Musk announces ban on the 'slurs' cis and cisgender | Hacker News Reader

Musk announces ban on the 'slurs' cis and cisgender

twitter.com

FYI from https://www.dictionary.com/e/gender-sexuality/cis/

“Cissexual was coined in the mid 1990s by a German sexologist. He used the Latin preposition cis, meaning “on this side of,” as a contrast to transsexual, trans being the Latin for “on the other side of” or “across.””

So not a slur at all really. An accurate way of differentiating “this” vs “that”.

I wonder if Mr.Free Speech will ban the use of “libtard” or “fascist”.

A slur doesn’t need to have any specific definition. It’s contextual and it’s about how it’s used. “Retarded” is a technical/medical term but is now forbidden.

Note I agree with you in general about the free speech thing. It’s just Musk has been out of the news for a while and he wants some attention as far as I’m concerned.

Homosexual literally means "of or relating to the same sex," but—despite being in a same-sex relationship—I don't think I'm wrong in being offended when someone calls me a homo.

The etymological denotation of a word has very little to do with the current connotation of a word.

> The etymological denotation of a word has very little to do with the current connotation of a word.

Here it really just means that: not trans.

It's not about etymology but about Musk's free speech claim.

Dead naming or misgendering isn't a problem for him but cis is a slur?

>>> “Cissexual was coined in the mid 1990s by a German sexologist. He used the Latin preposition cis, meaning “on this side of,” as a contrast to transsexual, trans being the Latin for “on the other side of” or “across.””

>> The etymological denotation of a word has very little to do with the current connotation of a word.

> It's not about etymology

Ok.

I remember when I was smaller that some people got really offended when described as heterosexual. "I'm not hetero, I'm normal" sticks in my brain. Something similar is probably at play here - people trying to reject a descriptor they don't think they identify as, but not because it's not accurate, but because they reject the categorization entirely.

They want to be the normal, default, nameless group so that they can treat trans people as freaks. Or to put it another way, they think cis is a slur because they use trans a as a slur.

Exactly! They fundamentally don't want to acknowledge trans people's existence as valid, and use every possible tool to keep it that way.

What is the CTO (head of product, software, and sysops) doing announcing moderation policy for Twitter? Isn’t that a different department’s responsibility? What does the CEO have to say about this?

I know this is probably a rhetorical question, but the answer is: "He felt like it, and he has no boss to reign in such impulses."

You're confusing Twitter with a properly-run company.

> What does the CEO have to say about this?

Nothing, because they're not a real CEO, one assumes.

Of course he announces this as he still beats his drum of free speech https://twitter.com/VivaTech/status/1669722321119068165. Also amazed at the folks responding to his tweet, thanking him for banning this "hateful" word.

Like most conservatives, his "free speech" is just code for "allow hate speech again" and to no one's shock censor the liberals instead.

No good faith actor whines about the damage protecting people from harassment does to free speech. Period.

You are tarring conservatives with a pretty broad brush there.

Some of them, when they say "Free Speech" are actually concerned with being able to express climate misinformation and spread conspiracy theories about scientists to aide their corporate masters.

From a purely finiancial/self interest perspective... This seems like a bad idea. Its a great way to make Twitter's paying customers squirm a little more.

Elon is a king of the "any attention is good attention" adage, but I think Twitter is beyond the point of such benefits.

Ironically this means that discussion of trans people is allowed on Twitter, but there is no easy way to talk about cis people as a category (oops, I mean people who are not trans).

The only alternative I can think of is “non-trans” but then that frames 99% of the population in terms of what they aren’t, which I imagine that these Twitter users would also complain about.

(Preemptively, I know that some on Twitter will object by saying “I don’t need any label like cis, I’m just normal! Can’t you just call me normal?” which is a poorly thought out non-solution as a drop-in replacement for cisgender. I imagine that they will still want a name for “people who are not trans or non-binary”, and I wonder what term, if any, will be concocted to replace cis.)

What happened to "free speech absolutist"?

Probable proximate cause https://twitter.com/JUNlPER/status/1671378793062178816

Most hilarious is that Mr free speech absolutist didn’t ban the word cissy which was the actual “slur” the poster claimed he was being harassed by.

Turns out that this has nothing to do with it being a slur but Elon continuing to be pissed that his child turned out to be transgender.

In my experience right wing leaning folk almost never actually care about protecting anyone from anything, it's all just smoke and mirrors justifying their disapproval of social groups they dislike.

Grimes dumped him for a rebound relationship with Chelsea Manning as well.

Musk has no problem boosting people saying outright slurs or perpetuating homophobic conspiracy theories. I'm not surprised at all that he'd go a step further.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com