A recent exchange on Facebook:
Miranda Yardley please stop passing off extremist ideas as popular. As others have said, Cis is just shorthand for “Not trans”, as straight is shorthand for “not gay”. In everyday life you don’t often need to disambiguate between straight or gay, or cis or trans. You only need to do so when you are talking about both groups at the same time. The attempt by fundamentalist feminists to define cis as a derogatory and offensive term is itself highly offensive. You’ve already stated your position in this very thread that cis-women have privilege over trans-women (in the same way that men have privilege over women, perhaps?). In making that statement you reveal yourself not to be an advocate of equality or feminism, but of division and oppression.
‘Cis’ is meaningless; the word ‘transwoman’ differentiates a woman (being an adult human female) from a transwoman.
Suggesting I am ‘passing off extremist ideas as popular’ and that I advocate for ‘division and oppression’ just because you happen to disagree with me is sloppy and disingenuous reasoning, a combination of an ad hominem attack and an appeal to authority.
Your statement ‘the attempt by fundamentalist feminists to define cis as a derogatory and offensive term is itself highly offensive’ is a misrepresentation and itself misogynistic. Feminism centers women, not transwomen (because ‘transwomen’ are not women) and concerns itself with the liberation of women from patriarchy, not ‘equality’.
Imposing ‘cis’ as a label on women is, however, profoundly antifeminist as this imposition is without consent. As I have stated, the function of ‘cis’ is to impute women’s privilege over transwomen (you seemed to miss my point) and it is again antifeminist for transwomen to deny the privilege endowed by male socialisation.
