July 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British singer known for her pro-LGBT activism was browbeaten into an apology by Twitter trolls after she refused to call herself a “cis-woman,” a term used by transgender ideologues to identify women whose biology matches their “gender.”
Alison Moyet, a solo artist whose lifetime album sales exceed 20 million, has performed at numerous LGBT events and even dedicated a recent song to the cause. However, that didn’t save her from being pilloried by her fickle transgender constituency when she refused to apply their terms to herself.
Moyet’s run-in with “trans” activists began when she announced on July 5 that she didn’t want to refer to herself as a “cis-woman,” but only as a “woman,” a term for which women have long struggled to “own,” according to Moyet.
“I defend everyone’s right to have the pronoun that they choose and will honour it. And ‘I do not choose Cis for mine,” tweeted Moyet, adding, “It took women like me long enough to own the title ‘woman’ in the first place. It’s a long enough word for me.”
In short order, Moyet was being hammered with aggressive comments from offended readers, calling her “transphobic,” denouncing her for rejecting the adjective “cis,” and mocking her for calling it a “pronoun.”
The word “cis” is a Latin preposition meaning “this side,” as opposed to “trans,” a preposition which means “across.” The two words, which were often used in Latin to refer to the two banks of a river, have been adapted to English as adjectives and prefixes to create the words “transgender” and “cisgender,” meaning, respectively, those who deny their biological sex in favor of some other identity, and those who embrace their biological sex.
Moyet soon tweeted, “I am going to stand down from the cis furore blowing my way. I have learned that cis is not a pronoun and I am both Trans phobic and an enabler of bigots.”
At the bottom of her post she included a link to a video of her pro-LGBT song, “The Rarest Birds,” and added, “May I leave you with this song. It was my paean to the LGBT community. Beyond that.. Bollocks.”
Moyet declared last year that “The Rarest Birds,” is a “paean to LGBTQ, to Brighton, to coming out after the darkest nights into the arms of those that delight in your flight. . . . It celebrates beautiful girls born boys. Stronger boys for being born girls. Freedom to identify where best we fit.”
However, despite Moyet’s link to her pro-LGBT song, the angry responses continued, and Moyet began to express frustration. Replying to someone who called her “wounded” in response to her tweet, Moyet wrote, “I’m not wounded. I’m stating my preference. My identity. I’m putting it out there for a conversation with a community I have long been an ally to. You hate me? F**k off then and tell your buddies how to live.”
Although the vast majority of responses to her tweets were positive and supportive, and often denounced the “transgender” activists who were trolling her, Moyet finally gave in after ten hours and deleted her offending tweet.
“Ok. people. You win,” wrote Moyet. “I get that I’m reprehensible for not liking a word. I understand that this now means I don’t get to sit with you all at lunch and yes, I am a wanker because I can’t do grammar. Thank you for showing me a better way. I delete.”
The controversy followed another brouhaha in the days immediately before, following a July 2 tweet in which Moyet expressed a negative opinion about houseflies using crass language, provoking responses in defense of flies from offended readers, including one who wrote, “What an astonishingly ignorant tweet. Might be good to think a little bit before tweeting this ? Insects a baseline critical for survival of so much other life.”
On July 6th Moyet expressed her desire to withdraw from Twitter, writing, “Ok Peeps. I’ve had a reckless time brutally dismantling the ecosystem, and egregiously offending a whole community illiterately. I’ve used up this months [sic] twitter tokens. I’m sorry I won’t be here to reply to either kindnesses, bile or reason. Go well, my beauties. X #FlyGate #cis”.
However, Moyet soon returned, accusing her critics of “misogyny.”
