Unwilling Members of the Cis-terhood

Madeleine Kearns draws attention to J. K. Rowling’s objection to being called a “cisgender woman,” or “cis.” This is basically a term from gender ideology to describe non-trans people, or those whose internal sense and external performance of their gender in some ways matches their biological sex.

Under Elon Musk, Twitter apparently has a policy of limiting or disciplining accounts that use the term “cisgender” as a repeated slur. That makes some sense to me.

I’ve seen progressives argue that objecting to being termed “cisgender” is needlessly pushy. True, they say, you may not have many contexts in which you identify yourself that way, just as (if you’re not Jewish) you wouldn’t identify yourself as a Gentile in most contexts — but in certain ones, that just is your identity.

I suppose my objection to being called cisgender would be more similar to a Jew’s discomfort with being termed “unbaptized.” From the metaphysical premises of gender ideology and Christianity, status as “cisgender” or “unbaptized” is just factual. But in both cases you are imposing a metaphysics on those who reject it.