I recently had an exchange with a few reddit MRA’s about gender terminology. One reddior in response to a post about accepting gay men into the MRA, something I support 100%, mentioned that we also needed to invite trans people as-well as cis-gendered people. My comment is and it’s responses here.
Before I dive in to why I think terms like cis-gendered need to be rejected I will talk about feminism. One of feminism’s core ideas is that gender is a social construct in other words, in a feminist conception of reality gender and gender roles are independent from the biological sex of an individual. This is such a part of feminism that you can’t have one without the other. It is the idea that allows feminists to say that they are not opposing men, just “traditional masculinity.” Naturally if gender is just a social construct then male bodied men could reject masculinity, or reshape it to become more acceptable to feminist sensibilities. It should be noted that feminists have also contradicted themselves on this point multiple times.
So what’s the problem with this view of gender? Simply, most people don’t experience their gender as disembodied. In other words the majority of men and women alike experience their gender as inextricably linked to their physiological gender. Feminists say this is just because they were raised a certain way, but that is false, the suicide of David Reimer and other other boys like him shows that even when someone is raised as the other gender they feel wrong, and often end up with psychological problems.
Back to the point of this post, why is cis-gendered such a horrible term? Cis-gendered is a word that means someones physiological gender is matches their psychological gender. Basically I am a cis man, meaning that I am a male bodied man. As cis women would be a female bodied woman. The problem is that as I have pointed out above, gender and physiology are linked, even in people who are trans-gendered they are trans-gendered because they are physiologically different they did not choose to be trans-gendered, they just are. When someone says that someone is cis-gendered their saying more than their just a male bodied male or a female bodied female, their saying that gender is separate from physiology, that for instance I as a man have chosen to be masculine and that if I wanted to I could choose to be different. That’s as insulting to me as it would be to tell a gay person that being gay is a choice. Or telling a trans-gendered person that they could choose not to be trans-gendered. Because, quite simply, I don’t experience gender as separate from my body, and I am not alone in that experience. Does that mean trans people are wrong? No! It means that they are physiologically different, and those differences are what make them trans.
Finally it was stated in the comments above that “I don’t need to label myself cis-gendered” it’s a term that is only there to help trans people identify people like us (presumably non-trans-gendered). But that is just as bad. I don’t want anyone to define me aside from myself, and I doubt that if you were to ask a bunch of trans people “do you like being defined by others?” that any of them would say yes.
The problem with words like cis-gendered is deeper than just not liking the term. Cis-gendered is part of a system of gender categorization based upon the false assumption that gender is independent from physiological sex and is used to promote the idea that a man could be better if he just choose a different gender role. This is misandry like any other, it’s a way of subjugating men by sex and claiming that because they don’t choose a different gender they are even more evil than the would be had they not known better. Because a man who doesn’t know he can choose his gender can’t be fully accountable for his supposed patriarchal nature, but a self identified cis-gendered man not only knows that he is evil but chooses to stay evil. That I find offensive.
Chicago-JSO 
yes, no one likes to be labeled by others, so why are they labeling me “cis gendered ” when im just a man being a man???
Words, labels, and constructions are very “Empowering” to the gender-feminist community, but if they don’t like being “labelled” then they should not “label” others with their own constructed terms.
Exactly!
Cis is a neutral label, it’s to differentiate from trans. End of story. It has a lot less fucked up undertones than Cis people calling themselves ” normal “. If trans people have to have the trans label because other people want to differentiate them from people who are born and assigned the gender they feel they are, than cis people have to have a label too. Humanity likes to have words for specific things, and just calling yourself normal because there is more of you is still fucked up. It’s like if 90% of men had the name Dave you wouldn’t just up and call every man you come across Dave and then throw a fit when they go ” uh, i’m fucking John “.
I assure you there are bigger fish to be fried than having a neutral designated name for not being trans.
“If trans people have to have the trans label because other people want to differentiate them from people who are born and assigned the gender they feel they are…” What other people? Trans people chose the lable trans, they self identified with that lable unless you can show me otherwise. For the most part if a person didn’t tell me they were trans I would have no way of knowing. That’s the difference the label trans was a self identified lable, where as cis or sis si (As I’ve been researching this I’ve found that no one seems to actually know how to spell cisgendered I’m not even sure if I have it right.) was a lable foisted upon people who did not want it or need it. And your idea that I just want to be called “normal” is also not correct. If you are a trans person and you feel as though trans was foisted upon you then if anything you should be on my side. Yes there is always a need for clear nomenclature, but historically names have been used as the first step in oppressing various populations too.
“Trans people chose the lable trans” ← That is just not true. They were labeled that way and had to accept it. And unlike what you told, using one of the labels “trans” or “cis” doesn’t imply that you can choose your gender; it implies that you cannot do so and that sex and gender are to related but not identical things.
Btw: “cis” is propably the most neutral term that could be choosen as an antonym to “trans”, because it was the antonym since the ancient rome! it just means “on this side” versus “on the other side”. So this is definitly nothing that can be seen as insulting in any way
Here’s the real issue the useage of cis is a narrowing of the bean of hatred against men. It used to be that feminists just hated men. But then they realized well there are some transgendered men and we obviously can’t hate them, becasue their “oppressed” so hating men became more vague so then terms like cis started comming up. So now it’s not okay to hate most men just cis-white-males. That’s why I don’t like the definition. It’s the difference between being in a field and having a cluster bomb go off near you and being in a field and being painted by a targeting lazer. In the first case you most likely will die in the second you certainly will. The terminology come from people who hate males and want them dead. So why should I use a term to describe myself that was created by people that truly want me dead?