Meghan Murphy – Why the conception of “cis” is wrong.

@GC (&partner?)

“The term “cis” or “cisgender” is a word that is used to describe an individual whose gender identity (male or female) matches their physical sex characteristics (penis or vagina).”

What is important in discussions such as these is the idea that sex and gender are two different categories.

Sex is the biological reality of our generally dimorphic human species. Gender is group of ideas that we as a society have socially constructed and artificially assigned to members of each sex class.

There no way to change one’s sex, previous intersex medical conditions being the exception, but yah, past the previously mentioned exception biological sex is immutable.

The Term “CIS” is problematic and here is why –

“1.Cis is not a necessary alternative to trans

Many people find it hard to see what is wrong with this statement:

“anyone not trans is cis”

But what if someone said this:

“anyone not Muslim is Christian”

It doesn’t make any sense, does it? The fact that being a Muslim is predicated on having a religious belief does not mean that anyone who is not a Muslim must have a different religious belief, let alone one specified by you.

You could amend the first statement to:

“anyone not trans is cis or non-binary or genderfluid or two-spirit etc.”

However, then the equivalent would be:

“anyone not Muslim is Christian or Hindu or Sikh or Jewish etc.”

There is quite clearly something missing: the space for people who do not wish to be defined by these belief systems at all. In the case of the former statement, that would be a huge number of feminists, with good reason.

I am not religious. I don’t define myself as an atheist any more than I define myself as a “not believer in fairies”. I just don’t wish to define myself in relation to religion in any way, shape or form. Does it mean I don’t believe Muslims are Muslims? Of course not. Similarly, does not identifying as cis mean I don’t believe trans people are trans? Clearly not. Nor does it mean that I am agender (I am female and I am a woman. Gender does not come into it). An absence of belief is not the erasure of someone else’s.

On the other hand, the demand that someone actively endorses your worldview by declaring themselves a believer or risk being deemed a bigot and subjected to ongoing threats and abuse … well, what would you call that?

“A person who is cis, is a person who was born with female sex characteristics and identifies as a female”

How you personally identify in society is irrelevant. I may identify as a bespectacled unicorn, but unless I actually have a magic horn and set of nifty glasses, I won’t be treated as one.

Let me just quote MM from her post –

“Therefore, a “cis woman” would be a woman who identifies with femininity, which I most certainly do not, nor do many other women. I reject the notion of femininity and I therefore reject the notion that women who have femininity imposed on them are either privileged or are naturally inclined towards their subordinate status. “Cis” is a regressive term, as it pretends as though women somehow identify with their own oppression.”

Women don’t ‘identify’ with their femininity. They are oppressed by it because our society has decided that people who have ovaries, uteruses, and produce large ova etc. are part of the subordinate class.

Women are oppressed by the social construct of femininity – identifying with femininity is then identifying with the basis of female oppression and why would one want to do that?

“Someone who is transphobic would be a person who hates people who identify as trans. Often, this can be caused by uncomfortable feelings/ misunderstandings/ irrational fears about a group of people, trans people included.”

I refer to the glosswitch article here as well:

“It’s morally unacceptable to demand that another person swears allegiance to a belief system they experience as harmful.

This is what is being done when feminists who do not believe in gender as anything other than a construct are ordered to identify as cis. It is not merely unfair; it is cruel, a cruelty which is intensified when the consequences of not submitting are to be declared a hateful bigot and a TERF.

There are non-trans women whose experience of gender is contained only within the harm that has been done to them and others. It’s not okay to then tell them that they just don’t “get” gender or that “real gender” is totally distinct from gender oppression and stereotyping.

If they do not experience or believe that, merely being faced with such statements is traumatising. Gender has an absolutely real and valid meaning for them and to suggest that any attachment to this meaning encroaches on the space of someone more oppressed is manipulative and untrue. This is not about hierarchies of suffering, it is about the integrity of meanings to people who are traumatised in different but equally deplorable ways.”

TL;DR

Not agreeing with a particular worldview is enough to get you labelled a bigot and transphobic. If conducting one’s affairs in correspondence to observable material reality is ‘transphobic’ so be it. :)

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@RSitM

“Back in the day, we all used cis merrily”

That was before my time, it would seem that the cultural connotations of the word have take a more sinister turn as of late.

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@GC

“One is a race. One is an ideology.”

There are parallels to be drawn between the discrimination faced by people of colour and women in their respective struggles against oppression in society.

Racism and sexism are often both ‘unseen’ in society and pointing out similarities can often bring clarity to discussions when people cannot (won’t) see one oppression or the other.

“At least Arb seems to be honest enough to admit sh’s…”

Small pronoun correction – not “she” but “he”. Your gentle blog-host most definitely possesses XY chromosomes.

Many radical feminists consider the word ‘terf’ to be a slur, as it often used in conjunction with other more classic pejorative language used to identify non-compliant females.

So, if nuance is a consideration – gender critical – isn’t a bad compromise as radical feminism by definition works to dismantle oppressive structures in society and gender is most definitely one of those structures.

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@CG

“Apologies. I thought I read somewhere that you identified as a she. “

No worries. Happens quite often.

“Do you consider it a slur?”

I do. In most parlance I’ve seen, it is being used in a pejorative, rather than descriptive manner. See that whole section of conversation with Roughseas – would supporting #BLM make one a n*gger-lover? Accurate or not, the pejorative connotation remains. The same can be said with terf, so again, it depends on how you want to come across. Ignoring what two women are saying about the term comes across as kinda of acting like a douche, no?

“That doesn’t mean I’d agree with them, but it’s much easier to converse with them.

Seems like a reasonable assumption.

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@GC

“So you see cis and trans as a belief system similar to a religion?”

Enough rough parallels to make a go of it. Sure, why not? If it helps in comprehending the objections to trans-ideology.

“You might not want to associate with the atheist community,

Been there, done that. Much of the atheist community is sexist as f*ck and doesn’t deserve a rational person’s time of day.

“No. I don’t like their ideology (although good things can be found in it as well) and think it’s untrue.

And there is the position that many radical feminists find themselves in – the ideology presented is untrue, and disagree… and for disagreeing the terfy bigoted crap starts. Not for hating on trans people but for disagreeing with them.

There is no hate for Trans people here – my quarrel rests with their ideology. A) Because it erases women and their struggle in society and B) it makes specious claims about sex and gender that are not supported by evidence.

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@GC

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper Summarizes point 1.

“But feminism only makes sense if one takes seriously the sexed body—and the reproductive asymmetry inherent therein. As British political theorist and radical feminist Rebecca Reilly-Cooper writes,

Women’s oppression has its historical roots and its ostensible justification in female biology and the exploitation of female reproductive labour. Altering the definition of the word “female” so that it now means “any person who believes themselves to be female” is not only conceptually incoherent . . . it also removes the possibility of analysing the structural oppression of female persons as a class, by eradicating the terminology we use to describe the material conditions of their existence. . . . If we do not recognise the material reality of biological sex and its significance as an axis of oppression, women’s experience of oppression becomes literally unspeakable. We lose the terminology and tools of analysis – tools carefully developed by generations of feminists working before us—to make sense of female experience, and of the reality of negotiating a male-dominated world in a female body [emphasis in original].

Those of us who disagree sharply with radical feminists on a whole host of issues must here agree: It is not evidence of biological determinism or essentialism to state the facts of the human body. But it is sexist to deny—or worse, despise—them.”

Still fuzzy? Read the rest of the article.

2. Robert Jenson –

“Transgender is defined as “A term for people whose gender identity, expression or behavior is different from those typically associated with their assigned sex at birth.” The transgender movement rejects the automatic sorting of males and females into the categories of man and woman, but does not necessarily reject gender roles. Some in the transgender movement embrace patriarchal gender roles typically attached to the cultural categories of masculinity and femininity.

While not all people who identify as transgender have sex-reassignment surgery or use hormones or other treatments to modify their bodies, the transgender movement as a whole accepts and/or embraces these practices.”

“Transgenderism is a liberal, individualist, medicalized response to the problem of patriarchy’s rigid, repressive, and reactionary gender norms. “

Read more here, here, and here.

On a side-note GC, you seem to be unusually interested in this topic – considering you erroneously deny the root problem –patriarchy I’m not sure what you motive is?

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@GC

Robert Jenson summarizes the trans position.

““Transgenderism is a liberal, individualist, medicalized response to the problem of patriarchy’s rigid, repressive, and reactionary gender norms. “

See the TransAdvocate for their glossary of terms.

Compare and contrast with gender theory as a cult.

For more background – a thumbnail sketch of queer theory.

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