Right-wing people always think that 'offensive' is what we care about. As if 'offensive' is some magic word to get us to stop doing whatever it is that's pissing them off.

The problem is not 'offense', it is 'harm'.

If the word 'cisgender' was genuinely harmful to people, then I would reconsider using it. But it isn't harmful, it's a neat and simple way to explain what I mean when I talk about my own body and gender identity.

https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/offence-is-not-taken-assigned/

@girlonthenet
Sorry, as a cisgenedered person, pissing certain people off is often the main reason why I post...

@girlonthenet Tangentially, don't you just love it when somebody tries to pick a fight with you in a dozen words that you already nailed to the wall in a handy-dandy 1300-word essay a decade ago? 😀

@ErosBlog haha yes! Always v satisfying!

@neil @girlonthenet
As opposed to "sleep talking", one presumes.

Also: in light of the Latin history of "cis" and "trans", proposal to use "apud-gender" as a synonym of "gender queer".

@girlonthenet I call myself cis-bi all the time, purely so people are clear on stuff. Nothing derogatory, just a way of defining how your gender was acquired

@girlonthenet I mean it's totally not woke really! It causes the low functioning types stress because it's a word with more than 4 letters and it smacks of science which triggers their shame about being such failures in highschool. Don't you see how abusive a term it is? (explicit /s tag here, just in case)

@girlonthenet "by woke I presume you mean respectful"

@girlonthenet

So the right wing REALLY BELIEVES that suggesting someone is the same gender as the sex there declared to be at birth is offensive. I've been reading them all wrong.

@girlonthenet Don't make me tap the hashtag...

#ThoughtTerminatingCliche #WokeIsCodeForStuffIDontLike

@girlonthenet "Please don't be a christofascist asshole, as it is offensive."

"Please don't be a racist bigot, as it is offensive."

"Intentional ignorance is against my religion, so please stop sinning in my presence."

Funny how they don't think it works in the other direction.

@sortius @girlonthenet

I find it just provides the initial rough sketch that's useful. I mirror you somewhat by calling myself a cishet dude.

@girlonthenet Interesting; I don't think I've considered 'offensive' to be a generic term encompassing the other -isms. In the prior example, I have to ask the writer "'cisgender' is offensive in what way?" Not that I particularly care because I've already written off the writer as a right-wing prick, but I think it's important to challenge people to be specific about their prickishness so everyone can see them with the mask off. Taking offense can be used as a weapon and I think it's important to make people demonstrate they're operating in bad faith especially if there's an audience. Make people choose whether they want to side with a massive prick.

The problem is 5% of people are massive pricks, 15% are actively fighting them, and 80% just want peace and quiet and don't want to deal with it. And while I don't want to give the pricks any more attention, we need to make the public sphere difficult for them _and_ those who tolerate them. Leverage their shame. The flaw in this plan is that it presumes people have any. :/

@girlonthenet this is so good, how have I never come across it before?

thank you.

@ErosBlog @girlonthenet wrote a couple a decade ago as well..!
Mainly, that offence doesn't have to be the shutdown prompt some people seem to think it is (anger can drive positive changes)
https://noodlemaz.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/offended-good/

And shorter, https://noodlemaz.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/on-the-defensive-about-offence/

#offended #offence #cultureWars

@girlonthenet cis is a perfectly reasonable and constructive adjective to differentiate a subgroup.

I ... don't quite understand how people can reasonably object to it. (Spoiler: they're not being reasonable.)

@larsmb @girlonthenet the spoiler nails it, they want to deny the possibility of any alternative existing, which is not reasonable