On 16 January 2015 at 17:13, Heather Walls <hwalls@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:56 PM, Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:
Whatever else "cis" is, it's not a scientific term.  It's a buzzword that sounds scientific because it derives from the Latin, but in fact it's a coined term that is not used in science. 

What makes a term scientific other than that scientists use it?

"Sociologists Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook define cisgender as a label for "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity" as a complement to transgender.[2]"

"Sociology is the academic study of social behaviour, its origins, development, organisation, and institutions.[1] It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation[2] and critical analysis[3] to develop a body of knowledge about social order, social disorder and social change."



Simply because two sociologists say it means X doesn't mean that there's any indication that term is widely accepted even with the academic field of sociology; in fact, the next paragraph of the lede of the article indicates it's only one of many terms that are used by various social science fields.  And just to be clear, social science != science; they're two very different things. 

The "cis" prefix is most frequently used when there is a fairly equal division between two different presentations. Thus, using this prefix prefix inaccurately reflects the distribution of gender identities.  Let's not kid ourselves, no matter what data are being presented, 70% or more of the human population *does* self-identify with the gender assigned at birth. (The whole first paragraph on the origin of the term is original research, but I'm not going to touch it with a 10-foot pole.)

We would never even consider calling people who have two feet "cispedal" or people who have blood pressure in the normal range "cistensive".  In fact, there's a word for those with blood pressure in the normal range:  "normotensive".  But it wouldn't look politically correct to call people who identify with their assigned birth gender as "normogender", which would be the linguistically correct prefix, because that encompasses the majority of people.  [For the record, I'd never advocate the use of that term, either.]

Let's just call women "women" or, if it's really felt that we need to be exclusive, "those who self-identify as women". 

Risker/Anne