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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33025 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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An interesting tweet from Elon Musk: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671370284102819841

Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.

The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.

My initial reaction to this was that "well, aren't you already allowing slurs on Twitter, Elon?" But then I realized that there's a distinction here - slurs may be allowed, but harassment is not. After all, he used the words "cis" and "cisgender" without any censorship, much like many would censor a typical slur such as "nigger" as "n*gger" or "n-word". You may be allowed to use "cis", but you're not allowed to directly call someone "cis" on the platform.

More to the point, I think it's very valid to describe "cis" and "cisgender" as a slur, insofar as a slur is something you call a group of people who don't want to be called that (similar to the "'TERF' is a slur" debate). Certainly, "cissy" is definitely a slur (which the person Elon Musk was replying to was called). So why don't people want to be called "cis"?

I think it's because labeling the vast majority of the population (something like 99%) and making them have to use a qualifier to describe themselves is a systematic effort to make them seem more different from the norm than they really are. For the vast majority of human existence, a woman would be described as "a woman", until suddenly (around the late 2010s or so), she would now have to be described as "a cis woman", to distinguish her from "a trans woman". The implied argument seems to be that "a woman" is now suddenly ambiguous and one does not know whether one is referring to a woman in the classical sense, or a trans woman.

I would agree with this, except that I still see many instances of "women" being used when it's really being used to refer to trans women. If a qualifier is needed now, why not just keep saying "trans women" all the way through? So the "cis" terminology seems to just be a ploy to redefine "woman" to by default mean "trans woman", thus making the "cis" qualifier necessary to refer to a woman in the classical sense. But this would seem to contradict one of the supposed goals of the trans movement, that trans people should be treated the same as non-trans people. Why not refer to trans women and "cis" women equally, without the qualifier?

And it's not like it's impossible to refer to non-trans people either. I've seen many terminologies used that are much more acceptable, such as "biological women", or "non-trans" as I've been using. There's also "assigned female at birth", but I feel like that's much more of a misnomer, as it implies that gender/sex is something you're "assigned" rather than a fundamental property that is immutable (at least with today's primitive technology).

Somebody on the Internet says "please don't call me X". Then people who don't like him start calling him X. This event has nothing to do with whether X is a "slur" -- I could be dogpiled after asking not to be called bald or a gamer and that wouldn't makes those words a slur, since "gamer" or "bald" are not normally used to insult people.

If your primary exposure to the word "cis" is that somebody is trying to insult you, then I suspect you've primarily been exposed to the worst actors of the progressive movement (and/or people who are just trying to trigger you specifically). I know multiple people who walked in the BLM protests and it's implausible to me that any of them would use "cis" or "straight" as insults (if nothing else, remember that most progressives are cis and straight).

(I won't comment on whether "cis" is usually used as an insult on Twitter, since I haven't had the misfortune of wading into culture war topics on Twitter).

I don't think "forcing 99% of the population to use a qualifier" is a good description of the culture-waring here -- it feels pretty post-hoc, since if the change was going in the opposite direction, we'd see the same amount of pushback. Suppose Americans had been using "cis women" for the last 100 years and progressives started complaining that they should just say "woman" to refer to biological women so that transwomen aren't constantly reminded that they're not cis. I'm skeptical that conservatives would be happily on board.

I think the much simpler explanation is that there are two enemy tribes who disagree on a topic and Tribe A wants to change language related to that topic. That change could be 100% innocuous and Tribe B is still gonna fight against it.

There are surely details specific to the "cis woman" debate that are relevant (e.g. some people have strong opinions on concrete policy changes like "who is allowed in a woman's shelter"), but I really don't think "you're not thinking of me as normal" is significant driver of conservative pushback.

If your primary exposure to the word "cis" is that somebody is trying to insult you, then I suspect you've primarily been exposed to the worst actors of the progressive movement (and/or people who are just trying to trigger you specifically).

What's the "else" to that "if"? I have been primarily exposed to the worst actors of the progressive movement, but not exclusively exposed to them. Who is using "cis" in a positive or even neutral way?

Tribe A wants to change language related to that topic.

Shouldn't Tribe B have a say in this? Especially the language change largely affects Tribe B.

If your primary exposure to the word "cis" is that somebody is trying to insult you ...

This is a cop-out. From what I've seen (I'm not cit), it's not a positive word in queer circles.

Suppose Americans had been using "cis women" for the last 100 years and progressives started complaining that they should just say "woman" to refer to biological women so that transwomen aren't constantly reminded that they're not cis.

That is not the same sort of claim, and I can't think of a normal usage when a normative condition requires a special qualifier, rather than the qualifier being reserved for the abnormal minority.

If your primary exposure to the word "cis" is that somebody is trying to insult you, then I suspect you've primarily been exposed to the worst actors of the progressive movement (and/or people who are just trying to trigger you specifically). I know multiple people who walked in the BLM protests and it's implausible to me that any of them would use "cis" or "straight" as insults (if nothing else, remember that most progressives are cis and straight).

I mean, possibly. But it turns out all the worst actors of the progressive movement are moderators in most communities people try to interact with. So perhaps you can admit their impact might be outsized compared to their numbers.

If progressives don't like them being so visible and representative, perhaps they should do something about that. Otherwise, I assume these people have progressive's consent when they speak, and take action, in their name.

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