Poll: How do you personally feel about the term cisgender?

Recommended Videos

Yan007

New member
Jan 31, 2011
262
0
0
Aelinsaar said:
Mong0 said:
Aelinsaar said:
Mong0 said:
Aelinsaar said:
Mong0 said:
Considering how often I've seen it used to dismiss the beliefs of people someone disagrees with, often in a sort of smug and self righteous way, I'm going to say that I think its insulting. That doesn't mean that needs to stop being used though; sticks and stones and all that.
Do you blame all tools for the way they're sometimes used?
I'll change my opinion of it when I start to hear it used properly; something that I've yet to experience even once.
Do you base all of your opinions only on your own personal experiences? I mean... that seems kind of untenable to me.
Yes, I do. I also recognize that it need not be an insult, but the OP asked how I felt about it, not what I thought that it was. Additionally, a words association with such use is precisely how they become derogatory. Unless you're willing to defend words like retard on the same grounds, then you're not being entirely consistent.
Retard is a pejorative shorthand for retarded, which is itself shorthand for mentally/physically retarded. Cisgender is just... the opposite of Transgender. 99.999% of the time you're not talking to, around, or about trans people so it shouldn't even be a burden. It's not like having it in the language means that you can't call yourself "straight" or "male"... any more than calling you heterosexual does.

Yeah, I guess people can toss around "Hetero", or "Gay" as insults too, and as it relates to "retarded" it would be a matter of context. "Developmentally Delayed" is the current PC, and since "delayed" and "retarded" are synonymous... I find it hard to argue against "Retarded".

Now... to the interesting bit, which is that your opinions are all based on your personal experiences... that must be wild! Tell me, what's it like not to believe in the great experimentalist physics of the last century and a half? Have you accepted Special Relativity yet? General would be out, unless you checked out that transit of Venus a while back? Hell... what are your views on modern medicine?!

MHR said:
It's not needed. What the hell is wrong with "straight?"
...Because "Straight" is the opposite of "Gay", and neither have anything to do with "Trans"? I mean... at a guess at least.

Yan007 said:
For me, cisgender is just a pompous way of saying normal.
Surely "Normal" is just a bigoted way of saying, "Like I think I am"?
Normal means part of the norm. Like the majority. Normal fire trucks are red, blue ones would be considered not normal (strange).
 

loa

New member
Jan 28, 2012
1,716
0
0
It's a niche term used by a minority and necessary in that specific context.
 

marioandsonic

New member
Nov 28, 2009
657
0
0
I understand the point of it, so I guess it serves a purpose. That said, I've never heard the term outside of the Internet, most likely because I don't personally know anyone who is transgender.

So I don't really care.
 

Reasonable Atheist

New member
Mar 6, 2012
287
0
0
I think it is a dumb pointless term that exists to keep insecure people from having feels about being strange.
The word is pointless, what is so bad about someone different from you being called "normal". The whole concept of avoiding "othering" people seems like coddling to the extreme. What exactly is.so bad about being strange?

Maybe im not in the loop, and am missing something about this.
 

ThreeName

New member
May 8, 2013
459
0
0
Buckets of apathy. I don't really "feel" about words like this. The word has a meaning. The only thing I should be "feeling" is towards its usage situation by situation, which is a totally different question.

And, frankly, seeing the constant parade of cis people getting all offended over the term is downright embarrassing. I expressed in another one of these threads my distaste for people who are not in a majority category of people getting all offended for being called "not normal" because they literally are not normal by definition and that offense/insult fits the context, not the word, and the same thing goes here.

"Oh but I hear on tumblr people use it as an insult" well are we on tumblr? Is this person actively trying to insult you? No? It's a purely descriptive word which, in the majority of contexts, is not designed to offend? Then fucking deal with it. Ugh. The about of straight cis people whinging over this word certainly destroys the stereotype that it's only super-emotion trans/gay/etc. people that are "easily offended".
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
13,054
6,748
118
Country
United Kingdom
Reasonable Atheist said:
Maybe im not in the loop, and am missing something about this.
The power of language, and the stigmatising effect it can have.

"Abnormal" has negative connotations when it's applied to people; that's obvious. Receiving insults based on your inherent characteristics can be emotionally harmful, stigmatising, and alienating; that's also pretty obvious.
 

kris40k

New member
Feb 12, 2015
350
0
0
Pluvia said:
You can't really call people "normal". You know that saying: "I've never met a normal person in my life"? Yeah.
You know that saying: "can't see the forest for the trees"? Yeah.

It is sensible to observe and realize similarities and outliers of situations.
 

ThreeName

New member
May 8, 2013
459
0
0
Aelinsaar said:
What a perfect illustration of the limits of the world. "A normal police vehicle is black and blue"... in which country? When? Which vehicle?

Without qualifying "Normal" endlessly, it's just your way of saying, "The fire trucks I see every day, are red."
You're unreasonably distorting the meaning of the word "normal" by attempting to imply that we all use it as an absolute, universal truth term.

Normal is by definition relative and malleable. The fact that it can change does not invalidate what is normal at any one time. What ever is the majority is normal. "Normal" does not need to be constantly qualified because correct usage in context tells you all that you need to know. "A normal police vehicle is black and blue" would clearly apply to the current police vehicles used in the speaker's locale. To ask them to qualify it is needless.

Pluvia said:
You can't really call people "normal". You know that saying: "I've never met a normal person in my life"? Yeah.
Difference from the mean comes in degrees, and you could arbitrarily say that anyone +/-1 standard deviation away from the mean in any aspect is abnormal. Again, normal is contextual; albinos are not normal in terms of physicality but an individual albino may be completely normal personality-wise. A gay/trans person is abnormal in a sexuality/gender sense (being part of significant minority of people) but look completely normal by the standards of society at that time.
 

omega 616

Elite Member
May 1, 2009
5,883
1
43
I'll stick to not trans haha

Call yourself what you like, I think the amount of sexual identitys is overwhelming and ultimately pointless.

Remember that big thing about Facebook having like 50 odd selections? What's the point of all them if nobody knows what they mean?

Male, female is easy everybody knows what that is. Trans, people get but don't accept. Then you start going off saying things like cisgender and people have no clue what you're on about.

To me, if you got boobs and a vagina, you're a woman ... penis means you're a guy. What you where before any operation is irrelevant. You have boobs and a penis, you're at a half way house, no offence of course.

Just no point splitting hairs trying to be a special snowflake or pedantically accurate about what you are.
 

SmallHatLogan

New member
Jan 23, 2014
613
0
0
In regards to people advocating "normal", I just think about how awkward it would sound, say, in the context of race.

"See those two guys talking over there?"
"Who?"
"The black guy and the normal guy."

Or even sexuality.

"Are you gay or normal?"

Just doesn't sound quite right to me.

omega 616 said:
I'll stick to not trans haha
Remember that big thing about Facebook having like 50 odd selections? What's the point of all them if nobody knows what they mean?
That was actually where I first heard the term cis and I had no idea what it was supposed to mean until I looked it up.
 

freaper

snuggere mongool
Apr 3, 2010
1,198
0
0
If you'd allow me to add one extra option I would add "ironic", considering the pigeon holing of non-queer gendered people is exactly what those "queer gendered" people want to get rid of, meanwhile it's that exact same group that has to put everyone in boxes for whatever reason.

On a side note; OP you seem to occupy yourself a lot with what other people think of, presumably, your gender/sexuality/whatever. Does it matter? Maybe don't pay attention to what other, inconsequential, people think about certain aspects of your life? Obviously I don't know you, so you could easily just toss these two cents in the next beggar's hat, but I've found that I'm a lot less nervous when I stop reading these kinds of threads.
 

ThreeName

New member
May 8, 2013
459
0
0
Aelinsaar said:
If "Normal" is relative and malleable, and it is... to the point of being individual... then it's a meaningless shit-term. It's the language of the lazy, or the intentionally obscure. I don't have a ton of sympathy for that.

It's not "Warping" language to actually hold it to account, it's just shitting on one particular way of abusing language.
...what? Could you qualify that please? "Malleable to the point of being individual" is the only meaningless term I can see. I honestly can't work out what you're saying here.

Normal means majority. What is the problem here?