"No matter how much you resent them, one of these terms applies to you."

Therein lies the crux of the problem. We are living in an era where supposedly anyone can self-identify any way they want to. Ask yourself: do people resent the terms, or rather, do they resent having someone else's gender taxonomy foisted on them? If a trans person wants to be called trans (or by any other label or gender pronoun), it should not be questioned. Their choice and their right to use a preferred label is theirs alone. No one should argue against that label or try to foist a label of their own making on them. So you may wish to refer to or call someone "cis" but for reasons you may agree with or disagree with, they dislike the term and wish to be called something else. You can either choose to grant them the respect and and courtesy you seek from them...or craft clever arguments about why their opinion doesn't count, and your prefered label for that person is the "correct" one rather than theirs. Essentially, if one group has the right to self-identify, then so should all groups...or there is a double standard and (for some folks) cause for resentment. I like the fact that your essay delves into etymology, and appreciate the aside about the Roman/Latin uses of these terms. But it also reveals how problematic they are, culturally speaking. Defining every human being as either "on the same side of" or "on the other side of" immediately sets up a binary opposition that sets the stage for conflict, othering, and alienation. Don't we have enough of that in the world already? Why aren't we looking for common ground rather than seeking ever more schisms and factions with which to divide ourselves? Either way, history shows that the semantics of these terms are moot. Henry Louis Gates Jr. put it best in his book "Colored People" in his discussion of the "euphemism treadmill." The terms in vogue today will most likely be replaced by something else in twenty years (or less). And with each new turn of the "treadmill" people will vehemently defend their prefered terms, only to casually discard them for a new set of terms, completely forgetting that this same process has already been repeated thousands of times throughout history, and will be repeated over and over again so long as humans continue to exist. Thank you for sharing your essay and stimulating discussion.