(no subject)

[gfish]

People have problems with the term cisgender? That's... I don't know what that is. Quite an impressive knapsack, I guess.

Comments

[cow.livejournal.com]

And yet, sadly common whenever trans/genderqueer stuff gets discussed on the internet. :(

It seems that people feel that defining the .. standard option? .. makes them boxed in. Which is understandable, but just as 'homo' needs 'hetero', 'trans' needs 'cis' just to construct the sentences. Not that you don't already know, but I get ranty.

or something. blurg tired brain.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

You have a chemistry degree. Cis- should not be a scary prefix for you.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

I don't have *any* problem with the concept. I don't have *any* problem with there being *a* word for it.

I have a problem with that *particular* word, just like I have a problem with a lot of very-poorly-chosen neologisms / language abuse.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

It's not scary in the least.

It also doesn't mean what they seem to think it means.

[arjache.livejournal.com]

It sure would be nice if, in the process of feeling boxed in, they took the time to consider how awful it must be for gender-variant people to feel boxed in by language too.

Something tells me that didn't happen, though.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

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.)

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

Because language never proceeds by analogy. And chemistry owns its particular usage of latin prefixes, doncha know.

[cow.livejournal.com]

Seriously. It's definitely something where I tend to reach for the Tiny Violins™ when I see people getting offended by the term.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

(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...

[cow.livejournal.com]

(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-.)

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about neurotypical?

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

It's not just chemistry. It's completely inconsistent with the use of the term in space sciences as well, and probably others.

Language has done a lot of things. That doesn't necessarily mean it should be encouraged to keep doing them.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Yes, and "on this side of gender" is ridiculous and meaningless.

[cow.livejournal.com]

"on the near side of the gender spectrum"

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

way to self-marginalize your own position!

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

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.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

I admit I could be wrong about what I infer that you kids these days mean by "knapsack". Am I?

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

Is there an option that isn't a neologism, or one that sounds more English-natural to you?

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Also, I was partially talking about the last insult-fest I went through elsejournal on a similar subject.

[cow.livejournal.com]

no. oversimplfying, because, well:

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.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

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.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

I quite like "gender-coherent", since my bodily appearance, sense of self, and fertility all cohere to one gender. Mind you, people keep thinking "Ashley" is specifically a girls' name.

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

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.)

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

The only problem with "cisgender" is that it's a rather foisted "everyone else" term. Most people it is intended to describe don't use the word. If someone asks me, "are you cisgender", my response is likely to be "um, I guess".

It's a bit like goy actually. I'm going to have the same response is someone asks whether I'm goyishe. Being goyishe as such isn't an active part of my identity, though I suppose it might be if I moved to Israel.

But neither term bothers me, either, because I know neither are intended to be derogatory.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

So one who transitions sufficiently becomes gender-coherent and we only comment on people in self-identified gender-incoherent states? I think I can get behind that.