X now considers the term “cisgender” a slur. On Tuesday, the platform reportedly began posting an official warning that the LGBTQ-inclusive terms could result in a ban from the platform.
I only ever call myself things like cisgender for the sake of argument, as it is the identity I was born into and lived with for many years before realizing I was agender.
I personally consider cisgender and cishet to be slurs solely because I’ve so largely seen it used in a derogatory context, the same way “white male” is used by certain bad actors to signal outrage
In all reality gender, sexual preference, race, ethnicity are all our of place in most civil discussion-- the majority of the time it is brought up is in discussion of identity politics. And if what we want as a society is equality, then identity should take a back seat to humanism.
Unfortunately, as I’m sure my comment score will no doubt soon reflect, a lot of people take issue with this notion of equality and, as I’m sure replies to my comments may end up reflecting, are ready to disagree and offer their own definitions of equality. It is therefore the duty of the reader to decide what equality means to them, unfortunately.
Cisgender is straight up just not a slur though, it literally just means the opposite of transgender, which is also not a slur, despite the fact that it can be used with derogatory language or sentiments.
I think you’re currently in a place where I was in myself many years ago. This is all assuming everything you said was in good faith. You see all of the pain and damage the -isms have caused (racism, sexism, etc) and it seems at first blush that if society simply disregarded the traits those -isms are based around, the problem would go away. There’s enough truth in the idea to make it feel like a solution and, even if it’s subconscious, it kinda takes the onus of action off of you and puts it on the people that that are actually racist or exist. I don’t want to assume your political leanings, but I was farther right on the political spectrum than than I am now, and it fit well with my ideas about personal responsibility and limited government at the time…and I feel like it was regarded as common sense with everyone in that political sphere at the time. At the time, I was a 20-something cishet white guy (I’m still all of those things, except 20), and I felt like everything I had I’d earned, and I legit thought people could pull themselves out of the mire if they wanted it enough. I didn’t like being grouped in with the -ists, but I also wasn’t likely to call out a buddy for making an offensive joke.
That whole chain of thinking is deeply flawed, but it’s an easy place to land, especially in middle-America. I feel like a good analogy that would have hit home with me at that point in my life would have been stories about places where Christianity was outlawed. I remember I had one of those old Christian comic books that were popular in the 90s about it. If you wanted to wear a cross, you’d have to hide it, you couldn’t talk about being Christian or meet with other Christians (like a church service or prayer group) without having to worry about the law coming down on you. (Really makes me wonder where that infamous sense of persecution the right has comes from). At the time, I’d hear those stories and think, “Man, government sucks…it would be terrible to have to hide who you were like that.” I think about those stories now and I think instead about not wearing the clothes you’re comfortable in, not being able to get healthcare for legit medical diagnoses, not being able to have a club or group of similar people you couls safely meet with to build community around shared life experiences. The story about persucted Christians in some unnamed dystopia was also telling the true story of LGBTQ people in my own country. And women in my own country. And racial groups In. My. Own. Country. I never would have accepted the idea that those persecuted Christians would be OK if there just wasn’t religion. Just like I know marginalized groups today won’t be OK if whatever society deems “wrong” with them just went away. Societies have inertia, and without someone exerting some kind of force on them, they’ll maintain their current trajectory. I came to see I didn’t like my societies trajectory, so I started trying to change it, probably went a little too extreme in the other direction for a while, but eventually learned to just listen first. It’s OK if I belong to a group (or several) that have been bad actors. It means I’m in a position to leverage my privileges to help change society’s momentum. I grew up very poor, but I’ve got pretty much every other privilege society has to offer. I honestly don’t know that I’d have been as fortunate as I am today if even one of those privileges was missing. Even with the deck stacked pretty well in my favor, it was a fucking fight to get here…and even now, doing so much better than most, it feels like barely hanging on some days. I agree that humanism is what we should be striving for, but I also understand that I’m part of a group that’s done a lot of bad to a lot of other groups. I don’t think it makes sense for me to be “proud” of any immutable part of my identity, but that also means I shouldn’t feel personally attacked when people talk about that identity. Things like the whole bear thing would have probably bothered me in the past, but now it’s more nuanced. I’m sad people feel that way, but I don’t blame them, and I’ve listened enough that I believe them. Now the question I ask isn’t “How is this fair to me?” but instead. “How can I use my membership in the group to help change its momentum to something better.” Sometimes it’s voting, sometimes it’s canvassing or protesting, sometimes it’s reaching out to someone I see a part of my past self in.
Maybe we should clarify what a slur is? Because to my knowledge, a slur is a term that has such negative connotations that it is considered offensive and discriminatory against a certain group of people in itself, without any additional context. You simply do not use it unless you want to insult or offend someone from that group. If a term is only offensive based on how it’s used, it’s just a regular insult, not a slur.
So, “can be used as a slur” is not a thing. A word is either a slur, or it isn’t. Neither trans nor cis are slurs at the moment. I’ve never seen trans be used as an insult before. And even cis is almost never meant as a direct insult, merely as a reminder that someone is talking about things they have no lived experience with and should probably check their privilege. Yes, that can be in a demeaning way, but the goal there is not to hurt you, but to make you piss off. It’s an act of self protection. Nobody is seeking cis people out and starting to call them names unless they insert themselves into trans spaces and start talking shit about trans issues. If you’re doing that, and getting told off insults you or hurts your feelings, then, frankly, that’s a you problem.
It is so strange to say that identity should take a back seat to humanism when every historical example of discrimination and dehumanization is based on identity. Identity in those instances is not imposed on oneself, but is used to define the outgroup that is being dehumanized. Identity politics is simply an honest accounting of groups that being descriminated against. When the discrimination ends, we see the group identity evaporate. We need only look at the early 20th century definitions of Caucasian, and the identity politics of Irish and Italian Americans subsequently evaporating when that definition evolved to include all Americans of European decent, to see that identity politics is a reaction to injustice and not the other way around.
guess this is what i will tell people to call me now. because i don’t give a shit that i have a penis.
100% agree with you. but sadly humanism doesn’t incite people to team-based violence, so it’s very going to be very popular. human beings very much prefer tribal thinking to global thinking.
I only ever call myself things like cisgender for the sake of argument, as it is the identity I was born into and lived with for many years before realizing I was agender.
I personally consider cisgender and cishet to be slurs solely because I’ve so largely seen it used in a derogatory context, the same way “white male” is used by certain bad actors to signal outrage
In all reality gender, sexual preference, race, ethnicity are all our of place in most civil discussion-- the majority of the time it is brought up is in discussion of identity politics. And if what we want as a society is equality, then identity should take a back seat to humanism.
Unfortunately, as I’m sure my comment score will no doubt soon reflect, a lot of people take issue with this notion of equality and, as I’m sure replies to my comments may end up reflecting, are ready to disagree and offer their own definitions of equality. It is therefore the duty of the reader to decide what equality means to them, unfortunately.
Cisgender is straight up just not a slur though, it literally just means the opposite of transgender, which is also not a slur, despite the fact that it can be used with derogatory language or sentiments.
I think you’re currently in a place where I was in myself many years ago. This is all assuming everything you said was in good faith. You see all of the pain and damage the -isms have caused (racism, sexism, etc) and it seems at first blush that if society simply disregarded the traits those -isms are based around, the problem would go away. There’s enough truth in the idea to make it feel like a solution and, even if it’s subconscious, it kinda takes the onus of action off of you and puts it on the people that that are actually racist or exist. I don’t want to assume your political leanings, but I was farther right on the political spectrum than than I am now, and it fit well with my ideas about personal responsibility and limited government at the time…and I feel like it was regarded as common sense with everyone in that political sphere at the time. At the time, I was a 20-something cishet white guy (I’m still all of those things, except 20), and I felt like everything I had I’d earned, and I legit thought people could pull themselves out of the mire if they wanted it enough. I didn’t like being grouped in with the -ists, but I also wasn’t likely to call out a buddy for making an offensive joke.
That whole chain of thinking is deeply flawed, but it’s an easy place to land, especially in middle-America. I feel like a good analogy that would have hit home with me at that point in my life would have been stories about places where Christianity was outlawed. I remember I had one of those old Christian comic books that were popular in the 90s about it. If you wanted to wear a cross, you’d have to hide it, you couldn’t talk about being Christian or meet with other Christians (like a church service or prayer group) without having to worry about the law coming down on you. (Really makes me wonder where that infamous sense of persecution the right has comes from). At the time, I’d hear those stories and think, “Man, government sucks…it would be terrible to have to hide who you were like that.” I think about those stories now and I think instead about not wearing the clothes you’re comfortable in, not being able to get healthcare for legit medical diagnoses, not being able to have a club or group of similar people you couls safely meet with to build community around shared life experiences. The story about persucted Christians in some unnamed dystopia was also telling the true story of LGBTQ people in my own country. And women in my own country. And racial groups In. My. Own. Country. I never would have accepted the idea that those persecuted Christians would be OK if there just wasn’t religion. Just like I know marginalized groups today won’t be OK if whatever society deems “wrong” with them just went away. Societies have inertia, and without someone exerting some kind of force on them, they’ll maintain their current trajectory. I came to see I didn’t like my societies trajectory, so I started trying to change it, probably went a little too extreme in the other direction for a while, but eventually learned to just listen first. It’s OK if I belong to a group (or several) that have been bad actors. It means I’m in a position to leverage my privileges to help change society’s momentum. I grew up very poor, but I’ve got pretty much every other privilege society has to offer. I honestly don’t know that I’d have been as fortunate as I am today if even one of those privileges was missing. Even with the deck stacked pretty well in my favor, it was a fucking fight to get here…and even now, doing so much better than most, it feels like barely hanging on some days. I agree that humanism is what we should be striving for, but I also understand that I’m part of a group that’s done a lot of bad to a lot of other groups. I don’t think it makes sense for me to be “proud” of any immutable part of my identity, but that also means I shouldn’t feel personally attacked when people talk about that identity. Things like the whole bear thing would have probably bothered me in the past, but now it’s more nuanced. I’m sad people feel that way, but I don’t blame them, and I’ve listened enough that I believe them. Now the question I ask isn’t “How is this fair to me?” but instead. “How can I use my membership in the group to help change its momentum to something better.” Sometimes it’s voting, sometimes it’s canvassing or protesting, sometimes it’s reaching out to someone I see a part of my past self in.
I just wanna say that I appreciate the hell out of you.
Thanks, stranger. I’m in stormy seas now, and that means more to me than it otherwise might.
Cisgender is a descriptive term. If you have seen it in a derogatory context, then you should take issue with the context.
And trans is also a descriptive term, right?
…yeah, it is. What are you implying?
Cis and trans are both the same type of descriptor. If trans can be used as a slur, so can cis.
Not saying either are slurs by default. But they most certainly can be turned into ones.
Maybe we should clarify what a slur is? Because to my knowledge, a slur is a term that has such negative connotations that it is considered offensive and discriminatory against a certain group of people in itself, without any additional context. You simply do not use it unless you want to insult or offend someone from that group. If a term is only offensive based on how it’s used, it’s just a regular insult, not a slur.
So, “can be used as a slur” is not a thing. A word is either a slur, or it isn’t. Neither trans nor cis are slurs at the moment. I’ve never seen trans be used as an insult before. And even cis is almost never meant as a direct insult, merely as a reminder that someone is talking about things they have no lived experience with and should probably check their privilege. Yes, that can be in a demeaning way, but the goal there is not to hurt you, but to make you piss off. It’s an act of self protection. Nobody is seeking cis people out and starting to call them names unless they insert themselves into trans spaces and start talking shit about trans issues. If you’re doing that, and getting told off insults you or hurts your feelings, then, frankly, that’s a you problem.
It is so strange to say that identity should take a back seat to humanism when every historical example of discrimination and dehumanization is based on identity. Identity in those instances is not imposed on oneself, but is used to define the outgroup that is being dehumanized. Identity politics is simply an honest accounting of groups that being descriminated against. When the discrimination ends, we see the group identity evaporate. We need only look at the early 20th century definitions of Caucasian, and the identity politics of Irish and Italian Americans subsequently evaporating when that definition evolved to include all Americans of European decent, to see that identity politics is a reaction to injustice and not the other way around.
guess this is what i will tell people to call me now. because i don’t give a shit that i have a penis.
100% agree with you. but sadly humanism doesn’t incite people to team-based violence, so it’s very going to be very popular. human beings very much prefer tribal thinking to global thinking.