Do you know that you are a cis-male?” comedian Norm Macdonald asked a flummoxed Stephen Merchant, the co-creator of The Office, nine years ago. Macdonald explained of the peculiar “cis” prefix: “It’s a way of marginalizing a normal person.”
At least that amounts to the intent. The result of such terms marginalizes the speaker, at least when in mixed company. Self-marginalization does not work in politics. Some Democrats only recently learned this.
