Gay is gay, trans is trans (or whatever you want other people to call you,) and straight is straight.Aelinsaar said:...Because "Straight" is the opposite of "Gay", and neither have anything to do with "Trans"? I mean... at a guess at least.
Straight is to heterosexual what gay is to homosexual. As Aelinsaar said it has nothing do with being trans. You are not either gay, trans or straight because trans is not a sexual orientation. You can be trans and straight or cis and gay. The term being used is cis because in Latin cis is the opposite of trans (cis= on this side, trans= on the other side). There is no insult in it.MHR said:Gay is gay, trans is trans (or whatever you want other people to call you,) and straight is straight.Aelinsaar said:...Because "Straight" is the opposite of "Gay", and neither have anything to do with "Trans"? I mean... at a guess at least.
I would see the point of inventing a new word like "cis" if the only other way to describe most people was "normal," since that implies bad things of everyone who isn't, but we do have the word "straight." A new confusing term (an acronym no less) laden with bad connotations that nobody even knows is not needed, and is annoying.
The only purpose with wide-appeal I can see for it really is to invent a term specifically for ridicule. You can't ridicule someone for being normal or straight or comfortable with the way they are with a buzzword, "straighty" or "normy" just makes you look dumber, and "hetero" barely passes. So, really, calling someone Cis scum makes sense in that context only to people that don't frequent the term in polite conversation. You aren't making any friends with it, and you never will.
Hi Kyuubi, thank you for your response on the other thread, apologies if I go in a bit of a different direction to what you intended because the term is intrinsically related to the definition. To be cis or transgender, there must be use of gender.KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:So what do you all think? Discuss!
-----
Then again I once heard a trans person use "cishet scum" unironically against a person and even I was offended by that. Seriously I wanted to smack that woman for saying that.
Hi lunavixen,lunavixen said:(EDITED)
I'm not cisgender (I'm pretty sure I'm genderqueer, I don't really identify as female, but I don't identify as male either), but I have no problem with people using the term. To be honest, I find cisgender less offensive than "normal" as a term because "normal" implies that those that aren't, need fixing.
All words are made up, or did you not know that? Also Cisgender has been around in clinical terms far longer than it's been an internet term.Dreiko said:It's not a real thing, it's something internet people have made up. I try to keep internet life and real life separate.
When it comes right down to it, to actually understand what being transgender is, you'd have to experience it, and it's not something I'd ever want to wish on someone. It's not a "pick from these" situation to my mind, it's more "this is how I identify myself, and this is what I want to project to the world." I hope that helps.AwesomeHatMan said:Hi Kyuubi, thank you for your response on the other thread, apologies if I go in a bit of a different direction to what you intended because the term is intrinsically related to the definition. To be cis or transgender, there must be use of gender.KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:So what do you all think? Discuss!
-----
Then again I once heard a trans person use "cishet scum" unironically against a person and even I was offended by that. Seriously I wanted to smack that woman for saying that.
The whole scum thing is problem what has caused the most immediate hate of the term. I am glad you are not like that woman.
I personally dislike it when people refer to me as "cis-gender". This is both because I dislike the concept of gender and because I don't identify as my sex, nor the other sex, nor neither sex, I don't identify as anything, I simply am my sex. I don't really understand what identifying as transgender is supposed to mean. I am frequently told that it means "What you identify as" which doesn't help my understanding because I don't know what it means to "identify" as something. I am also told "that one's sex feels wrong" which I can understand and I refer to as dysphoria. I consider it similar to body integrity identity disorder. I believe that people who experience dysphoria or BIID truly do feel that their body parts shouldn't be part of them and its sad that people feel uncomfortable with their bodies.
I fully support people breaking traditional gender roles, be it in terms of hair, make-up, clothing, choice of occupation, social activites, who pays for a date, whatever. If a man wants to grow his hair long, put on lipstick, wear a dress and learn belly dancing while he's not at work as a secretary he should feel free to and all power to him.
I feel like the concept of defining one's gender is restrictive as to me it seems almost like saying "pick one of these options for a set of gender roles which you then have to follow". The idea that one should define their personality by the sex that they would like to be is wrong because one should not have to restrict their personality in such a way nor should there be a "right" personality for a certain sex.
I support the usage of the terms dysphoric/non-dysphoric.
Hi lunavixen,lunavixen said:(EDITED)
I'm not cisgender (I'm pretty sure I'm genderqueer, I don't really identify as female, but I don't identify as male either), but I have no problem with people using the term. To be honest, I find cisgender less offensive than "normal" as a term because "normal" implies that those that aren't, need fixing.
I'd be interested to hear whether you identify as a tertiary option and/or if you identify as not being male/female. I would also be interested to hear if you feel like the cis/trans nomenclature makes you feel like you are confronted with a binary option.
--
Best wishes to both of you.
PS If one was to use the word transgender, then cisgender is the correct choice for an antonym.