Elon Musk is a number of issues. A Tesla not-founder, a Hyperloop not-builder, and most just lately the man making Twitter worse in almost each doable manner. He’s had a number of enjoyable with that final position, utilizing his possession of the location to drive away advertisers and increase hateful “documentaries,” however now it appears he’s realized a higher calling: Arbitrarily deciding what counts as hate speech or harassment on the platform.

Beforehand, this meant eradicating the corporate’s insurance policies in opposition to misgendering, declaring it open season to assault trans individuals on the location. Now, he’s gone one step additional, declaring the antithetical time period “cisgender” to be “harassment,” a “slur,” and worthy of suspension.

So, what’s the story behind “cis” and “cisgender” as phrases? Nicely, it begins with its reverse. The phrase “transgender” dates again to a medical journal from the mid-Nineteen Sixties, changing earlier, less-accurate phrases, and was shortly adopted by each the trans and medical communities. However by the mid-’90s, when trans people had been hanging out in Usenet boards, they realized there wasn’t actually a time period to distinguish non-trans individuals from everybody else.

So, they went again to Latin. The prefix “trans-” means “on the opposite aspect of,” and it has an antonym in “cis-” which means “on this aspect.” Chemists have lengthy used “cis” and “trans” as antonyms when describing sure molecular bonds, and in 1994 these Usenet customers carried the dichotomy over to gender: Transgender and cisgender.

Each phrases are generally utilized in medical circles when discussing the subject of gender, and see related utilization basically writing and dialog. Neither, when used as an adjective, is a slur — they’re simply medical descriptors. Musk’s banning of the time period begs the query: What would he slightly be referred to as? Elon Musk, not-trans man? That would really be an “esthetic nightmare.”

The reply, after all, is that Musk would favor to by no means consider the excellence in any respect. By inserting the “trans-” and “cis-” prefixes on equal footing, neither one will get to say they’re the “regular” aspect of issues — each are simply adjectives. Musk, who has introduced his intent to foyer for the criminalization gender-affirming care, doesn’t appear to need to share his standing with individuals he clearly deems as beneath him.

Musk’s transfer has been common with the worst corners of Twitter, individuals who frequently interact in bigoted speech and behaviors, which is a market Musk appears to be concentrating on with rising frequency. That, and the deeply alone robot-fucker market.