Elon Musk revealed last week that the terms “cisgender” and “cis” are considered slurs on Twitter and accounts that use them would face suspension for targeted harassment, Fox News reported.
In a tweet last Wednesday, commentator James Esses noted that after he tweeted that he rejects the term “cis” and did not want people to use it to describe him, he received “a slew of messages” from transgender activists calling him “cissy” and telling him they would use the word whether he liked it or not.
In a reply to Esses’ tweet, Musk said “cis” and “cisgender” are “considered slurs on this platform” and warned that an account that engages in “repeated, targeted harassment” against a Twitter user will “receive, at minimum,” a temporary suspension.
Unsurprisingly, Musk’s decision outraged the same transgender activists who frequently get upset when a Twitter user doesn’t refer to people by their preferred pronouns.
After Musk’s reply sent his initial tweet viral, Esse revealed that he was “bombarded with death wishes” and direct messages calling him a “faggot” and “sissy.”
He suggested that the trans activists “who are so quick to throw the word ‘bigot'” around should “take a long, hard look in the mirror.”
On Thursday, Esse tweeted that since he rejected the term “cis,” he has been flooded with “abuse,” “death threats,” and “even cracks about my appearance.” But what he has not received is a reasonable “rebuttal” “refutation,” or “solid argument” in favor of the term, since none exist.
In response to Musk’s tweet, Reduxx Magazine founder Genevieve Gluck thanked the Twitter chief for identifying “cis” as a slur and pointed out that the term “cisgender” was “coined by German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch” who believed that pedophilia is “something wonderful” and children should be exposed to pornography.
The popular account @TheRabbitHole84 conducted a Twitter poll in May that found 78.2 percent of the nearly 53,000 respondents, describe “cis” as a slur.
