(LifeSiteNews) — Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk on Tuesday said that the terms “cis” or “cisgender,” which transgender ideologues use to frame the acceptance of one’s own sex as just one among many expressions of “gender identity,” will be “considered slurs” whose use can result in accounts being suspended from the platform.
Musk made the statement in a June 20 response to commentator James Esses, who said he had been bombarded with “a slew of messages from trans activists calling me ‘cissy’ and telling me that I am ‘cis’ ‘whether or not I like it’” after he tweeted that he did not accept the term “cis” and did not want others to use it to describe him.
“Just imagine if the roles were reversed,” Esses said.
In a response tweet that has racked up 28 million views to date, Musk said “[t]he words ‘cis’ or ‘cisgender’ are considered slurs on this platform.”
“Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions,” he said.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023
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Twitter’s “abuse and harassment” policy, last updated in April,forbids any “behavior that encourages others to harass or target specific individuals or groups of people with abuse. This includes but is not limited to: calls to target people with abuse or harassment online and behavior that urges offline action, such as physical harassment.”
The exchange between Musk and Esses on Tuesday was followed by a tweet from Reduxx writer Genevieve Gluck, who thanked Musk for his statement and posted a link to her January, 2022 article about German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch, who pioneered the use of the prefix “cis” to refer to the alignment of biological sex and “gender identity” in 1991.
“Speaking of cissexuals. If there are transsexuals, logically there must be cissexuals,” Sigusch wrote. “One is not to be thought [of] without the other at all. I have allowed myself to introduce the terms cissexualism, cissexuals, cisgender etc.”
Sigusch has sparked criticism for his controversial research and opinions regarding sexuality and children.
In 2010, Sigusch argued in “sexology theses on the abuse debate” that “adding taboos to childish eroticism creates what we all want to prevent: sexual violence.”
He also argued “[t]here is nothing wrong with pedophilia in the sense of the word, that is, against liking, even loving, children,” making a distinction between people who “lik[e]” children and those who act upon a desire to abuse minors.
“The sensuality that spontaneously unfolds between a child and an adult is something wonderful,” he said. “Nothing can remind us more intensely of the paradises of childhood. Nothing is purer and more harmless than this eroticism of the body and the heart. Childish eroticism is not only full of delights, it is also necessary.”
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In an interview with German outlet Spiegel in 2011, Sigusch said that “[g]ood sex can be anything, including dirty.”
Responding to Gluck, Musk called Sigusch a “contemptible creep” who “has serious problems.”
“Ignore him,” the billionaire said.
Conservatives have praised Musk’s decision to regard the term “cis” as a pejorative on Twitter and blasted the use of the word as a “signaling mechanism” of obeisance to transgender ideology.
“Transgender extremism, being totalitarian, depends on the abuse of language and meaning,” reacted Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.
Social media strategist Chuck Callesto called Musk’s decision “Super based.”
Catholic conservative Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh responded during a podcast episode by noting that the term “simply means a normal person who identifies as the sex that they are,” and argued that “cisgender” is used to describe “normal people” in such a way as to simultaneously affirm and normalize transgenderism.
“This is not a biological designation. It has no basis in science. It’s a signaling mechanism. It tells you the politics of the person who uses the word,” he said. “If someone says they’re ‘cisgender,’ it’s the equivalent of seeing pronouns in their Twitter bio.”
Walsh’s colleague, fellow Catholic commentator Michael Knowles, referenced a remark by the late comedian Norm MacDonald, who bluntly explained that the “cis” characterization is “a way of marginalizing a normal person.”