Billionaire pissbaby Elon Musk has decided that the term 'cisgender' is a slur on Twitter
in his defence, most things that people call Elon Musk are usually an insult
The terms ‘cis’ and ‘cisgender’ are functional words used to differentiate between trans and non-trans people.
When I say function, I mean that in certain discussions, in certain sentences, often about trans rights or trans health, it’s a useful distinguisher. Any example could be something like “trans women’s existence takes nothing away from a cis woman’s rights”. Or “there are some health issues that trans men need to monitor that cis men don’t need to worry about”. Another example would be “Elon Musk, a cis man, is obsessed with trans people ever since Grimes left him for one”, or “I feel incredibly sorry for cisgender Elon Musk’s trans child”.
It’s a word that has been around for a very long time, comes from Latin, and is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “Designating a person whose sense of personal identity matches their gender at birth”. It’s worth noting that it was added to the dictionary in 2015, and in order to be eligible for addition, has to have been in popular use for ten consecutive years in order to qualify for the Oxford English Dictionary.
However, never a huge fan of understanding things, Twitter’s owner and emerald mine heir Elon Musk has declared that cis and cisgender are now slurs on Twitter, after replying to a well-known transphobe complaining about the terms.
It’s interesting that the supposed “free speech” advocate would decide these terms are slurs - you can almost tell they AREN’T slurs, purely because he isn’t campaigning for the freedom to use them. Reaction against these functional terms is clearly a transphobic dogwhistle, as evidenced by the wizard terf billionaire immediately backing him up.
Starting to think we’re gonna need more submersibles for all these billionaires.
On Twitter, defending his decision, Musk wrote, “The contemptible creep that manufactured the term ‘cis’ has serious problems. Ignore him,” referencing a right-wing conspiracy theory claiming that the term “cisgender” was coined by a paedophile doctor in the 1990s, which is fundamentally untrue.
However, the term “cis,” derived from Latin and meaning “on the same side as,” has been used as a dichotomic descriptor since at least the early 20th century.
It’s another blatant attempt to link LGBTIQ people with pedophilia, which is basically the playbook again - from drag queen storytimes to trans people.
This “argument” isn’t to be taken seriously - nobody in the world genuinely believes that cis or cisgender is a slur. Instead, it’s an easy way for anti-trans bigots to use traditional “left wing” talking points (such as declaring certain racist and homophobic language as slurs) against what they see as a “left wing” community - LGBTIQ people.
I believe at present that this argument is in even more bad faith than the “queer is a slur” discourse. The difference being that queer did used to be a slur, and some members of the LGBTIQ community discussed their issues with the word long before it got weaponised into an anti-trans dogwhistle. There are people who genuinely don’t want to use that term to describe themselves - which is their valid choice - and people who use that as a way to attack trans people and attempt to divide LGBTIQ identities.
Attacking the language that trans people and the LGBTIQ community uses is not so much about quibbling specifically about words, and their use and etymology, but as a way to try and delegitimise the people and experiences that those terms are designed to serve, authenticate, and validate. It’s attacking the reality of trans identity, a kind of existential genocide, chipping away at the foundations of the right for trans people to be trans. The more noise and confusion they make, the happier they are. They are amused and pleased simply by weaponising a neutral term into a weapon.
Cis and cisgender is not a slur, but please understand that when I describe all the other things that Elon Musk is: billionaire, divorcee, bad father, idiot, business loser, spiritually balding, no good submarine ideas - I mean them as a slur.
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This is SCOOPID, where All The Het Nonsense does queer news and culture articles. Please subscribe and share around. Considering cis is a slur on twitter, I’m probably not gonna stay on the platform for long lol.
Cisalpine Gaul. Just saying.