UngodlyAudrey🏳️⚧️No One Actually Believes That Cis Is A Slur, Here’s Why They Pretend To — Katy Montgomerie
FlowerTreePeople feel that "cis" is a slur because it puts them on equal footing with trans people.
They prefer to consider themselves "normal" while "trans" people the weird ones whom can only be labelled with anything other than "normal." Being called "cis" makes them feel as if they can also be labelled as something other than "normal."
MxM111As non-trans person, I can partially confirm. First time when I heard it, my reaction was "why do you need a new word for that?" Now I kind of used to it, but still there is some amusement each time I hear this word - it seems unnecessary, when "non-trans" would suffice if needed to avoid confusion. But slur? That's nonsense is only in Musk's head.
raccoona_nongrataNon-trans is still othering to trans people in its own way (there's trans people, and then there's everyone else). It's also kind of imprecise and awkward. To use the analogy from the comments above, it would be weird to describe someone as "non-black" or "non-blonde-haired person" etc.
Cis is a term that allows for better discussion and examination of intersectional issues. You could, for instance, compare the experiences of black women who are cis and gay, and black women who are trans and gay and figure how those two specific groups might face different unique systemic challenges. Once you tease apart novel issues at that level, you can better address them.
The right always is trying to muddy that puddle because they hate the clarity it provides, and they percieve the examination of the issues as a threat to the heirarchies from which they benefit. Same reason they have tried to turn CRT into some kind of toxic term.
If we are talking about sociology journals, then yes, I agree, cis is the right term. If we are talking about general use, like in newspaper, then there is natural reaction of bewilderment - why would you need this term? Please understand that most of the people (me including) do not meet/do not see trans people in their lives (at least they do not know they are trans). I personally know exactly zero of such people. So, the world from the point of not-trans person looks very different - they read about trans people on internet and in the news, it is rare phenomenon, that is not even observed by them personally. That's why it seems as really unnecessary world. Do you have a special word for non-albinos or for non-red-heads? And those (albinos and red-heads) they see in their life more frequently.
And here is where insisting and pushing this word on other people comes at disadvantage to trans community - the right will use any opportunity to use bewilderment of non-trans people to propagate whatever stereotypes they want to propagate about trans. They will say that trans people are "forcing" other people to call themselves "cis", and that this is derogative term, and nobody likes to be forced to do something like that.
No one is insisting or forcing anything though, it's simply a descriptor in relation to another word. Both the terms cis and trans are simply in reference to eachother.
By your same logic we should then never refer to trans people as trans outside of sociology text books either, but that's not how it works. Trans people aren't "forced" to adopt the label of trans, it just is the term that describes what they are in regards to gender.
The topic of gender is a common topic for many people, the term cis was coined out of a need for the discussions to be coherent, accurate and neutral in regard to "normalcy".