(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-.)
biological the near side genderqueer
sex --------------------|-------------------- transsexual
(cis–) (trans–)
(1) It's not marginalization to declare a spectrum. If there isn't a cis–, there isn't a trans–. It's working within the constructs of what society has already set up to build definitions one can work with. (2) It's especially not self-marginalization, but feel free to identify me in ignorance; it's always fun to watch people do that.
I'm sure all of the born-intersexed people will be pleased to hear that they are no longer "biological".
Also, I didn't mean to imply that you personally are (or are not) transsexual, only that you were arguing on that side of the discussion. I regret any misunderstanding.
Man only a full-on sucka fool would use "biological" and "medical" and "physiological" for sex as though it described some absolute, unchangeable, one-axis state. :(
Well, this is why some of us attempt to qualify such statements to be about people presumed to be or perceived as being one or the other, since the societal distinctions that are most problematic (and where e.g. privilege is concerned) are one-dimensional. When you talk in more specific contexts that changes, but for the general case it fits the core assumptions that are made. If an XX woman without breasts, vagina or uterus is ignored by EMTs it is likely to be because they perceive her as a transwoman, for example, because that's what the societal assumptions and biases are. Not because of the specific anatomical differences for their own sake.
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.
1. There's no particular reason to think that noun phrases such as 'straw man' and 'crack[ed ]pot' should obey the same rules as nouns combined with established and well-defined prefixes. Or will you seriously claim that I shouldn't expect to be able to derive the meaning of 'microscope' from micro- and scope? 2. Even if there were, the etymology of those is pretty clear from their individual definitions ('pot' is well attested as a slang term for head or brain, as is 'dexter' for adept rather than stictly right hand). 3. Even if they weren't, the mere fact that things have been done badly in the past is no argument for doing them badly in the present and future. 4. The data points don't make the rule, they simply support that the prefix as used in English (which is admittedly rarely) consistently has the meaning given by the OED for the prefix and the meaning one expects from the Latin. 5. It is absurd1 to suggest that cislunar is somehow derived from translunar by analogy to chemistry. 'Cislunar', like 'cisalpine', simply means 'on the same side of the moon [as the speaker]'. It happens that all of the speakers involved in the orbital planning are on the same side of the moon as each other, so it happens that no ambiguity arises; if they weren't, it would. 6. My objection has nothing to do with 'leav[ing] something out'. The moon, like the Alps, has sides, and one can be reasonably said to be on the same or opposite side of it as another. Gender can in no reasonably-conceivable sense be so said. Even if it did, the term 'cisgender' would be meaningless as used and would only make any kind of sense to describe someone who is on the "same side of gender" (whatever that would mean in this strange hypothetical universe) as the speaker is, which is clearly not the sense intended by its advocates (nor one of any real use whatsoever).
(The chemical use of the terms (and para-/ortho-/meta-, and R/S, and others) arises only from chemistry's unpleasant obsession with the anthropomorphizing of atoms, and it's a serious mistake to try and reason by analogy therefrom without considering this fact. It's also worth pointing out that IUPAC has deperecated the use of cis/trans terminology partially for this reason and prefers the German E/Z (entgegen/zusammen) notation, which is much more rigorous.)
1 Of course, the mere fact that it is absurd doesn't necessarily mean that it's not true, but it does mean that I (reasonably) won't believe you without a credible source. If you do have one (people have been known to do absurd things), I'll refer you to point #3.
"according to the generally constructed identification" and "not according to the generally constructed identification" don't count as "sides"? Why on earth not?
Even if it did, the term 'cisgender' would be meaningless as used and would only make any kind of sense to describe someone who is on the "same side of gender" (whatever that would mean in this strange hypothetical universe) as the speaker is
The location of "Cisalpine Gaul" does not change depending on whether or not you're in Germany or Sicily. It is always on the same side of the Alps as Rome, which everyone in the Latin-speaking world was capable of recognizing as a privileged frame of reference. Using cultural context to help assign meaning is just really not that difficult.
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. :)
---
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. :)
I'm fully aware of the OED's descriptivist leanings, as much as I'm not a fan of them. That doesn't change the thrust of my argument, to wit, all extant uses of the 'cis' prefix are totally at odds with what people want to use it to mean in 'cisgender' (which is, of course, not in the OED, although I have no doubt that it someday will be, despite my hopes to the contrary).
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Your attitude towards linguistics is certainly the prevailing one, it's simply not mine.
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That is, indeed, precisely what I would like the term to mean, and a state I sincerely wish more people would attain.
For what it's worth, I became a lot happier with this viewpoint when I realized that language is inherently a crude and sloppy way to communicate, and can never be anything more, since it relies on mental categories, which are never precisely the same in any two people, and are simply abstractions anyway, and thus inherently faulty.
So yeah, it's broken, fixing it is impossible, stopping it is impossible, and slowing it down is a waste of time when TV is doing our work for us.
But we all get to pick our own battles, of course. :)
I still don't understand your position here (AFAICT this whole thread sprung from one in a flocked post elsewhere?), and I would like to.
Is your argument fundamentally political (i.e., that the metaphor people are relying on in order to draw an analogy to other uses of the cis- prefix is incorrect/counterrevolutionary)? Or fundamentally linguistic/literalist, i.e., that it is illegitimate to extend the use of cis- by analogy for things that don't have literal sides?
Actually, for the record, this all started in reference some entirely different posts. I hadn't read the thread neuro42 was involved in until I saw it referenced here.
That's not correct. Even if you posit a 'gender binary', you cannot be on the same or opposite side *of the concept of gender itself*, and that's the only sensible thing cis- can mean.
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no. oversimplfying, because, well:
(1) It's not marginalization to declare a spectrum. If there isn't a cis–, there isn't a trans–. It's working within the constructs of what society has already set up to build definitions one can work with. (2) It's especially not self-marginalization, but feel free to identify me in ignorance; it's always fun to watch people do that.
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Also, I didn't mean to imply that you personally are (or are not) transsexual, only that you were arguing on that side of the discussion. I regret any misunderstanding.
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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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2. Even if there were, the etymology of those is pretty clear from their individual definitions ('pot' is well attested as a slang term for head or brain, as is 'dexter' for adept rather than stictly right hand).
3. Even if they weren't, the mere fact that things have been done badly in the past is no argument for doing them badly in the present and future.
4. The data points don't make the rule, they simply support that the prefix as used in English (which is admittedly rarely) consistently has the meaning given by the OED for the prefix and the meaning one expects from the Latin.
5. It is absurd1 to suggest that cislunar is somehow derived from translunar by analogy to chemistry. 'Cislunar', like 'cisalpine', simply means 'on the same side of the moon [as the speaker]'. It happens that all of the speakers involved in the orbital planning are on the same side of the moon as each other, so it happens that no ambiguity arises; if they weren't, it would.
6. My objection has nothing to do with 'leav[ing] something out'. The moon, like the Alps, has sides, and one can be reasonably said to be on the same or opposite side of it as another. Gender can in no reasonably-conceivable sense be so said. Even if it did, the term 'cisgender' would be meaningless as used and would only make any kind of sense to describe someone who is on the "same side of gender" (whatever that would mean in this strange hypothetical universe) as the speaker is, which is clearly not the sense intended by its advocates (nor one of any real use whatsoever).
(The chemical use of the terms (and para-/ortho-/meta-, and R/S, and others) arises only from chemistry's unpleasant obsession with the anthropomorphizing of atoms, and it's a serious mistake to try and reason by analogy therefrom without considering this fact. It's also worth pointing out that IUPAC has deperecated the use of cis/trans terminology partially for this reason and prefers the German E/Z (entgegen/zusammen) notation, which is much more rigorous.)
1 Of course, the mere fact that it is absurd doesn't necessarily mean that it's not true, but it does mean that I (reasonably) won't believe you without a credible source. If you do have one (people have been known to do absurd things), I'll refer you to point #3.
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Even if it did, the term 'cisgender' would be meaningless as used and would only make any kind of sense to describe someone who is on the "same side of gender" (whatever that would mean in this strange hypothetical universe) as the speaker is
The location of "Cisalpine Gaul" does not change depending on whether or not you're in Germany or Sicily. It is always on the same side of the Alps as Rome, which everyone in the Latin-speaking world was capable of recognizing as a privileged frame of reference. Using cultural context to help assign meaning is just really not that difficult.
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Down with L'Académie Française!
---
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. :)
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
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Your attitude towards linguistics is certainly the prevailing one, it's simply not mine.
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That is, indeed, precisely what I would like the term to mean, and a state I sincerely wish more people would attain.
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
So yeah, it's broken, fixing it is impossible, stopping it is impossible, and slowing it down is a waste of time when TV is doing our work for us.
But we all get to pick our own battles, of course. :)
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Is your argument fundamentally political (i.e., that the metaphor people are relying on in order to draw an analogy to other uses of the cis- prefix is incorrect/counterrevolutionary)? Or fundamentally linguistic/literalist, i.e., that it is illegitimate to extend the use of cis- by analogy for things that don't have literal sides?
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!
Re: Down with L'Académie Française!