Cis Is a Slur
Cis is a slur!
That’s what many people say, whose gender aligns with that expected of them since birth.
They say “cis” is a slur, and that they aren’t “cisgender”; instead they identify as “normal”.
They lived their entire life identifying as normal, and now when someone tries to label them “cisgender”, they take it offensively, and label it a slur, because they see it as an identity being forced upon them.
Of course they’re wrong, the word “cisgender” is just a descriptor. It means “gender which is the same (as society expects)”. It’s not a slur, just a technical way to say that their experience of their gender aligns with what their society says it should be.
The antonym for “cisgender” is “transgender”, meaning “gender which is different (from what society expects)”.
You see, gender is a social construct, meaning it is a concept invented by society rather than being observed. Like money, or government, or having a last name.
In a society where the construct of gender is rigid (for example, “there are only two genders and only two sexes and they always align so male=man and female=woman”), the concept of “transgender” naturally arises: someone whose gender doesn’t fit the rigid societal construct of gender forced upon them.
It doesn’t need that exact word, obviously, but it’s the one we chose in this society for a person whose gender is different; it’s atypical; it’s queer; it’s trans.
Maybe they’s a man in a typically-female body, or a woman in a typically-male body.
Maybe they feels somewhere in between, or something else entirely, or even just barely doesn’t match what society says their gender should be.
Whichever way their gender doesn’t align, they’s trans.
Its antonym “cisgender” also doesn’t need that exact word, but it simply exists as the opposite of “transgender”; these concepts are tied together, naturally arising in a society with a rigid gender construct.
In a society where there is no gender construct, or the gender construct happily accommodates each and every member’s internal sense of gender, then there is no concept of “transgender” nor “cisgender”; there, it’s meaningless nonsense.
Returning to the cis person who says “cis is a slur”
Cis is a slur because it’s an identity forced on me!
There’s differences and overlaps between descriptors and identities. Any descriptor can become an identity if embraced, but one doesn’t have to embrace it. Descriptors describe either way.
It doesn’t matter whether this person uses “cisgender” as an identity or insists on being called “normal”; this person is described as “cisgender”. Either she’s a woman in a typically-female body, or he’s a man in a typically-male body. “Cisgender” is simply a description of their natural alignment, nothing insidious nor offensive.
Of course, there are other social constructs relating to gender, such as sexuality.
Imagine a cis man who only enjoys fucking other cis men, and isn’t interested in fucking anyone of any other gender at all, but he calls himself straight / heterosexual. We describe this man as homosexual (or gay, or a faggot, or various other terms), despite his identity as a straight/heterosexual man. This man is free to say he’s heterosexual, but that doesn’t really help anyone. In fact, that’s what we often see from politicians trying to pass anti-homosexuality laws, who then turn out to be homosexual themself. His rejection of the “homosexual man” descriptor doesn’t stop the descriptor from describing him any more than a cis TERF rejecting “cis” stops that from describing her.
Similarly, in a society where sex between all combinations of gender are equally as common and accepted, the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” might be meaningless nonsense.
These are descriptive words.
They may be embraced as an identity, but they are descriptive first and foremost. They rely entirely on one’s society’s ideas about gender.
What restrooms you’re allowed in, what hairstyles you should use, what careers you should pursue, even how doctors officially record you when you’re born.
Even how/whether doctors mutilate infants to force their bodies to conform to what’s expected.
If you are cisgender, then you live your whole life happy to go along with how the people around you expect you to express your gender. Your body looks like they would expect it to look when they see the “F” or “M” label on your documents, and your voice matches what you think it should sound like, and the clothes fit just right, and the hair stylist does the right thing by default.
You don’t have to convince people it’s okay for you to be the way you are.
Sure, there’s some oppressive expectations like whether you should be a wage slave or house slave, and you might have to over-exaggerate your natural gender sometimes (see also: Patriarchy), but you’re happy to do that because what’s expected of you aligns with your sense of self.
If you are transgender, then you live your whole life trying to make external people see your gender the way you internally see your own. That or you spend it pretending to be someone you aren’t.
Maybe people look at your physical body and they see a gender that doesn’t match your own.
Maybe you struggle to make your body’s voice more like your true one,
or maybe you go through years of high-effort bullshit just to change documents so the “F” or “M” on them matches you or is removed entirely,
or maybe you have to petition your doctor to let you replace your hormones with ones which change your body to be closer to how you feel,
or maybe you spend far too long thinking about facial hair,
or maybe you just think a lot about what it would be like to be a different gender,
… or maybe all of these at once.
Whatever a person’s experience of gender, if it doesn’t entirely fit within their society’s expectations, that person is transgender. If it entirely fits, they’s cis.