"Yid" isn't a word I've come across at all often, but in my very limited experience it's used in a similar way to "Taff" or "Yank" - coat-trailing terms that don't always appear to be hostile but crouch at the border of hostility, ready to leap across at a moment's notice. I personally wouldn't use any of them under normal circumstances.
I agree that "Jew" is a better example (though a more complex one because of its far longer history and the ambiguity of its scope in terms of ancestry vs. religious practice). That ability to slide between neutral term and slur gives an easy out to bigots. Your debate experience sounds very familiar from a trans perspective, too: many's the time trans people have been asked to take part in a "civilized debate" about their right to exist, and the treachery of language in this regard doesn't help. (Whenever this kind of subject comes up I take the opportunity to recommend this wonderful blog post by Ika Willis - now teaching in Wollongong!)
In answer to your question, I generally only come across "cis" in either academic or activist circles - it's certainly not a component of most people's everyday conversation. 99% of the time it's a simple descriptive label, but inevitably it often figures in critiques of cissexist practices, institutions and assumptions. If those are assumptions one happens to hold, and one finds any critique of them disturbing, then I suppose it's likely the word will come to have negative associations - much as the word "sexism" does for sexists. But I only come across "cis" being used as an insult vanishingly infrequently.
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Date: 2014-03-22 07:54 am (UTC)I agree that "Jew" is a better example (though a more complex one because of its far longer history and the ambiguity of its scope in terms of ancestry vs. religious practice). That ability to slide between neutral term and slur gives an easy out to bigots. Your debate experience sounds very familiar from a trans perspective, too: many's the time trans people have been asked to take part in a "civilized debate" about their right to exist, and the treachery of language in this regard doesn't help. (Whenever this kind of subject comes up I take the opportunity to recommend this wonderful blog post by Ika Willis - now teaching in Wollongong!)
In answer to your question, I generally only come across "cis" in either academic or activist circles - it's certainly not a component of most people's everyday conversation. 99% of the time it's a simple descriptive label, but inevitably it often figures in critiques of cissexist practices, institutions and assumptions. If those are assumptions one happens to hold, and one finds any critique of them disturbing, then I suppose it's likely the word will come to have negative associations - much as the word "sexism" does for sexists. But I only come across "cis" being used as an insult vanishingly infrequently.