Down With Cis

About

Down With Cis is an ironic catchphrase initially created to mock cisphobia and specific threats from certain social justice activism circles against opponents of the movement, most notably “Die Cis Scum.” However, members of Tumblr’s transgender community eventually started to embrace the phrase because of the fakeness of the story it originated from. Due to the original fabricated story featuring a bus containing a horde of people wearing shirts with the phrase, it also eventually became an exploitable placed on shirts.

Origin

On April 4th, 2015, Tumblr user Forever Honest^[1] posted a fabricated story featuring himself and a friend walking down the street right as a bus stops next to them, after which they are both being beaten by a horde of people from the bus wearing shirts reading “Down with Cis.” Cis itself is an abbreviation for cisgender and cissexual, which is used to describe those whose gender identities match the sex they were assigned at birth (as a complement to transgender); of which the abbreviation additionally also gained usage in certain social justice blogging circles as a negative slur towards those who question or dislike the choices of people who identify with non-standard gender practices. As of May 6th, the post managed to gather over 9,000 notes.

Spread

On April 7th, Tumblr user transgirlnausicaa^[3] both created a post showing a t-shirt with the custom text “Down With Cis”,^[4] which managed to gather over 740 notes in the following month. Following transgirlnausicaa’s post, the “down-with-cis” tag^[2] managed to gather relatively little attention before getting active again nearly a month later on May 4th. On that date, Tumblr user sistermeme^[5] also created a post featuring a scene from the animated series Steven Universe with the character Buck Dewey holding a shirt reading “Down With Cis” (shown below). In the following 2 days, the post managed to gather over 6,300 notes.

On May 5th, Tumblr user Alienspeed^[6] posted an image showing Pepe the Frog from Matt Furie’s comic series Boy’s Club wearing a shirt reading “Down with Cis” (shown below, left). That same date, Tumblr user Skyerin^[7] created a text post asking people to reblog if they were on the “down with cis”-bus, and Tumblr user Sourcefieldmix^[8] created a text posting asking if the bus does parties. In less than 24 hours, the posts managed to gather respectively over 2,200; 4,500 and 2,600 notes. That same date, Youtube user Vivid Grim^[9] also uploaded a video showing a scene of the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica with a shirt of the character Homura Akemi edited to read “Down with Cis” (shown below, right).

Due to the phrase’s nature and close similarities with “Die Cis Scum”, a phrase initially created as a serious response by certain members of the transgender community, “Down With Cis” can be described as an example of Poe’s Law. Because of this, deployment of the phrase has become a form of flame trolling by Tumblr’s transgender community and supporters to gather replies taking it serious. On May 6th, Tumblr user Chandra Nalaar^[10] created a post highlighting several reactions from people who believed Forever Honest’s original fabricated story (shown below). In less than 24 hours, the post managed to gather more than 4,100 notes.