“Congratulations! It’s a boy!”
Does that sound like hate speech to you? No? Well, obviously, you’re a cisgender bigot.
That’s how Slate’s C.S. Milloy sees it . . . Wait, you don’t know what a “cis” is? What’s wrong with you?
In today’s gender-studies-enriched society, a “cis” is a “you,” or “your wife,” or all of the people you know. Cis a term drawn from a Latin prefix (“on this side of”) that is often contrasted with the prefix trans (“across”).
I bet you’re catching on.
A cisgender (“cis”) person is comfortable identifying with the sex indicated by chromosomes X and/or Y, genitals, and the handiwork of Almighty God. A transgender person (“sissy”) experiences unease (“dysphoria,” according to the canonical DSM V) when attempting to identify with the sex assigned him at birth. He may dress things up with a bow or have things cut off with a scalpel or just write for Slate.
Now that you’ve learned those terms, please realize that strict usage of them may reveal further bigotry on your part. What if some poor, confused soul sees himself as “gender fluid”? Or “bigender”? Or “gender nonconforming”? How dare you restrict your terms to society’s narrow cis/trans distinction!
It puts you in a real pickle if you’re a multibillion-dollar left-loving outfit like Facebook. When I signed up many moons ago, I was able to select from “Male” and “Female.” As of this year, that list also includes “Custom.” Reports from February celebrated the fact that, having partnered with all sorts of queers who advised and shared wisdom, Facebook was pleased to offer 50-some alternatives to the traditional two-term list. Hooray! said the “agenders” and the “cisgender females” and the “genderqueers.” But what if one felt himself to be a “gender nonconforming”? Was he to remain isolated in the sweaty study hall of bullying and cisconformity?
The list had to be expanded.
Thus, in late June, the Telegraph could report with a straight (whoops!) face that “UK Facebook users can now choose from one of 71 gender options, including asexual, polygender and two-spirit person.”
And then there are the pronouns. Facebook knows something about grammar and usage, and has created, detected, and averted a hatecrime in the making. Today is Elton’s birthday, you read. Now fill in the blank with a pronoun: “Wish [x] a happy birthday!”
We already know that Elton’s equipment doesn’t matter. Liberals and conservatives agree on that. Find me a conservative politician or Christian denomination that unqualifiedly proclaims that God has designed males to be men, and females to be women, and that men and women have naturally defined vocations that are distinct, and I’ll give you a King James Bible, Weaker Vessel Edition.
But Elton’s feelings about gender-traditional pronouns matter, too. Thus, Facebook gives him the option to be referred to as a him, a her, or a them.
It’s the same sensitive grammar on display in the New International Version of the Bible, Revelation 3:20: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (emphasis, Satan).
Or in this, the top featured article (“Hobby Lobby Hysteria,” the Editors) on nationalreview.com at the moment of this writing: “Nobody then, you may recall, was agitated over the fact that . . . their supposed ‘rights’ to free contraceptive coverage from employers had been continuously violated” (ibid).
Well, yes, many say, we’ve learned to live with them instead of him and gender instead of sex to please our Christian feminist sex-unspecified siblings, but who in the world would accept polygender and genderqueer as normal words to be used in everyday life?
The children of America, that’s who. The fields of forced sex education and antibullying campaigns are fertile ground for leftists to spill their seeds of gender confusion. Out for Equality’s Safe Schools Manual, which is promoted by several state departments of education for use in the classroom, lists among such societal evils as “Heterosexual Privilege” and “White Privilege” the sin of “Cis Privilege.” “As a cisgender person,” the curriculum forces children to contemplate ashamedly, “I can use public restrooms without fear of physical intimidation, or arrest,” and “If I’m murdered, my gender expression will not be used as a justification for my murder,” and “Hollywood accurately depicts people of my gender in films and television.”
The real problem, as Slate’s C.S. Milloy sees it, is the crime committed by obstetricians in labor and delivery. (“Christin Scarlett” Milloy, author of “Don’t Let the Doctor Do This to Your Newborn,” is a man who dresses up like a girl.) “It’s called infant gender assignment: When the doctor holds your child up to the harsh light of the delivery room, looks between its legs, and declares his opinion: It’s a boy or a girl, based on nothing more than a cursory assessment of your offspring’s genitals.”
Milloy is right about one thing: Words have meaning. Not long ago, nouns had gender, and people had sex, and sexual relations meant something that could and might make a baby boy or girl; and that relationship was protected, elevated, and distinguished for time immemorial by something called marriage.
How quickly things change.
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