Elon is , so we’re re-running this post to explain why he’s wrong.
Elon Musk is a lot of things. A , a , and most recently . He’s had a lot of fun with that last role, using his ownership of the site to and but now it seems he’s realized a greater calling: Arbitrarily deciding what counts as hate speech or harassment on the platform.
Previously, this meant, declaring it . Now, he’s gone one step further, declaring the antithetical term “cisgender” to be “harassment,” a “slur,” and worthy of suspension.
So, what’s the story behind “cis” and “cisgender” as words? Well, it starts with its opposite. The word “transgender” dates back to , replacing earlier, less-accurate terms, and was quickly adopted by both the trans and medical communities. But by the mid-’90s, when trans folks were , they realized there wasn’t really a term to differentiate non-trans people from everyone else.
So, they went back to Latin. The prefix and it has an antonym in Chemists have long used “cis” and “trans” as antonyms when , and in 1994 those Usenet users carried the dichotomy over to gender: Transgender and cisgender.
Both terms are when discussing the topic of gender, and . Neither, when used as an adjective, is a slur — they’re just medical descriptors. Musk’s banning of the term begs the question: What would he rather be called? Elon Musk, not-trans man? That would truly be an “”
The answer, of course, is that Musk would prefer to never think of the distinction at all. By placing the “trans-” and “cis-” prefixes on equal footing, neither one gets to say they’re the “normal” side of things — both are just adjectives. Musk, who has , doesn’t seem to want to share his standing with people he clearly deems as beneath him.
Musk’s move has been popular with , , which is a market Musk seems to be targeting with increasing frequency. That, and the .