To "Cis" or not to "Cis" that is the question

I've recently - the last month of so - been spending a lot of time on Reddit.  M initially turned me onto the site over something innocuous, I can't even recall what.  But I quickly became addicted to it, more than Facebook, Pinterest, etc,. combined.  I have several "Subreddits" that I really like, especially ones such as "funny", "talesfromretail", and so on; but the one I spend the most time on is "AskTransgender".

I really haven't had an outlet - well other than this blog which has a small amount of activity at best - to share information, experiences, etc., since I closed my account down at Susan's Place which I've documented in earlier post(s) here.  The AskTransgender subreddit has given me a new outlet and it's far more active and objective than Susan's Place ever was so it's a good fit for me.  I tend to read a lot, give my thoughts and/or opinions a little, and simply enjoy the site.

Last night a woman who was NOT transgender asked a few questions and I happened to be the first one to comment on her post with my answers.  What's relevant here is that one of her questions revolved around using the term "cis".  As I told her I've never been a fan of that term and the reason being that before my transition I had never heard it used and I can virtually guarantee that few if any of my friends and/or family would know what it means.  That being said I tended to use the term "genetic female".  I was corrected in a follow-up comment that technically "cis female" and "genetic female" weren't necessarily 100% interchangeable for reasons more detailed than I want to go into here as it's not the point of this post.

What is the point of this post?  Well as usual it's taken me several paragraphs to get to it, but I have a few questions for those of you reading this to ponder:

1. Did you know what the term "cis" was before reading this?  And if so did you know what the term was before transitioning if you have/are doing so or done so?
2. Assuming for a moment (as I did) that the terms "cis woman" and "genetic woman" were the same as in say "water" versus "H two O" are, which term would you use in say a group of your family and/or close (Non transgender) friends?
3. Someone else expressed the term "non trans" for those that may not know/understand what "cis" means.  Do you think that's a reasonable alternative?

Let me give my answers to those questions:

1. Yes I did.  No I did not know prior to starting my transition.
2. Since I did think they were interchangeable terms I always used "genetic woman" - in fact I probably have in this blog itself.  I took an informal survey of a few friends and family tonight - small sample size of 8; but 7 out of 8 had no idea what "cis" was.  The exception was my wife J and that's only because she's seen the term in various places since I started transitioning.  By her own admission she didn't know what it meant 18 months ago prior to my transition starting.
3. Even though the subset of people who are "genetic women" versus "cis women" is not 100% the same, the difference from my understanding is microscopic when it comes down to it.  Personally if I'm in the company of friends/family and need to use a term such as one of those it's going to continue to be "genetic woman" as they will in general know exactly what I mean.  I feel that "cis women" or even "non trans" woman will either be terms they may not understand or leave things more open to interpretation than I'd like.  Now if I'm in an online community for example I will start using "cis women" simply because it is more correct for what I mean from what I now understand and my target audience should not have the trouble understanding what I mean.

Enough of this stuff, it's late (or maybe early depending upon your schedule) - so I'm going to wrap this up.

- M