Elon Musk deems LGBT activists' terms 'cisgender' and 'cis' to be slurs on Twitter

Elon Musk has taken another consequential stand against gender ideology and its exponents, this time prohibiting the abusive and repeated use of the neologisms "cis" and "cisgender" on Twitter.

The move was spurred by an apparent LGBT activist harassment campaign targeting a gender ideology critic.

James Esses is the co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists, a U.K.-based advocacy group of counselors, clinical psychologists, and psychotherapists "with a shared concern about the impact of gender identity ideology on children and young people."

Esses tweeted Monday, "I formally and publicly declare that I reject the label of 'cis'. I don’t believe in gender ideology. I don’t self-identify as 'cis'. Using this term makes me feel unsafe and is demonstrative of your hatred towards me. Anyone who uses the term 'cis' to describe me is a bigot."

LGBT activists took the bait, barraging Esse with messages calling him "cis," a "cissy," and accusing him of having a "cissyfit."

Esses eventually responded, noting he had received a "slew of messages from trans activists calling me 'cissy' and telling me that I am 'cis' 'whether or not I like it,'" adding, "Just imagine if the roles were reversed."

Early Wednesday morning, Musk laid down the law, writing, "Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions. The words 'cis' or 'cisgender' are considered slurs on this platform."

Musk's prohibition on the abusive use of the term on Twitter was widely celebrated. His post had received over 147,000 likes at the time of publication.

Esses thanked Musk for "standing up for reality."

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, tweeted, "Transgender extremism, being totalitarian, depends on the abuse of language and meaning."

A May 3 Twitter poll of over 52,000 users found that 78.2% of respondents agreed "cis" was a slur."

While McGill University's Office for Science and Society noted that the prefix "cis" has long been used in the sciences to mean "on this side" whereas "trans" has been used to mean "on the other side of, "cisgender" is a specific ideology-advancing term that presumes the possibility of a severance of gender and sex.

The LGBT activist publication Advocate reported that the term further serves to imply that straightness is not the default and that "being trans" is not abnormal.

The Oxford English Dictionary added the word "cisgender" to its listing in 2015.

Concerning the inclusion of the term, the OED stated, "Since 1994 ... when the word cisgendered was used by an American academic appealing for help with a study of transgender issues, cis– has taken on a new lease of life in a group of words which provide a direct equivalent to identity terms such as transgender and transsexual when referring to people who are not trans, i.e., those whose sense of their own personal identity corresponds to their birth sex."

Merriam-Webster followed suit in 2016, adding "cisgender" along with the term "genderqueer," defining the former thusly: "of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth."

Genevieve Gluck, co-founder of the feminist publication Reduxx, indicated the terms "cisgender" and "cissexual" were first used by German "pedosexual" apologist Volkmar Siguschin in a 1991 publication titled "Transsexuals and our Nosomorphic View."

"Speaking of cissexuals. If there are transsexuals, logically there must be cissexuals. One is not to be thought without the other at all. I have allowed myself to introduce the terms cissexualism, cissexuals, cisgender etc.," Sigusch wrote, according to Gluck.

Gluck further noted that "Dagmar Herzog, author of Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany, Volkmar Sigusch and his colleague Gunter Schmidt, with whom he published research on child sexuality in the 70's, also argued that exposing children to pornography – a well-known grooming tactic of pedophiles – was completely harmless."

In reply to Gluck's backgrounder on the pedophile apologist behind the term "cisgender," Musk wrote, "Yup, the contemptible creep that manufactured the term 'cis' has serious problems. Ignore him."