Use it or else
A lot of people are passing around this bit of genius:
HOW IS IT HALFWAY THROUGH 2019 AND SO MANY PEOPLE STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT "CISGENDER" MEANS?! IT'S NOT A SLUR. IT JUST MEANS YOU IDENTIFY WITH THE SEX YOU WERE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH. THAT'S IT. IT'S GONNA BE OKAY, CIS PEOPLE. IT'S A FLIPPING WORD. USE IT. DEAL WITH IT. IT'S FINE.
— Lauren Rankin (@laurenarankin) July 12, 2019
Would you like to try our Lobster Special today?
All-caps all you like, but that doesn’t magically make your claims true.
“Cis” just means you identify with the sex you were assigned at birth, she tells us. Yes, we know, and that’s why we reject the word. I don’t “identify with the sex I was assigned at birth.” I just am it, that’s all. It’s simply a fact. I don’t “identify with” it or embrace it or glory in it or anything else along those lines, I just have the humdrum normal awareness of the fact of it. It is what it is, as we so often hear about pretty much everything except what sex we are. It is what it is. We’re vertebrates, we’re mammals, we’re primates, we’re great apes. Those are all names, or labels, of course, but the criteria for them are specific and well known. What sex we are is like that. It’s not subjective, it’s not a feeling, it’s not like the soul, it’s not Spiritual.
I don’t identify with it, and I wasn’t “assigned” it. I understand that it’s A FLIPPING WORD but all words are that, and we’re allowed to say some of them are inaccurate or tendentious or venomous or any number of other things that cause us to reject them. We’re not required to call ourselves cis or to agree with the confused ideology that tries to impose the word on all of us. Shouting in all caps ain’t gonna change that.
And “Die cis scum?” A friendly suggestion? Gentle admonition?
Give me some help here.
Exactly the kind of nonsense I’d expect to hear from a cisvertebrate.
I myself am a cisbiped.
Elizabeth Hungerford said that she not only didn’t identify as cis, but that she was unhappy with her “assigned” gender role. She also declined to consider herself trans.
This. So much this. My “gender role” is not who I am, what I am, or who I want to be. I spent my entire life fighting against my “gender role” not embracing it, but do not consider myself trans, because I don’t see how rejecting being covered in pink lace, having babies all the time, and washing dishes (actually, I sort of like washing dishes) makes me male. It just makes me me. I am a female who chooses to reject the idea that my sex comes with a set of requirements that I serve men.
And I suspect that few, if any, of these trans activists have a clue what it really does mean to be a woman in this world. They think it is about doing certain things they want to do, and don’t understand that (1) that comes with a shitload of baggage; and (2) there is no reason men cannot do those things.
“IT JUST MEANS YOU IDENTIFY WITH THE SEX YOU WERE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH.”
WTF why did no one tell me this in all this time?? /s
Anyway, since the logic of trans sex is identical to trans race no matter how much TRAs object, this Fresh Prince clip will never not be relevant. “Being black isn’t what I am trying to be it’s what I am.” Later: “apparently I’m not enough of a brother to be a brother.” Exactly the same can be said of sex.
“I’m running the same race and jumping the same hurdles you are so why are you tripping me up?”
#3 Naif
Shameful confession time: I was a quadruped very early in life, but later identified as bipedal and left that old identity behind. The bipedal role just… suits my walkingmode identity far better.
No, madam.
Holms,
I, too, started out as a quadruped, became a biped, reverted to being a quadruped (with the aid of arm extenders) and am now a weird kind of animal which uses all four limbs for locomotion, whilst sitting down. ;)
They’ve changed it. They used to say it meant you “identified with” the gender you were assigned at birth.
They got pushback on that that they couldn’t handwave away without undermining their own ideology (the one slice of it which is actually true, i.e. that people often feel a mismatch between their own feelings and their society’s gender norms). So they exchanged the word “gender” for “sex” in the definition.
Ha! Stealing this, Skeletor.
As for you cisbipeds — THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX PROVES THAT PEDIALITY IS A SPECTRUM.
‘Assigned white at birth.’
Five seconds of thought sort of kill that concept.
Re #12
Pudd’nhead Wilson comes to mind.
With the “One Drop Rule” concept, it’s quite possible to be a white-appearing person who’s “really” black, but impossible to be a black-appearing person who’s “really” white.
I don’t identify as female, I just am. Like it or not (I’m mostly okay with it, but regardless of that) woman is my biology ; not my wish, personality, mind, or self-expression. Just my physical (and social) experience.
I’m sure as hell not “cis”.