A Model American: The word "cisgender" is the most unnecessary and exhausting thing on the Internet right now »

dragismydrug:

dawnless:

herebetweennow:

mrrobotico:

iamthebrainwasher:

impostorsyndrome:

paulhphillips:

First of all, it’s a redundant word. If the idiots who say this don’t know that, in Sociology, terms already exist to describe gender presentation, then they need to sit the fuck down. Second, how am I a bad person for presenting the gender associated with my natural sex? Y’all are acting like a bunch of over grown college freshmen who just got away from their parents for the first time and now they’re CHANGING THE WORLD with their theoretical gender bullshit. And I should know. A middle of the road institute of higher education awarded me a BA in Queer Theory. You’re embarrassing yourself. And so am I.

I guess I have a couple thoughts:

1. No one thinks you’re a bad person. You sound like an asshole, but you don’t appear to be a bad person some going-straight-to-hell sense. And you’re definitely not a bad person just because you’re cis. Whenever someone rails against a marginalized group for trying to make our language more just because of some perceived sense of being attacked or having their privilege threatened - which you appear to be doing - then I can’t think of any way of describing them other than as an asshole. I might be wrong. But I doubt it.

2. You seem to have gotten little from your mediocre BA in Queer Theory. Probably too busy being an asshole to think critically.
3. “Cis” is not a pejorative; affixing it to one’s gender identity is not an attack or an insult. It is, really, a relatively value-neutral, descriptive term. Your gender identity aligns with the gender identity typically assigned to people with your sexual anatomy? Great, we’re just going to refer to those of you in your situation “cis-gendered”. We’re not doing it because we think you’re an asshole (although we do think you’re an asshole), we’re not doing it to make you feel bad about yourself, we might be doing it in an effort to limit your privilege or to at least make you conscious of it, and we’re doing it to address that fact that our language privileges certain groups of people by framing their identities as natural, neutral, and normal and, by implication, those whose identities do not align in these ways as deviant, pathologized, and often repulsive. This is not to say that you think people with other gender identities are deviant, pathologized, or repulsive, just that this is the nature of our language (and by implication our culture and our society). But you are still an asshole.
4. There is no such as “natural sex” (see point #2 above). By using “cis,” the goal is to destabilize the perceived “naturalness” of traditional sex and gender identities and their necessary correlation. You may identify as male and you may have a penis and some balls — a lovely set I’m sure — but this does not make you normal or natural. It makes you cis. An asshole cis. 
5. Changing language does change the world. You say you’re “gayer than a spring parade” and I’m going to make a wild assumption here that at some point you’ve used the reappropriated terms “queer” or “fag” in positive ways to describe yourself or friends. (If this is not the case accept my humblest apologies, asshole.) If you’ve ever done this and felt the profound sense of agency and power that comes by taking those words from people who would use them to harm us then you have a sense of the world-changing possibilities of language. Similarly, to change the language we use to discuss gender is equally powerful and world-changing, you are just on the other (wrong) end of this process this time; the asshole end. Theory changes the world all the time.
6. What does it cost you to recognize yourself as cis? It’s one syllable. You will actually have very little occasion to use it. It is likely taken for granted by others that you are cis (that’s kinda the problem here) and so you will rarely ever have to actually use the term to describe yourself. But in acknowledging yourself as cis you’re doing a lot of work in creating a more just and egalitarian space for people with non-normative gender identities. You are acknowledging the privilege and naturalness that is non-problematically attached to cis individuals and marking your gender identity as not “normal” or “natural” but just as contingent and constructed as anyone else’s. 
7. Sociology is a boring and moribund discipline. You should be ashamed for invoking it. Asshole.
8. Do you not have anything of substance to actually be angry and exasperated about? Man, you’re an asshole. 

The reason I agree with the guy who originally posted this is because there are people out the who use “cisgender” as a negative. They use it in the same way you’d negatively call someone gay. I know that not every single person uses it as a negative, but that’s usually how it comes across. I have heard countless times people being called “cisgender scum” or something similar. In that form, cisgender might as well be the word faggot, dyke, a racial slur, or any other insulting name. 

I am aware that cisgender isn’t a naturally offensive word, and I understand what it means. I also know that I am cisgender. However, that does not in any way make me less of a human for wanting to be the gender I was born with. I don’t have to be trans or gender fluid to be human. I’m not a jerk because I like being male. 

uh, wtf?

this is kind of ridiculous imo. i mean, why does anyone even try and put so much stock in words anymore? and, according to my trusty friend wikipedia, cisgender is about the gender role you identify with and how closely that masculinity is associated with societies ideas on masculinity. so, a transgendered MtF could also be cisgendered if, since they are female, they also dress and act accordingly to how society things females should dress and act.

so cisgendered isn’t even about natural gender or not. it’s about identity and fitting into societies little mold.

so lets all stop being whiny and try real hard to be accepting of people different from you instead of just writing about it.

Reblogging this again for the two comments made by the lovely cisgendered people before me. To begin with, the first commentator at least attempted to see both sides of the discussion; however, I still totally disagree with his final conclusion. Taking the piece from the beginning of his commentary,

The reason I agree with the guy who originally posted this is because there are people out the who use “cisgender” as a negative.

I find this statement to be incredibly unhelpful in defending his point. So many words within the English language can be taken either negatively or positively. I understand that he addresses this fact to a degree in the following sentences, but that doesn’t change the pointlessness of his original sentiment. Any word can be used in a negative manner if the person who is on the receiving end of the word takes offense to it. I wholeheartedly believe that people cannot tell someone what they should or should not be offended by. If you’re offended by the term, cisgender and its derivatives, then by all means, consider it negative; however, as he stated further on in his comment, cisgender is not an inherently negative word. There is no history or struggle associated with the term. In fact, cisgender is a term relating to privilege, which is the entire reason for having the term in my opinion. The first response to the original post clearly points this out, and yet, our lovely commentator seems to have missed that detail. Cisgender is only a negative term for those who feel that they are being attacked because of their privilege. No one is attacking you for being born a male and identifying with that gender. No one is telling you that you’re a horrid person for being a cisgendered male or female. However, you are a privileged being by being cisgendered. You will never face a certain set of challenges or obstacles because your assigned gender and actual gender do not align. You will never have to come out to your parents as trans* or gender variant. You will never understand what it’s like to live through that. And that’s okay. The fact of the matter is, your privilege doesn’t make you a bad person, it just tends to make people unaware to the things that they are afforded in life. So many privileged individuals love to rise up and complain about a marginalized group using terms to describe the aforementioned privileged individuals in less than desirable ways. Well…seeing as how they are the ones being oppressed, and you’re obviously not facing the same challenges that they are, that’s motherfucking okay. As a privileged individual, you have to learn to identify that fucking privilege and acknowledge how it impacts your life. Acknowledge how it makes your life easier. The goal here is not to feel like “cisgendered scum,” but to actually become a person who’s fucking sensitive to another’s plight, and often times, cisgendered individuals do not even spare a single second to think about people who are not cisgender and the challenges that they face not on a daily basis, but on an hourly, on a minutely basis. Through creating the term, cisgender, people are forced to acknowledge their privilege. A cisgendered white heterosexual Christian upper-middle class male is the epitome of privilege in America. Oppressed and marginalized groups will attach some negative terms to these individual titles because you know what, it sucks to be fucking oppressed. Again, you’re not a bad person for being privileged, but you need to understand that there are people who do not have the same privileges in their lives. As white cisgendered gay males, you could never imagine what it would be like to be a trans* individual of color. 

And as for the second commentary,  

 i mean, why does anyone even try and put so much stock in words anymore?

has to be the worst type of logic that I’ve seen on a tumblr post. We put stock into words because in the end, words define everything about who we are. I’m not talking about labels, but the actual words that we use. Your word choice conveys so much in a single sentence. You could easily change one word in a sentence, and that could change the entire meaning of what you had originally intended to say. In conjunction with that, as humans, we tend to like grouping things together. Psychological processes such as conditioning show the importance of a word. If a child has heard the n-word everyday of his life before he was attacked, spat upon, judged without getting to know him, he comes to associate that word with those actions. That word isn’t just a word to be uttered. That word is representative of an entire collective experience that has made his life a living hell for the past however long he’s had to deal with those types of encounters. A word is rarely just a word, and everyone knows this in some form. People get defensive and angry over being called certain names or being insulted for a reason: words have meaning and “stock,” as the commentator stated. 

And finally, I shall just say in response to:

according to my trusty friend wikipedia, cisgender is about the gender role you identify with and how closely that masculinity is associated with societies ideas on masculinity.

Wikipedia also states that misogyny deals with the hatred of women and girls, yet gay men are actively involved in reproducing and perpetuating misogynistic tendencies even though there are no women present among a group of male-identified individuals. The fact is, misogyny manifests itself within the femme phobia and the idolization of masculine ideals that pervades the gay community. Misogyny isn’t just a hatred of women and girls, but it’s a hatred of femininity, something that all individuals must interact with in some form. Therefore, why should Wikipedia be trusted on the definition of “cisgender”? Don’t have an answer? It’s because it shouldn’t be. You have to unpack and define a term before merely claiming that something is or isn’t correct. 

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(via ruinedchildhood)

The kids have it all figured out.