The BBC reports that the Oxford English Dictionary has added 500 new words for June 2015, including "twerk," a word that has seen use as far back as 1820, when Charles Clairmont wrote that "Germans do allow themselves such twists & twirks of the pen, that it would puzzle any one." The "twerk" spelling was used in 1901.
Other "new" words and phrases include choss, cisgender, depanneur, e-cig, ecotown, fap fap fap, FLOTUS, fo' shizzle, freegan, gimmick ("to mean 'a night out with friends'"), guerrilla ("describing activities carried out in an irregular and spontaneous way"), intersectionality, inukshuk, keener, mangia-cake, meh, SCOTUS, shipping ("the activity of discussing, portraying, or advocating a romantic pairing of two characters who appear in a work of (serial) fiction, esp. when such a pairing is not depicted in the original work"), Special Olympics, stagette, tenderpreneur, twitterati, uncanny valley, voluntourism, webisode, and yarn bombing.
The full list for June 2015 can be found here. Previous OED updates are here. Revisions are made every March, June, September, and December.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @06:27AM
That word shouldn't exist. A minority within a minority were unhappy that straight people weren't being "labelled" and decided to come up with this. You know, because if someone needs a way to refer to a group then said group gets upset and childish and demands that all groups now need labels. Luckily the majority of the lgbtq community are cool people and think cisgender is stupid.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @06:59AM
Sounds like they found your trigger word :^)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:25AM
Different AC here, wondering why you think OP-AC seemed triggered?
He sure did fly off the handle imo
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday June 26 2015, @01:59PM
There seems to be a notion among MRAs that cisgendered is a pejorative. This is somewhat true, but only when describing a woman. See my other comment for etymology. The term is threatening to MRAs when it shouldn't be. In fact, I would argue that in the upcoming shitstorm concerning assigned males on the internet, the MRAs would do good to look to trans women as allies. We're all in the same boat here! Don't believe feminism when it claims to support trans women. They hate trans women, and that's where the term cisgendered comes from.
I believe that cisgendered should not be used to describe a man for the reasons I outlined.
There is nothing wrong with being cisgendered or heterosexual. Only the SJWs and their guilt worship believe there's something wrong with it, and they're merely trolling. They really have no fucking idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:30AM
Every well defined group has its own lingo. Deal with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @10:21AM
Well, it does sound a bit silly and it is often used as a pejorative, which are neither very good properties. However, I don't see how it's any less needed word than heterosexual since sometimes you really need to refer to "the other group" somehow and its derivation kinda makes sense when you compare it to terms like cis-fatty-acids.
I think I'd prefer if it was kept in more "technical" context instead of being lazily thrown around in everyday speak.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday June 26 2015, @01:52PM
I agree to an extent. The problem is late 2nd wave and 3rd wave feminists.
Trans women just want to be women. Fly under the radar. Like everybody else. Just fit in, etc.
Except the problem is that 2nd wave feminism invented this womyn-born-womyn thing to shame and exclude trans women. (Look up some of Sarah Conner's outbursts from T2 and Chronicles to see what I mean.) Like, I mean (like totally) I'm not even talking about trans women who can't “pass” (a superficial distinction). Feminists invented the art of doxxing because they couldn't stand the idea that folks who were otherwise indistinguishable from cisgendered women were “invading” them. See Raymond et al.
So Julia Serano comes along. She didn't start it, but she documented it in her work Whipping Girl. (I would recommend MRAs, especially redpillers, read this book, if they truly want to take the red pill. One does not need to agree with the olive branch she extends to 3rd wave feminism. I certainly don't, but the work has other merits.)
Basically, the word cisgender exists because of feminist transphobia. This term is specifically designed to objectify cisgendered women as a kind of “oh yeah?! no you dident [sic]” sense.
I would go so far as disapproving of the use of cisgender when describing a man. Trans men have different problems for sure, but they have no problem appearing as a man. The Chinese Amazons wrote me a few weeks ago to inform me that the Spring of Drowned Man had dried up because it's now possible to perform a penis transplant. The trouble for trans women is that the physical changes brought on by testosterone are irreversible, even with modern plastic surgery.
So, really, feminism brought this all on itself. Trans women don't want to be “trans” any more than anybody wants to be described as “cis.” However, something had to be done about the whole “womyn-born-womyn” thing.
For more info, see the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and the corresponding Camp Trans. I met a woman who was involved with Camp Trans once, and while I'm not sure I understand, it's a Big Thing. Truth be told, yours truly could waltz into the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival unquestioned (unless they check ID), but I'd rather stand with Camp Trans any day.
The Amazons get this. A woman is a woman and beauty is only skin deep. The feminists simply do not get this. A woman is not her animal functions. And the SJWs are beyond help.
Hope that helps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @10:45PM
I would go so far as disapproving of the use of cisgender when describing a man. Trans men have different problems for sure, but they have no problem appearing as a man.
Great news! I'll go right ahead and tell my trans* men friends that they'll never again be misgendered. They'll be ecstatic. But, seriously, I honestly don't understand why you have a problem with there existing a word that means "not trans*".
Talking about feminism's views of trans* identities while representing TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) [wikipedia.org] as the only, or even majority, view within feminism is highly misleading. It would be like reading a newspaper article about egalitarian movements which didn't bother to distinguish MRAs from feminists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @10:33PM
I'm missing something. How is having the word "cisgender" to give a word to the (culturally accepted) common case of gender identity any different from having the word "straight" to give a word to (culturally accepted) common case of sexual orientation? Or, for that matter, different from having the word "human" to give a word to the common case of species for sentient beings?
I guess I'm not surprised by people disagreeing with other people's views on gender identity, but I'm flabbergasted by someone taking offense in there being a descriptive word for a very common gender identity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2015, @10:45AM
It is because in my first exposure the use came from a place of hate. Same is true for almost all uses I've seen since then (meta discussions about the meaning being the rest). As a straight white male it was enlightening having hate speech aimed my way, so in a way I'm grateful. That aside it is hate speech, clear from the context, so they should stop.