It's the opposite of trans-. I'm not sure what else is needed. (And anyway, expecting strict logic and consistency from natural language is almost always a waste of time.)
(a) It's *not* the opposite of trans- (b) transgender isn't a great term either, but it's less bad and more entrenched (c) someday I'll learn that disagreeing with the herd only gets me ad-hominem insults...
Now ad-hominem is a term that quite clearly does not mean what you think it means. Your position here is not wrong because of any property of you as a person, and none have implied such.
Nobody's claiming you're wrong because of privilege, merely that it takes a lot of privilege for one to put correcting the marginalization transpeople get below the marginalization of hypercorrect chemists.
If you are inferring Peggy McIntosh's essay, the point of that exercise is that everyone has one. So not an insult (though persistent failure/refusal to examine might be worthy of insult.)
(Plus, ignoring the chemistry term--which I think fits it better--the other use of the prefix is "on the near side of". If anything, it's a more forgiving prefix that way than trans-.)
I haven't seen an explication of this inconsistency. You've made some points about the non-binary and multidimensional nature of both gender and sex, which is obvious to all involved, nonetheless there is a socially constructed gender and sex binary and a socially constructed identification between them; the condition of a person's satisfying that identification might use a name. You also made a faux-unpacking of the term as 'on the same side of gender' which I can't even begin to take seriously or believe that anyone worth talking to would think etymology works like that. All these points seem not to be relevant as far as I understand the intended usage of cis-. Cna you explain in more detail rather than just saying you have a problem with it?
I'm confused about "can't even begin to take seriously or believe that anyone worth talking to would think etymology works like that." Could you elaborate, perhaps without bringing into issue my personal worth to talk to?
Quoth the OED:
prefix, repr. L. cis prep. ‘on this side of’, opposed to trans or ultra, across, beyond; also used in comb. as in cis-alpnus, cis-montnus, lying on this side the Alps or the mountains, cis-rhennus on this side the Rhine, cis-tiberis on this side the Tiber. The two first of these esp. continued in use in med.L. in reference to Rome and Italy, whence It. cisalpino, F. cisalpin, cismontain, CISALPINE, CISMONTANE.
Note that 'opposed to' doesn't mean 'is an antonym of', as I trust you know.
The only words listed in the OED that begin with cis- as a prefix (as opposed to 'cistern' and its derivatives, which derive from Latin /cista/) are /cisalpine/, "on this side of the Alps", and /cismontane/, "on this side of the mountain". I fail to see how you can draw any reasonable conclusion but that "cisgender" must mean "on this side of [the] gender", and I fail to see how you can reasonably conclude that such a meaning is appropriate.
I'm happy to be enlightened, especially if you can do it without insulting me.
(There's also /cisoid/, a technical adjective describing a cis- chemical structure. I don't feel it's relevant, but I suppose we could argue about it.)
I had supposed it was a straw man argument, but it seems you actually do think morphology works like that. I don't see how you could, as you can see immediately from the preceding sentence that "straw man" refers to a thing you don't have if you just look up "straw" and "man" in the OED and mash them together, expecting all words or phrases composed of morphemes to have meaning fully determined. A "crackpot," I don't know what on earth that has to do with busted cookware. "Ambidextrous" does not mean you have two right hands.
As to the semantic content of derivation, the best you can say is that the modification of meaning given by adding a refix prefix is sometimes predictable. Given two obscure words "cisalpine" and "cismontaine" we have two obscure data points. It is, indeed, unreasonable to expect two data points to make a rule, especially when hardly anyone has encountered the words. "Transsexual," "transgender" and chemical "cis/trans," on the other hand, actually exist in people's minds (at least those of the neologizing crowd.)
As you alluded to it elsewhere: 'cislunar' also derived from 'translunar' via the 'cis/trans' analogy to chemistry and not by applying the 'cis' entry in the OED. 'On the same side of moon' makes just as much or little sense as 'on the same side of gender.' WHAT is on the same side of moon? Moon's a three dimensional object, who gets to privilege binary 'sides' and I don't see which side is specified in the OED entries? The side facing the earth, REALLY? Et cetera.
We assign words as shorter mnmemonics to larger concepts. Expecting all morphemes to adhere in a determined relation and morphology to support fully general semantics is pointless; one might as well go around saying "gender and sexual identities aligned according to the generally constructed identification" because without the opportunity to leave something out via mnemonic there can never be a word to capture that actual meaning.
You object, as far as I can tell, that "on the same side of gender" leaves something out. But that's the whole point of having a word to refer to a concept.
Aha, you appear to have stumbled on one of *my* favorite nitpicks! :) To wit, the OED is a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. They don't attempt to define the English language or codify "correct" usage, merely to record the English language as it's used in day-to-day life. If "cisgender" isn't already in the OED (and I'd be surprised if it weren't), it shouldn't take much more than a letter with a few citations to put it in. But my point is, using the OED to argue that a word "should" or "shouldn't" mean something is hideous misuse of one of the greatest linguistic endeavors of all time. Not that I *really* care that much, and I don't mean to pile on you, but it does feel nice to let my inner pedant out once in a while. :)
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Personally, as a sometime linguist, my attitude toward language is that it's fine for it to produce Lovecraftian horrors, growing "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." Or, uh, something slightly less apocalyptic.
All that said, now you've put a possible alternative meaning for "transgender" in my head, roughly along the lines of "has transcended earthly gender categories", which amuses me greatly. :)
As a total layperson, I popped "cis-" into my firefox dictionary search engine and it returned a definition that let me easily infer what it meant in relation to one who is transgendered.
I do understand nit-picky preference for correct usage/terminology, but isn't that ease of inference for as many laypersons as you can hope for the most important part?
1: on this side (cislunar) (cisatlantic) 2 usually italic : cis (cis-dichloroethylene) — compare trans-
I read the first definition, then my gaze skips all the way to "compare to trans-" and I can at least figure I'm dealing with a word that refers to those who aren't transgender (for some reason when I link it, it leads to this (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cis-) definition though).
I suppose it's your prerogative to have those priorities, it just comes off as needlessly belligerent, I suppose? A marginalized group has a word that does what they want and isn't so obscure that most moderately intelligent people can find the intended meaning of it without much difficulty - I know you're not saying that your priorities should or do overshadow that, but it's really easy to read that way.
Actually you're phrasing it quite well :D and that's about all you'd need to find. If you take the biological sex, cis– is on that side of the spectrum, and trans– is across the other side of the spectrum. It's simplifying for etymological highlighting but you see how you get there.
The goal, in a general case, is to have terms that can have equal connotation--instead of a "good" and a "bad", or a "normal" and an "other". So like, normal person vs. trans person isn't far from person vs. trans person, to take a Fish example from above.
So instead of "straight" and "fag", the latter of which has all sorts of bad connotations and denigrations, we have "heterosexual" and "homosexual" (and bisexual and asexual and and but that's beyond scope here) where the terms are more or less equal and you can use them as descriptors without hating on someone. At the same time, instead of "normal person" and "(the other weird freaky) trans people" we have "cisgender" and "transgender" (and genderqueer and gender-fluid and and and, again).
It's also about trying to highlight privilege in language (because most of us think in language, and creating terms is one of the first steps in framing discussions). Just because a non-gender-variant person is the default doesn't mean it's the correct or only way; it's just one of many options.
Oh god Professor Cow is apparently teaching sociology again. :D But I wanted to sum it up because you and Gibb were always so awesome for me, and hopefully this can be useful. Plus I really wanted to say HI JYUU but I don't seem to be able to say anything in under two pages. :D
Exactly - the point is having an identifiable word that works as a comparable, nonjudgmental term for those who are not transgender. It might not be the most correct word, but I have yet to see an alternative, and given the transgressions of tons of other words in the English language this seems like a pretty acceptable vocabulary tweak (for most, anyway).
HI COW :D I'm glad I can sound decently coherent! And d'awww, if we helped at all then I'm immensely glad and fuzzy feeling-ed. ♥
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It also doesn't mean what they seem to think it means.
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(b) transgender isn't a great term either, but it's less bad and more entrenched
(c) someday I'll learn that disagreeing with the herd only gets me ad-hominem insults...
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Language has done a lot of things. That doesn't necessarily mean it should be encouraged to keep doing them.
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Quoth the OED:
prefix, repr. L. cis prep. ‘on this side of’, opposed to trans or ultra, across, beyond; also used in comb. as in cis-alpnus, cis-montnus, lying on this side the Alps or the mountains, cis-rhennus on this side the Rhine, cis-tiberis on this side the Tiber. The two first of these esp. continued in use in med.L. in reference to Rome and Italy, whence It. cisalpino, F. cisalpin, cismontain, CISALPINE, CISMONTANE.
Note that 'opposed to' doesn't mean 'is an antonym of', as I trust you know.
The only words listed in the OED that begin with cis- as a prefix (as opposed to 'cistern' and its derivatives, which derive from Latin /cista/) are /cisalpine/, "on this side of the Alps", and /cismontane/, "on this side of the mountain". I fail to see how you can draw any reasonable conclusion but that "cisgender" must mean "on this side of [the] gender", and I fail to see how you can reasonably conclude that such a meaning is appropriate.
I'm happy to be enlightened, especially if you can do it without insulting me.
(There's also /cisoid/, a technical adjective describing a cis- chemical structure. I don't feel it's relevant, but I suppose we could argue about it.)
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As to the semantic content of derivation, the best you can say is that the modification of meaning given by adding a refix prefix is sometimes predictable. Given two obscure words "cisalpine" and "cismontaine" we have two obscure data points. It is, indeed, unreasonable to expect two data points to make a rule, especially when hardly anyone has encountered the words. "Transsexual," "transgender" and chemical "cis/trans," on the other hand, actually exist in people's minds (at least those of the neologizing crowd.)
As you alluded to it elsewhere: 'cislunar' also derived from 'translunar' via the 'cis/trans' analogy to chemistry and not by applying the 'cis' entry in the OED. 'On the same side of moon' makes just as much or little sense as 'on the same side of gender.' WHAT is on the same side of moon? Moon's a three dimensional object, who gets to privilege binary 'sides' and I don't see which side is specified in the OED entries? The side facing the earth, REALLY? Et cetera.
We assign words as shorter mnmemonics to larger concepts. Expecting all morphemes to adhere in a determined relation and morphology to support fully general semantics is pointless; one might as well go around saying "gender and sexual identities aligned according to the generally constructed identification" because without the opportunity to leave something out via mnemonic there can never be a word to capture that actual meaning.
You object, as far as I can tell, that "on the same side of gender" leaves something out. But that's the whole point of having a word to refer to a concept.
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Down with L'Académie Française!
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Personally, as a sometime linguist, my attitude toward language is that it's fine for it to produce Lovecraftian horrors, growing "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." Or, uh, something slightly less apocalyptic.
All that said, now you've put a possible alternative meaning for "transgender" in my head, roughly along the lines of "has transcended earthly gender categories", which amuses me greatly. :)
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I do understand nit-picky preference for correct usage/terminology, but isn't that ease of inference for as many laypersons as you can hope for the most important part?
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And no, while it might be the most important part to some people, I have different priorities.
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2 usually italic : cis (cis-dichloroethylene) — compare trans-
I read the first definition, then my gaze skips all the way to "compare to trans-" and I can at least figure I'm dealing with a word that refers to those who aren't transgender (for some reason when I link it, it leads to this (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cis-) definition though).
I suppose it's your prerogative to have those priorities, it just comes off as needlessly belligerent, I suppose? A marginalized group has a word that does what they want and isn't so obscure that most moderately intelligent people can find the intended meaning of it without much difficulty - I know you're not saying that your priorities should or do overshadow that, but it's really easy to read that way.
Sorry, I know I'm not phrasing this well at all.
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The goal, in a general case, is to have terms that can have equal connotation--instead of a "good" and a "bad", or a "normal" and an "other". So like, normal person vs. trans person isn't far from person vs. trans person, to take a Fish example from above.
So instead of "straight" and "fag", the latter of which has all sorts of bad connotations and denigrations, we have "heterosexual" and "homosexual" (and bisexual and asexual and and but that's beyond scope here) where the terms are more or less equal and you can use them as descriptors without hating on someone. At the same time, instead of "normal person" and "(the other weird freaky) trans people" we have "cisgender" and "transgender" (and genderqueer and gender-fluid and and and, again).
It's also about trying to highlight privilege in language (because most of us think in language, and creating terms is one of the first steps in framing discussions). Just because a non-gender-variant person is the default doesn't mean it's the correct or only way; it's just one of many options.
Oh god Professor Cow is apparently teaching sociology again. :D But I wanted to sum it up because you and Gibb were always so awesome for me, and hopefully this can be useful. Plus I really wanted to say HI JYUU but I don't seem to be able to say anything in under two pages. :D
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HI COW :D I'm glad I can sound decently coherent! And d'awww, if we helped at all then I'm immensely glad and fuzzy feeling-ed. ♥