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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.
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?
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Shouldn't Tribe B have a say in this? Especially the language change largely affects Tribe B.
This is a cop-out. From what I've seen (I'm not cit), it's not a positive word in queer circles.
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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.
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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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