I’m pretty slow on picking up stuff. I’d be really pathetic if it weren’t for the puzzles teaching me new things all the time. So it was only recently that I learned what the prefix “cis” means. It’s to distinguish trans folks from nontrans folks. So in the puzzle today, the clue at 14A was “One assigned female at birth and identifying as such,” and the answer was CISGENDER. So someone who is a woman having transitioned to that gender is a trans woman, and women who have not transitioned are cisgender women.
And that’s what caused a flare up among the commentariat in Rex’s blog. Longtime commenter Nancy, as big a curmudgeon as Rex, took strong exception to being given this new classification: cisgender woman. She wants to just be called a woman. This caused several in the community to charge her with transphobia, i.e., being anti-trans. And then, of course, came the defense.
Here’s how Nancy started things out:
You are not allowed to go mucking around with my identity — an identity I’ve had for my entire life which, btw, adds up to a lotta, I mean a lotta years. You can have any identity you prefer for yourself and I will completely respect it, but you cannot go mucking around with mine. You may not re-define me, however “convenient” you may find your new definition. My identity does not exist for your convenience.
Anony mouse chimed in with: These are transphobic comments. Please talk to a younger person once in a while so you can see how off base you are here.
Nancy’s rejoinder: I don’t remotely care how a trans person wants to identify themselves — as a “trans woman” or as simply just ” a woman” or any other way they want to describe themselves. That’s totally their prerogative and privilege. But I’m damned if I will permit them or journalists or anyone else to describe me as a CIS WOMAN. I’m a woman, period.. Make up as many new terms for the trans community as you wish, but not for me. That is not your right. And, no, you cannot call me transphobic because I insist on defining MY OWN bleeping identity. I am perfectly willing to respect your chosen terms of reference, so please afford me the same courtesy.
Anony Mouse (likely a different one) added:
“Cis is merely a Latin prefix with the opposite meaning of trans- . Applying the prefix cis- isn’t an act of redefining you against your will. It’s just a clarification that may seem unnecessary in your life (which is a privilege).
“I recently learned that people in the autistic community refer to non-autistic people as allistic. It makes a lot of sense to me that terms need to evolve so that language can identify members of particular groups (when necessary, in context) without resorting to hierarchical distinctions like ‘normal.’
“At any rate, since the crossword wasn’t asking for the gender of Nancy, and since many people ‘assigned female at birth and identifying as such’ do choose to identify as cis, the clue fits the answer without needing to be seen as an attack on you as an individual.”
Commenter dgd said: I think it is destructive and self defeating to assume someone is transphobic just because certain terminology bothers them. Language can be a very personal thing. I am gay. I fully understand why people in the community use queer but it is not something at 72 I can say easily.
The problem is when progressives become dogmatic and sad to say a bit like their enemies. Taking control of what people call you is a good thing. Imposing new words describing other people not so much. And you are imposing the term ciswoman if you call Nancy transphobic simply because she doesn’t like it.
And look progressives seem to me to spend too much energy on terminology. Changing terminology can be very important ( Black, Latino/a, First Nations, gay – now queer- trans) but an ever expanding list of subcategories that the mass of people find confusing and on this occasion insulting is counterproductive.
The final post on the issue came from Anony Mouse:
It would be one thing if someone had said it was transphobic for Nancy to define herself as something other than cisgendered. Nancy can call herself whatever she wants. But the crossword had nothing to do with her, and what appears transphobic is her strong objection to CISWOMAN as an answer in the crossword at all (or perhaps, an answer as clued).
Cis is part of the language that has developed and become normalized in order to allow trans people to self actualize and have language that describes their experience of the world, at times in contrast to non-trans (ie, cis) people. No part of that is an insult to Nancy.
Personally, on whether Nancy should be charged with being transphobic — I grant her a special curmudgeon exemption. It’s one hell of a broad-ass exemption.
Let’s just move on.
“It’s finally Taylor Swift Watching Football season.”
In the ongoing saga of Taylor and Travis, there was concern last week of a rift between Taylor and Brittany Mahomes, the wife of Travis’s buddy, QB Patrick Mahomes. Brit had come out supporting Trump, and Taylor, of course, is with Kamala. But the latest word is B may be souring on Trump. She was quite miffed at his attack on Taylor. Here they are, a while ago, mugging for our Phil.
Two short notes on baseball, and then we’ll close early tonight — I’m tired from teaching my classes.
I love the little nooks and crannies in baseball — little oddities that seem to pop up all the time. I was watching the Gnats play the Mets tonight (the Gnats have slipped behind just a bit, 9-1 in the sixth. Ouch.), and announcer Gary Cohen noted that the Mets had an “all-righty” line up. It is an accepted baseball fact that you would prefer to have a right-handed batter facing a left-handed pitcher (and vicey-versey). So the Mets stacked their lineup with all righties to face Gnat pitcher Parker, a lefty. (It was all “pure” right-handed batters — no switch hitters.) And Cohen noted it was only the third time in twenty years that the Mets did that. Neat.
Second, I learned a new rule last night — how often does that happen after so many decades of watching? First, let me explain the infield fly rule. It applies when there are less then two outs, and runners on first and second, or the bases are loaded. If an infield fly is hit by the batter — i.e., a pop-up in the infield — the umpire will call the batter automatically out, whether the ball is caught by the defense or not. The rule is designed to prevent the fielder from dropping the ball on purpose and going for a double play.
In last night’s game, the Gnats had runners on first and second, with no outs. The batter bunted the ball, but poorly — he bunted it into a soft popup to the third baseman who was charging in. The third baseman caught it. But the announcers (Cohen and Keith Hernandez) were saying maybe he should have let it fall, intentionally, to go for the double play. I thought — but shouldn’t the infield fly rule have been called to prevent that? And that’s when I learned it does not apply when the ball is bunted. Wow.
Then one of them said, maybe the third baseman couldn’t have done that, because he vacated his position at third to field the bunt. So a third-to-second DP could not have been executed. So they showed the replay to check. Amazingly — you could see the catcher racing from home to third to be able to take the throw there if the ball had been intentionally dropped to go for the DP. Again, wow. Apparently, however, the third baseman just didn’t think quickly enough or didn’t know the rule (hard to imagine).
Gary Cohen (left, below), asked Keith Hernandez, who was a brilliant first baseman in his day, if infielders were generally aware of that bunt rule. And Keith said, “You know, Gary, it’s been so long since I’ve played, I just don’t remember.” D’oh!
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 