You can dress it up. You can put a wig on it. You can unload mountains of money into invasive surgeries and change the name. but let’s be honest with each other: White, upper class privilege, at the level of Caitlyn Jenner’s, will always rear its sanctimonious head.
In the proceeding weeks before Ms. Jenner’s explosive Vanity Fair issue came out on June 25th, 2015, there was an excitement buzzing around the LGBTQ community. She sat down with Diane Sawyer that April (in an interview that garnered 17 million viewers) to tell the story of an olympiad and household name, known to the public as Bruce Jenner (or in later years on his time filming Keeping Up with the Kardashians, as Mr. Kris Kardashian ) would be soon going public with the bravery and tenacity exuded by people in said community for years. To say the least, this moment was huge: a figure who had already won the public in familiarity, would be the face to normalize the prevalence of what The Gender Centre quotes as 1 in 30,000 for male to female (MTF) transsexualism cases and 1 in 100,000 for female to male (FTM) in America alone.
Jenner accepted the Arthur Ashe award for courage at the ESPY’s in the summer of 2015 and in her speech referenced the suicide rates of transgendered adolescents. Generally speaking, this was a huge moment in visibility for the trans-community. However, after the confetti flying and the fanfare quieted down,something peculiar happened. Jenner may have transitioned into Caitlyn but Bruce, a life long conservative’s views came along for the ride.
Students at SUNY Old Westbury’s Women’s Center (headed by Professor Carol Quirke) recently brought light to the violence and plight surrounding this subset of the LGBTQ community. Outlining their bodies to symbolize victims on March 22nd. If only Jenner had seen.
During one especially awkward moment on her show “I am Cait,” Jenner’s group of trans-girlfriends sit and discuss the struggle for employment and livable wages for trans men and women around the United States. She meets one of her of friend’s suggestions of a program that helps trans people get entry level jobs with a reminder of how out-of-touch she is, asking: “Don’t a lot of times they can make more not working with social programs than they can with an entry level job? You don’t want people to get totally depend on it. That’s when they get in trouble, [thinking] ’Why should I work?’” The more assimilated friends quickly dash down her dreams of there being an abundance of transsexual-welfare-queens and assured her that most of the people using government assistance really need it. What wasn’t mentioned to her were the number of transgendered people who are forced into fetishized sex work for survival.
In another display of an awful lack of self-awareness are Jenner’s recent comments on making other people feel comfortable with your choice of transitioning. During a 2015 interview with Time, Caitlyn expanded on what she feels is a “good image” to portray stating,” I think it’s much easier for a trans woman or a trans man who authentically kind of looks and plays the role. So what I call my presentation, I try to take that seriously. I think it puts people at ease. If you look like a man in a dress, it makes people uncomfortable.” Gender fluidity be damned!
What Jenner is suggesting with this shows the lack of knowledge of the disproportionate poverty level of trans adults, the fact that she is of a privileged few that can afford the exorbitant surgeries it takes to eliminate “masculine” features) and that what she is endorsing is no different than the implications of a lighter skinned or mixed race person “passing” during the times of segregation,Jim Crow laws and slavery. It creates a caste system of the haves-and-have nots.
Being conservative is not all bad, it is actually in a way speaking to the normalcy of people who feel they were simply born into the wrong body, but this lack of self awareness is dangerous to the community where the ignorance and intolerance according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey equates to a 41% rate of people who have tried to take their own lives and a homicide rate that skyrocketed in 2015. Being in a cushy bubble cannot be enough for someone who has taken on being one of the most famous faces in the community
