Consider this dialogue, not uncommon on today’s social media:
A: “Cis is a slur!”
B: “It is NOT, you’re such a transphobe.”
A: “What? I don’t fear trans people.”
While there is a high likelihood that person A in this conversation has unfairly negative beliefs about transgender people, there are also several points in this small conversation where language may be compounding the confusion.
“Slur”
What is a slur?
At its most basic, a slur is any word that is used to harm or impugn another person based on something about that person’s identity. It’s a type of insult, therefore; one that specifically addresses an identity class.
Some words are inherently slurs: They were created for that purpose, and any use of the word that is not part of that purpose is an act of reclaiming. The most blatant such slur for transgender people is “tr*nny”. Some transgender people use that term for themselves as an act of reclaiming their power, but if you’re not transgender (even if you’re gay), you should not ever use that word. (I’m transgender and don’t even use it.)
Some words evolve into slurs, to the point that they can no longer be used as anything else: “Transsexual” is currently in that evolution, although some, especially older, transgender people still use it for themselves in a way that is neither self-denigrating nor reclaiming.
But any noun or adjective can be used as a slur (under the definition above) if it’s being used in a way that insults an identity. “You’re gay” (whether or not the person really is) said as an insult is a slur; there are many other contexts where it’s just a statement of fact.
Hence, it’s not factually correct to say “cis is a slur” (more below), but it also may be factually incorrect to say “nobody ever uses it as one”.
I say “may be” because the meaning of “slur”, like the meaning of almost all words in natural language, has fuzzy, evolving meaning.
Originally, “racism” referred to forced segregation, and by general implication required systemic power. As the word took hold in the mainstream, the idea of “systemic power” eroded and it came to mean just any belief that one’s one race was superior or that other races were inferior. Then, as academics focused on social justice got more time on the public square microphone, the “systemic power” aspect got exerted again.
I’ve seen many arguments about whether something is racist come down to whether or not system power is a part of the definition. I’ve also noticed that the systemic power aspect has gotten attached to other words, such as bias, bigotry, prejudice, and slur.
I don’t personally think this is a useful direction to go for these other words, but I’ll focus specifically on slur: If systemic power is a necessary criterion, then “cis” cannot be a slur, since transgender people don’t have consistent systemic power in the greater society. If this is the argument that people are making when saying that “cis” is never used as a slur, okay, but I think there needs to be at least an awareness that this is not a universal (or even a cultural-majority) definition of “slur”.
For instance, a definition of “slur” that requires systemic power means that “cracker” (used for white people) isn’t a slur, even though it was applied to white people as a whole for the purpose of insulting people based on identity.* We can certainly rank words based on how often they’re used as slurs and how intense they are (“cracker” being usually used as a slur in that meaning, but being perhaps the least intense of the slurs), but a definition of “slur” that removes “cracker” from the list entirely strikes me as very odd.
I recognize that other people apparently use the word “slur” in such a way, though, and if I ignore that fact, I run the risk of having communication problems unrelated to the underlying concepts.
“Transphobe”
As a clinical term, a phobia is an intense and irrational fear of something, to the degree that exposure to that thing can cause intense, uncontrollable anxiety reactions.
When attached to an identity-group prefix, though, a phobia is any distrust, dislike, or otherwise negative reaction to people with that identity. It doesn’t need to be intense, irrational, or fear-based; it doesn’t even need to imply hatred anymore (although I do think it used to imply that).
This is a very significant shift in meaning which allows people who do have some degree of dislike of transgender people, or even of just the concept of being transgender (“love the sinner, hate the sin”), to sidestep the main conversation and focus on outdated semantics.
Generally, I personally try to avoid the word “transphobe” for this reason. Additionally, it distracts from conversations for another reason: Just as calling someone a “racist” instead of calling their actions out as racist allows for a categorization, calling someone a “transphobe” instead of pointing out that their words or deeds show an anti-trans bias allows them to center themselves and their greater belief set.
I am transgender. I have lots of internalized anti-trans bias. There are things I say or do that could be fairly characterized as transphobic. If having anti-trans bias of any sort makes someone a transphobe, then nearly everyone (including most trans people) is a transphobe and the accusation becomes meaningless.
“Cis is a slur”
Someone could convince me that “cis” can be used as a slur, as I discuss above. Nobody can convince me that “cis” is an inherent slur.
When trans people and allies see or hear “cis is a slur”, our standard reaction is that the person communicating it believes that “trans” is a slur, and that “cis” is the same sort of word. And so we get offended.
In other words, they believe that there’s something inherently wrong with being transgender, that calling someone “trans” is pointing out that inferiority, and that therefore calling someone “cis” is pointing out an inferiority attached to not being transgender.
But is that always true? I believe it is generally true, more often than not, but I also believe that there are some people who erroneously believe that “cis” is an acronym or otherwise newly invented word that was created to impugn people who aren’t trans. It doesn’t help that TikTok’s default for captions is to capitalize it, as if it’s an acronym.
So the best approach is to point out the purpose of “cis” and move on. I’ve seen too many people claim that nobody uses “cis” as a slur; this is simply not true, and only serves to allow the other person to bog the conversation down in defensive semantics.
Summary
Here are some truths:
- “Cis” is used by a small minority of trans people and allies in order to hurt or insult people who are not transgender.
- “Cis” was not in any sense created for that purpose; it was created to make an easy, objective distinction between transgender and non-transgender people (using an existing prefix).
- “Cis is a slur”, or some version of it, is usually communicated by people who are offended, insulted, or uneducated about transgender people, and would like the topic and the people to be removed from public conversation.
- “Transphobia” refers not to irrational fear but to distrust and distaste at any level.
- Categorizing someone as a “transphobe” allows them to focus the conversations on the idea of “transphobes” and “non-transphobes”, and their evidence that they belong to the later group.
- Word meanings shift, both across time and across communities.
Too many conversations bog down when we forget that last point. Much of that is intentional; conversational sealions are adept at exploiting it. But much of it is genuine confusion, and if we just ignore it, we’ll repeat the same “talking at each other” rhetorical cycles.
Note
* There are competing etymologies for “cracker”, one of which makes it a slur against poor people, and in that sense, it is absolutely systemic. Another is that it refers to slave drivers cracking their whips, and hence lacks systemic power. A third is that it’s a reference to people who boast, and hence was applied by white people to other white people without consideration of wealth. But its current application to white people, generically, does not carry any systemic power.