Comments | transgender: Cissexism in Radical Publications

foxgloved in transgender

Cissexism in Radical Publications

Nov 18, 2012 11:22

For all you folks involved in radical activism, I wanted to point out some egregious nonsense recently published in the most recent Slingshot Collective newspaper. You might want to give this a read before purchasing a 2013 Slingshot Organizer or subscribing to the newspaper.

( Cut for lots and lots of cissexism, and a fair bit of sarcasm in response. )

controversial, activism, social issues-media, politics, community

Comments 31

aumentou November 19 2012, 02:52:28 UTC

Ignorant person writes a lot of incoherent words. Says nothing of value.

Good thing there are no comments, or I'd be faced with the interesting question of how to approach it. That would keep me up a while.

kittenmommy November 19 2012, 04:03:37 UTC

Good thing there are no comments, or I'd be faced with the interesting question of how to approach it. That would keep me up a while.

Surely you know better than to read comments! :p

kittymink November 19 2012, 15:23:54 UTC

heh.

kittymink November 19 2012, 15:23:44 UTC

POOR CIS PEOPLE. Ooh,I can't even say "cis" ITS SO DIVISIVE AND HURTFUL.

Oh that article is such a mess. I agree with the above comments that the author was self-medicated on something, possibly hallucinogenic.

Also, writers, paragraph breaks are your friends. Don't be afraid to use one once in a while.

foxgloved November 19 2012, 16:28:33 UTC

To be fair, the printed version of the article (which I had the pleasure of reading over dinner in my college dining hall - apparently someone subscribed the whole school to this paper) was formatted with paragraph breaks. I don't know why the website is so poorly designed.

Yeah, I just can't wrap my head around people who don't want to be labeled "cis" but are perfectly ok using the word "trans." I brought this up to friend IRL (I swear she could have written this article!) and her defense was, "but I don't like the label "trans" either!" and then continued to refer to me as trans...

kittymink November 19 2012, 17:46:14 UTC

wow... They don't seem to understand that "cis" and "trans" are opposites.And even when they do, I have heard ppl say "I don't like 'cis' because it's mean, wrong, etc. so call me 'non-trans'." Which doesn't make sense, you don't call straight ppl "non-gay" and "non-trans" just continues to "other" trans people. Which I suspect is the real issue, they are so used to trans people being the Other, they don't like language that puts cis and trans people on equal footing. And by that I don't mean that "cis" others them, even if they may feel that way

One person was like "I can't find 'cis' in the dictionary so you can't use it." Which means she didn't actually like,look in a dictionary because I then went and found it for her.

cykotyks November 19 2012, 23:59:24 UTC

So out of curiosity, I looked "cis" up in my computer's dictionary, and came across this note about it: "Often contrasted with trans- or ultra-." I am now seriously considering calling myself ultragender.

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