Is “cis” a slur?

Activists claim that the term is descriptive, but their detractors take it as an insult.

The rules of social media have forever been unpredictable. On one platform you might be kicked off for pointing out that no human being has ever changed sex. On another you might be scuppered for speculating about a certain virus leaking from a certain lab. It is all too easy to fall foul of the various platforms’ “Trust and Safety Councils” (aka Inquisitions), and so many users routinely self-censor to avoid demonetisation. It really isn’t worth the risk of being subjected to the Kafkaesque experience of attempting to appeal against a judgement for an unspecified crime.

Since Elon Musk’s Twitter coup, the rulebook has been shredded and free speech on the platform, to a degree, restored. The previous regime was at least predictable in its authoritarianism – I was temporarily banned seven or eight times for satirical posts, and soon learnt how to navigate the algorithms – but Musk has a habit of defying expectations. Some accounts on X (formerly Twitter) are still throttled, all in accordance with Musk’s slogan of “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach”, but in many cases the justification is lacking. And recently he has declared that the word “cis” is a slur and therefore could land you in the digital oubliette.

So if you write the term “cis” on X, even to criticise its usage, you might be greeted with the following message:

“This post contains language that may be considered a slur by X and could be used in a harmful manner in violation of our rules.”

As slaps on the wrist go, it’s fairly harmless. But activists who are already convinced that Musk is the reincarnation of Joseph Goebbels have taken this very badly. One recent article on TechCrunch (a website, not a cereal brand for gamers) complains that “under Musk’s ownership, the platform formerly known as Twitter has become actively more hostile to gender-nonconforming people”. As evidence for this claim, it cites the fact that X promoted a film by PragerU about detransitioners, no longer bans users for “misgendering” (a term which means to observe accurately the sex of another person), and has taken this firm stance on the word “cis”.