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

[Reasonable Atheist]

So im noticing that alot of the pro-cisgender terminology arguments here, are based on the idea that there is no such thing as context. Anyway, im male and i do not see the need for a specific term to denote that im not trans. Asinine, do i also need a term to denote that im not bipolar? That im not a furry?

If there was a need for a term to denote either of those things then I'm sure one would have been invented already, and if a need arises in the future, you are more than welcome to invent one.

Honestly, if you would rather refer to cisgender people as normal or not-trans then I don't see anything standing in your way. Does the existence of the word "cisgender" require all other words of similar meaning to suddenly vanish? Last time I checked, that's not how language works.

Honestly, I'm not seeing why people seem to be so offended by the mere existence of the word. It only really applies to discussions about transgender topics, so it's not like it's hard to ignore. How does it really effect your life to know that someone somewhere on the internet knows you as cisgender?

Not offended, make up as many words as you want to call me. But i think im a difficult to offend person and im sure others (likely lots of Americans) feel differently. Honestly the only time ive heard it spoken aloud is on south park. If we were to meet in person and you called me cisgender my reaction, if im honest, would be to chuckle to myself and roll my eyes.

The thread was inquiring what people feel about the term, I feel its asanine coddling.
But by all means continue to use it if it functions as conversation lubricant in certain niche circles.

 

[Yan007]

It just means someone who isn't trans. It's accurate and descriptive, and in no way offensive or "grand-standing". I am a female-born person who identifies as a woman; I am cisgender. Who cares? Why would I take offense to this, let alone to the degree that I demand someone change the term?

Though there is a kind of delicious irony in watching the usual suspects who rail and scream about those darned "SJWs" "taking offense" to everything and how being offended means nothing and doesn't mean that anything has to be changed... ...taking offense to this term and demanding it be changed.

I would recommend you take their advice on every other topic (that doesn't affect them, personally) and ignore the offended, here.

I think you, and it seems a lot of other people here aren't really aware of what offended means.

No ones offended by it, maybe a rare few but not on a scale that you or half the other people in this thread are claiming. It's not that the word offends someone or not, it's that most of the time you see it used online it's used as an insult or a slur. Annoying? Yes. Offensive? No.

The delicious irony is everyone going on about how suddenly the anti-SJW crowd is getting all offended at the word. When no one actually is. People are just pointing out how it's commonly used now, instead of it's actual meaning.

You might have a point if, the vast majority of the time, the so-called "offended" "SJWs" weren't doing exactly the same thing: pointing out that the way a word is used has become an insult rather than its original meaning, and asking that you not use it because of said meaning. As it stands what's going on here is identical, and kind of hilarious.

I don't see a whole lot of "stop using that word!" more so "we get what the word means, you just sound like a tosser when you use it"

And yet there are numerous people here, if you actually read the thread, who think that cisgender = straight, or are angry that the word is used instead of simply "normal" or used at all. I'd highly suggest doing so.

That anger (and I use the term anger very loosely here) comes from the fact that everyone is all of a sudden offended when they use normal to refer to normal people. Because in their minds calling them abnormal, or not part of the norm is a personal attack against them.

People can use cisgendered as a label, but not normal?

As many, many other people have already pointed it out, again if you actually read the thread, "normal" is a subjective label, and thus worthless when a specific term is needed. Even if you define normal as "majority", then women should simply be called "normal" and men "men", Asians should be called "normal" and everyone else something specific, and so on. And yet, we don't do that. We don't even call another vast majority - straight people - "normal" we call them straight. Straight isn't an offensive term. Neither is heterosexual. It's precise, when "normal" isn't. Furthermore, as evidenced by the fact that we don't do it for women/Asians/etc. "normal" makes an implicit value judgement that straight/gay, cis/trans, Asian/white, male/female does not. Insisting on "normal" in one category because one is in the majority and not another is sheer hypocrisy.

But no, actually read the thread. This has already been gone over. As has everything I've mentioned so far. Until you do rehashing it is pointless.

What's actually happening here are named users I've seen show up in virtually every single thread about "SJWs" to berate them about being "offended" because they don't like how a term is used (see: "retarded", etc.) and telling them they don't have the right... taking offense to how this term is used (or not even understanding what the term means). It's hyprocrisy of the highest order.

Now you're being obtuse. The majority of people will either be male or female, and this is what is normal. The other genders are new constructions.

I lived in China for a number of years. People would point at me all the time and call me foreigner because I was not a normal person to them. In a city of 5 million people, we were at most 25-30 foreigners there. So yes, I did not look normal to them. Also, the Chinese language has many names for it, but the one most used is either hanyu (people's dialect) or putonghua (normal language). Yes, they literally call their language the normal language.

In a hypothetical future where the majority of people are transgendered, they would be considered normal and the people who like themselves as they are would be called cisgender because people categorize things that are uncommon.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

ITT: question posed about how people feel about something specific, prople express their feelings, and sjws tell them their feelings are incorrect.

(Not looking at you op, you seem pretty cool)

 

[FirstNameLastName]

If we were to meet in person and you called me cisgender my reaction, if im honest, would be to chuckle to myself and roll my eyes.

But of course, this isn't actually going to happen, due to the fact that ...

Honestly the only time ive heard it spoken aloud is on south park.

... it's largely a scientific term that doesn't really come up outside of discussions about transgenderism; the one "niche circle" in which it's actually useful.

The thread was inquiring what people feel about the term, I feel its asanine coddling.
But by all means continue to use it if it functions as conversation lubricant in certain niche circles.

I'm not sure why it's coddling to have a more specific term to describe certain topics in psychology.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

The thread was inquiring what people feel about the term, I feel its asanine coddling.

Actually it was made specifically to stop a debate on it in my thread for questions about transgenderism.

 

[loa]

That anger (and I use the term anger very loosely here) comes from the fact that everyone is all of a sudden offended when they use normal to refer to normal people. Because in their minds calling them abnormal, or not part of the norm is a personal attack against them.

People can use cisgendered as a label, but not normal?

Ah yes because exclusion and that sensation of something being wrong with them surely isn't something that has been accompanying trans people their whole life or anything. "I wish I was normal" has never been a thought circulating in their mind at any point in time.

So of course we require more negatively-loaded implied stigmata to show them their place even though the term "normal" encompasses a hilariously large array of wildly fluctuating things whereas cis+gender directly zeroes in to, you know, the stuff that matters in this particular case.
But sure, let's call "normal people normal" even though you probably won't find a single person on this planet to whom that label truly and fully fits when put under the magnifying glass.
That makes sense.

 

[loa]

You just proved my point. Thank you. Not normal doesn't equate to wrong either. If you want to take it as some personal attack than by all means, go for gold. Doesn't mean it actually is.

So you think "abnormal" is not a negatively loaded term?
That's cute.

Also this is less about "personal attacks" and more about an environment, mob mentality, "us vs them" and such if you wouldn't mind to zoom out of your narrow perspective a bit.
Trans people get killed you know. For being trans. This is a reality.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

That anger (and I use the term anger very loosely here) comes from the fact that everyone is all of a sudden offended when they use normal to refer to normal people. Because in their minds calling them abnormal, or not part of the norm is a personal attack against them.

People can use cisgendered as a label, but not normal?

Ah yes because exclusion and that sensation of something being wrong with them surely isn't something that has been accompanying trans people their whole life or anything.
We require more implied stigmata even though the term "normal" encompasses a hilariously large array of wildly fluctuating things whereas cis+gender directly zeroes in to, you know, the stuff that matters in this particular case.
But sure, let's call "normal people normal" even though you probably won't find a single person on this planet to whom that label truly and fully fits when put under the magnifying glass.
That makes sense.

You just proved my point. Thank you. Not normal doesn't equate to wrong either. If you want to take it as some personal attack than by all means, go for gold. Doesn't mean it actually is.

The problem with using normal is that people who differ, especially in psychological terms, abnormal. Abnormality in terms of psychology has been rather bad for people. Hell you can still be institutionalized in Australia against your will on the flimsiest grounds. The asylum mentality is full of abuses, and was particularly bad for transgender people. To which abnormal mixed with transgender means things that are still seen as bad by the community today.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

You just proved my point. Thank you. Not normal doesn't equate to wrong either. If you want to take it as some personal attack than by all means, go for gold. Doesn't mean it actually is.

So you think "abnormal" is not a negatively loaded term?
That's cute.

Also this is less about "personal attacks" and more about an environment, mob mentality, "us vs them" and such if you wouldn't mind to zoom out of your narrow perspective a bit.
Trans people get killed you know. For being trans. This is a reality.

Not only getting killed for being transgender, but also commit suicide at alarming rates due to massive injustices.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

You just proved my point. Thank you. Not normal doesn't equate to wrong either. If you want to take it as some personal attack than by all means, go for gold. Doesn't mean it actually is.

So you think "abnormal" is not a negatively loaded term?
That's cute.

Negatively loaded? In some cases. On the whole it's not an insult. I have abnormal interests, I dress abnormally to what is considered normal. Am I suddenly attacking myself or putting myself down? No, I'm accurately describing something.

If you want to be super sensitive and take it as an insult when someone clearly states it is not meant as an insults. Like I said, go right ahead, doesn't make it so.

Doesn't this reasoning also apply to the word "cisgender"?

 

[Abomination]

It's simply a sheltering term so that trans people can emotionally feel less abnormal than they are, but no care is given to those in similar pickles.

Being trans IS categorized as a psychological illness, it seems somewhat redundant to have a term to refer to someone who is healthy from one particular ailment.

We don't have a specific word to describe someone who is non-autistic, non-bipolar, non-phobia, non-kleptomaniac, non-OCD etc.

It is strange there's a push for a word that identifies a larger proportion of the population than that which aren't autistic, when no such word is used for that spectrum of the mentally healthy.

Overall, it's as redundant as words used to describe people who aren't furries, aren't Jets fans, aren't BDSMers, aren't Republicans, aren't Democrats, aren't Hispanic, aren't Anglo-Saxon...

 

[FirstNameLastName]

You just proved my point. Thank you. Not normal doesn't equate to wrong either. If you want to take it as some personal attack than by all means, go for gold. Doesn't mean it actually is.

So you think "abnormal" is not a negatively loaded term?
That's cute.

Negatively loaded? In some cases. On the whole it's not an insult. I have abnormal interests, I dress abnormally to what is considered normal. Am I suddenly attacking myself or putting myself down? No, I'm accurately describing something.

If you want to be super sensitive and take it as an insult when someone clearly states it is not meant as an insults. Like I said, go right ahead, doesn't make it so.

Doesn't this reasoning also apply to the word "cisgender"?

It does. Difference is I'm not going around demanding people not use it because I find it offensive. I think it's a silly term that's used mainly as an insult more often than not in discussions online. But I'm not telling people not to use it, even if I think they come off as a twat saying so.

Where exactly is everyone browsing that they keep having encounters with people using "cisgender" as an insult? Of all the times I've encountered the word, I can't honestly remember any of them being used as an insult.

We don't have a specific word to describe someone who is non-autistic, non-bipolar, non-phobia, non-kleptomaniac, non-OCD etc.

Indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

 

[Ariseishirou]

It just means someone who isn't trans. It's accurate and descriptive, and in no way offensive or "grand-standing". I am a female-born person who identifies as a woman; I am cisgender. Who cares? Why would I take offense to this, let alone to the degree that I demand someone change the term?

Though there is a kind of delicious irony in watching the usual suspects who rail and scream about those darned "SJWs" "taking offense" to everything and how being offended means nothing and doesn't mean that anything has to be changed... ...taking offense to this term and demanding it be changed.

I would recommend you take their advice on every other topic (that doesn't affect them, personally) and ignore the offended, here.

I think you, and it seems a lot of other people here aren't really aware of what offended means.

No ones offended by it, maybe a rare few but not on a scale that you or half the other people in this thread are claiming. It's not that the word offends someone or not, it's that most of the time you see it used online it's used as an insult or a slur. Annoying? Yes. Offensive? No.

The delicious irony is everyone going on about how suddenly the anti-SJW crowd is getting all offended at the word. When no one actually is. People are just pointing out how it's commonly used now, instead of it's actual meaning.

You might have a point if, the vast majority of the time, the so-called "offended" "SJWs" weren't doing exactly the same thing: pointing out that the way a word is used has become an insult rather than its original meaning, and asking that you not use it because of said meaning. As it stands what's going on here is identical, and kind of hilarious.

I don't see a whole lot of "stop using that word!" more so "we get what the word means, you just sound like a tosser when you use it"

And yet there are numerous people here, if you actually read the thread, who think that cisgender = straight, or are angry that the word is used instead of simply "normal" or used at all. I'd highly suggest doing so.

That anger (and I use the term anger very loosely here) comes from the fact that everyone is all of a sudden offended when they use normal to refer to normal people. Because in their minds calling them abnormal, or not part of the norm is a personal attack against them.

People can use cisgendered as a label, but not normal?

As many, many other people have already pointed it out, again if you actually read the thread, "normal" is a subjective label, and thus worthless when a specific term is needed. Even if you define normal as "majority", then women should simply be called "normal" and men "men", Asians should be called "normal" and everyone else something specific, and so on. And yet, we don't do that. We don't even call another vast majority - straight people - "normal" we call them straight. Straight isn't an offensive term. Neither is heterosexual. It's precise, when "normal" isn't. Furthermore, as evidenced by the fact that we don't do it for women/Asians/etc. "normal" makes an implicit value judgement that straight/gay, cis/trans, Asian/white, male/female does not. Insisting on "normal" in one category because one is in the majority and not another is sheer hypocrisy.

But no, actually read the thread. This has already been gone over. As has everything I've mentioned so far. Until you do rehashing it is pointless.

What's actually happening here are named users I've seen show up in virtually every single thread about "SJWs" to berate them about being "offended" because they don't like how a term is used (see: "retarded", etc.) and telling them they don't have the right... taking offense to how this term is used (or not even understanding what the term means). It's hyprocrisy of the highest order.

Now you're being obtuse. The majority of people will either be male or female, and this is what is normal. The other genders are new constructions.

I lived in China for a number of years. People would point at me all the time and call me foreigner because I was not a normal person to them. In a city of 5 million people, we were at most 25-30 foreigners there. So yes, I did not look normal to them. Also, the Chinese language has many names for it, but the one most used is either hanyu (people's dialect) or putonghua (normal language). Yes, they literally call their language the normal language.

In a hypothetical future where the majority of people are transgendered, they would be considered normal and the people who like themselves as they are would be called cisgender because people categorize things that are uncommon.

Yes, that's why Chinese people call themselves "normal" as opposed to "Chinese." White Canadians refer to themselves as "normal" Canadians, because they're in the vast majority! It's why we don't have (or rarely use) the term "right-handed" - because the vast majority of the population everywhere on the planet is right-handed. They call themselves "normal-handed", as they should. Maybe in the future, when left-handed people are the majority, we'll use the term right-handed.

Who is being obtuse here?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

It's simply a sheltering term so that trans people can emotionally feel less abnormal than they are, but no care is given to those in similar pickles.

Being trans IS categorized as a psychological illness, it seems somewhat redundant to have a term to refer to someone who is healthy from one particular ailment.

We don't have a specific word to describe someone who is non-autistic, non-bipolar, non-phobia, non-kleptomaniac, non-OCD etc.

It is strange there's a push for a word that identifies a larger proportion of the population than that which aren't autistic, when no such word is used for that spectrum of the mentally healthy.

Overall, it's as redundant as words used to describe people who aren't furries, aren't Jets fans, aren't BDSMers, aren't Republicans, aren't Democrats, aren't Hispanic, aren't Anglo-Saxon...

Being trans is not categorized as a psychological illness, it's not even a mental disorder. Gender dysphoria is classified as a medical disorder by the DSM-V and the mental disorders associated with it are symptomatic the horrible way we're treated in society.

 

[Ariseishirou]

It just means someone who isn't trans. It's accurate and descriptive, and in no way offensive or "grand-standing". I am a female-born person who identifies as a woman; I am cisgender. Who cares? Why would I take offense to this, let alone to the degree that I demand someone change the term?

Though there is a kind of delicious irony in watching the usual suspects who rail and scream about those darned "SJWs" "taking offense" to everything and how being offended means nothing and doesn't mean that anything has to be changed... ...taking offense to this term and demanding it be changed.

I would recommend you take their advice on every other topic (that doesn't affect them, personally) and ignore the offended, here.

I think you, and it seems a lot of other people here aren't really aware of what offended means.

No ones offended by it, maybe a rare few but not on a scale that you or half the other people in this thread are claiming. It's not that the word offends someone or not, it's that most of the time you see it used online it's used as an insult or a slur. Annoying? Yes. Offensive? No.

The delicious irony is everyone going on about how suddenly the anti-SJW crowd is getting all offended at the word. When no one actually is. People are just pointing out how it's commonly used now, instead of it's actual meaning.

You might have a point if, the vast majority of the time, the so-called "offended" "SJWs" weren't doing exactly the same thing: pointing out that the way a word is used has become an insult rather than its original meaning, and asking that you not use it because of said meaning. As it stands what's going on here is identical, and kind of hilarious.

I don't see a whole lot of "stop using that word!" more so "we get what the word means, you just sound like a tosser when you use it"

And yet there are numerous people here, if you actually read the thread, who think that cisgender = straight, or are angry that the word is used instead of simply "normal" or used at all. I'd highly suggest doing so.

That anger (and I use the term anger very loosely here) comes from the fact that everyone is all of a sudden offended when they use normal to refer to normal people. Because in their minds calling them abnormal, or not part of the norm is a personal attack against them.

People can use cisgendered as a label, but not normal?

As many, many other people have already pointed it out, again if you actually read the thread, "normal" is a subjective label, and thus worthless when a specific term is needed. Even if you define normal as "majority", then women should simply be called "normal" and men "men", Asians should be called "normal" and everyone else something specific, and so on. And yet, we don't do that. We don't even call another vast majority - straight people - "normal" we call them straight. Straight isn't an offensive term. Neither is heterosexual. It's precise, when "normal" isn't. Furthermore, as evidenced by the fact that we don't do it for women/Asians/etc. "normal" makes an implicit value judgement that straight/gay, cis/trans, Asian/white, male/female does not. Insisting on "normal" in one category because one is in the majority and not another is sheer hypocrisy.

But no, actually read the thread. This has already been gone over. As has everything I've mentioned so far. Until you do rehashing it is pointless.

What's actually happening here are named users I've seen show up in virtually every single thread about "SJWs" to berate them about being "offended" because they don't like how a term is used (see: "retarded", etc.) and telling them they don't have the right... taking offense to how this term is used (or not even understanding what the term means). It's hyprocrisy of the highest order.

Again, having issue with how people are using words is not the same as being offended by those words. You're going on about how the offended are being hypocritical. These people aren't offended.

I'm not offended if someone calls me cisgendered, hell I wouldn't even be offended if they called me cis-scum. I think those who use the word sound like a twat. Even more so if they go out of their way to point out that they're offended when I call myself normal in that sense.

People are pointing out how it's thrown around as an insult or how they'd rather be called straight, or normal (yes yes I know straight doesn't mean cis gendered, but that's not the point I'm making). Not that "cisgendered? You've offended me!".

But the so-called "SJWs" don't go "retarded? lame? You've offended me!" either. They explain why they think the term is being is an insult, just as you're (trying) do here, and offer terms they'd rather you use instead. Complaining about people doing one, then doing it yourself, and when called out on it, conjuring some ridiculous straw man about people you disagree with really is the height of hypocrisy. If they're "offended", so are the people in this thread.

 

[Abomination]

Being trans is not categorized as a psychological illness, it's not even a mental disorder. Gender dysphoria is classified as a medical disorder by the DSM-V and the mental disorders associated with it are symptomatic the horrible way we're treated in society.

Medical, mental, psychological - the key word is "disorder".

Many other people with disorders are treated horribly too - but you didn't make this thread to discuss that, I thought you were making this thread to discuss how people felt about the word "cis"?

Indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Yet we seldom ever see people being identified as Neurotypical, it's just assumed one is until one is identified as not.

You know, when we point out an abnormality.

Because that's what's interesting.