with everything else as straight, yet later in the same post they complain about people using literally when it means figuratively, pick a lane
Cis comes from Latin meaning 'this side of'. Trans comes from Latin meaning 'other side of.'.
Shut the fuck up you special little bigot.
They always get it all wrong. There are normal people, and then there are cis people.
sometimes when I read posts here that say something like "cis people are so fucked up they all do x" I get this reactionary jolt where I'm like "hey that's not fair I don't do that, don't paint us all as--"
Then I blink and realize I'm literally just being extremely uncool and humorless and literally doing exactly what the memer is saying "we" do by reacting that way to the slightest bit of teasing.
Text of the "don't say cis" arguer below:
"cis" I feel like it's an extra term for "straight". The "default" for lack of a better term (and one that isn't othering) is near the not trans & not gay part of the gender / sexuality spectra. To me everyone in that zone is "straight" (boring/default/whatever).
I'm open to an explanation of a commonplace situation where it's necessary to have a separate word for "is of the gender that matches that assigned at birth."
To me it's like if I say I enjoyed the sunrise" and someone says, "you mean the Earth sunrise?"
I mean yeah, sunrises happen all over the solar system, there are different kinds of sunrises, probably all beautiful in their own ways, but in general the default "sunrise" a human is likely to be talking about is the one we experience on Earth.
"cis" I feel like it's an extra term for "straight"
This alone would earn them a "shut the fuck up" from me. If they can't even be bothered to look up basic terms then I can't be bothered to give them anything but derision.
To me it's like if I say I enjoyed the sunrise" and someone says, "you mean the Earth sunrise?"
Yeah no shit because everyone lives on Earth right now. If people were experiencing sunrises from non-Earth viewpoints, I would absolutely expect the distinction to start being made between different kinds of sunrises. Like consider why "landline telephones" used to just be called "telephones," or "analog clocks" used to just be called "clocks," or "acoustic guitars" used to just be called "guitars," and why all of those terms have had extra words applied to them.
Common is a more accurate and meaningful word than normal in this context
Yeah, having read the link, fuck em. Hit em with a "you would have hated the word 'straight' 20 years ago" or give em a PPB. There's nothing else for it, they should be bullied until they shut the fuck up and crawl back into whatever reactionary hole they crawled out of.
Edit: well, ok, they do try to argue they're cool with "straight" but they don't see why "cis" has to exist when "straight" already does. But like, that's so wrongheaded I think it can be dismissed immediately. Maybe with a "so do you think trans people are never straight or what?"
Wow, tankies openly organising harassment and brigading of an innocent person simply for sharing their opinion. Authoritarian much?
