this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
62 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
1452 readers
88 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"cis" I feel like it's an extra term for "straight". The "default" for lack of a better term (and one that isn't othering) is near the not trans & not gay part of the gender / sexuality spectra. To me everyone in that zone is "straight" (boring/default/whatever).
"begs the question" because people exclusively use it wrong. Just say "leads to the question" or "poses the question."
And I'm still really salty about everyone giving up on the term "literally" to allow it to mean its exact opposite.
There is a better term, it's 'cis'
There are plenty of cis gay folks. "Straight" just doesn't work if you're trying to describe non-trans people.
.
“Cis” is not an extra term for straight any more than “trans” is. These terms have nothing to do with sexual orientation. If you can handle the word “straight,” as opposed to “boring/default/whatever,” then you can also handle the word “cis” by the same logic.
I find "cis" useful, personally. I'm bisexual, so certainly "straight" isn't applicable. In a lot of contexts I'd use "cis" to refer to myself, I suppose "not trans" would also work, but it'd be clunkier.
Plus, there are times when the thing I want to centre in my communication is the cisgender perspective that I have. For example, I was recently discussing with a friend that seeing trans friend's gender euphoria improved my own relationship to my gender because it made me ask myself whether cis people could experience gender euphoria and if so, why couldn't I recall any instances of experiencing it?
I feel like the term "cisgender" implicitly acknowledges that voices and experiences like mine are important in building a shared understanding of gender — i.e. trans people aren't the only ones who have a gender. Like, obviously I can't speak directly about trans experiences, but that doesn't mean that I'm expected to shut up and contribute nothing to the wider conversation.