Elon Musk’s promise to treat ‘cis’ as a slur will provoke more extremism

On Wednesday, anti-trans darlings Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling posted deeply troubled and misinformed tweets in which they both argued the term “cisgender” is essentially an ideologically radical and unfounded term, which, well, hurts their feelings. Therefore, according to Rowling, she shouldn’t have to use it, and Musk decreed the word would be categorized as a “slur” by Twitter and that Twitter users who use it will be penalized. 

The adjective “cisgender” describes people whose gender identity matches their sex, and for transphobes — that is, people who want to deny the existence of trans people or oppress them — deploying the term “cisgender” is deeply threatening because it implicitly acknowledges the existence of “transgender.” While Rowling claims in her tweet that gender identity is an “unfalsifiable concept,” she is wrong. 

Dr. Simón(e) Dow-Kuang Sun, a neurologist with a Ph.D. from the New York University Neuroscience Institute, where she studied neuroplasticity, beautifully debunked such arguments in the Scientific American in 2019. 

People who make such claims, Sun wrote, “espouse unscientific claims that have infected our politics and culture. Especially alarming is that these ‘intellectual’ assertions are used by nonscientists to claim a scientific basis for the dehumanization of trans people. The real world consequences are stacking up: the trans military ban, bathroom bills, and removal of workplace and medical discrimination protections, a 41-51 percent suicide attempt rate and targeted fatal violence. It’s not just internet trolling anymore.”