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In Which I Admit My Jealousy of Caitlyn Jenner

6/8/2015

17 Comments

 
First off: Caitlyn Jenner is a brave human being.  Anyone who has the courage to come out as something different--as something that others make fun of or ridicule or malign is brave.  It takes courage to be yourself whenever "yourself" isn't what most other people are.  

I've been increasingly bothered by the rhetoric surrounding Jenner's coming out, and about the precise nature of the ostensibly supportive comments I've been reading and hearing.  The ones that bother me most have come from well-meaning straight women in the public eye who talk about how beautiful Caitlyn is (true) and how courageous she is (also true), and who show a sudden empathy for the plight of all trans people (by which, frankly, they tend to mean trans women).   (Sidenote: I'm going to use the term "straight women" in this post to refer to a particular kind of straight woman that tends to: (1) embrace the gender binary (2) but support gay rights (3) but glare at me in the women's restroom.  You know the type.  If you're a straight woman who reads this blog all the time and doesn't look askance at butches in the restroom, please know that I'm not talking about you.)

It's not that Caitlyn Jenner doesn't deserve kudos and support--she certainly does!   But a significant chunk of the mainstream support I've seen seems to totally embrace gender norms.  If Caitlyn looked like, say, Rachel Maddow, I daresay that she would have fewer straight female supporters talking on podcasts and posting on Facebook pages about much they love and support her.   Nor, I suspect, would she have graced the cover of Vanity Fair.  I do not think Bruce Jenner coming out as a woman is the big draw.  I think the big draw is Bruce Jenner coming out as a woman of a certain kind--as a woman who embraces the type of femininity that fits neatly into the existing gender binary with which people are comfortable.  I don't think they're thinking, "Wow, this really complicates how I think about gender!"  I think they're thinking, "Wow, this gorgeous woman was trapped in a man's body!"

As a New York Times article astutely pointed out the other day, the brain-body distinction is not so clear. Here's an excerpt:

While young [Bruce Jenner] was being cheered on toward a university athletic scholarship, few female athletes could dare hope for such largess since universities offered little funding for women’s sports. When Mr. Jenner looked for a job to support himself during his training for the 1976 Olympics, he didn’t have to turn to the meager “Help Wanted – Female” ads in the newspapers, and he could get by on the $9,000 he earned annually, unlike young women whose median pay was little more than half that of men. Tall and strong, he never had to figure out how to walk streets safely at night.  Those are realities that shape women’s brains.

Which is true, at least to some extent.  To say that Jenner always had a "woman's brain" doesn't take into account that she had a man's social experiences--and that our experiences powerfully shape our brain chemistry, our pocketbooks, and our self-understandings.   Acknowledging this doesn't make Jenner any less of a woman (something the article really seems to miss).  But not acknowledging this minimizes the social experiences of cis women and girls, and reduces trans identity to a simple case of "wrong brain, wrong body."  Jenner had a certain set of experiences particular to her identity, and they should be respected in and of themselves.

Frankly, I'm also jealous.  I wish that straight women would embrace women who look like me with as much openness as I see them embracing Caitlyn Jenner.   In short, I wish that straight women's newfound "acceptance" of different versions of what it means to be a woman extended more broadly in my own direction, not just in Caitlyn's--that they would show so much love and support for women whose gender presentation and ideas of womanhood don't look like their own.


17 Comments
Naomi
6/8/2015 01:08:47 pm

Well, I love you! And you are no less courageous that Caitlyn for being who YOU are in the world. Please know that you are loved, honored, respected, and admired for being you!

Reply
Jamie Ray link
6/8/2015 08:51:49 pm

I thought the New York Times Op-Ed piece was both homophobic (or at least completely heteronormative) and transphobic. The author stopped thinking about gender in 1980.
Gay men and lesbians who are not gender-conforming still make a lot of straight, gay, and lesbian people just as uncomfortable. They need to get over it.

Reply
Butch Wonders link
6/9/2015 12:29:50 am

Although I quite liked the part of the article that I excerpted, I disagreed with a big chunk of it.

What parts did you think were transphobic? One part I didn't like was the idea that trans people are somehow "bringing back" gender essentialism. The gender binary is alive and well, alas, and "blaming" trans people for somehow making it worse seems totally absurd.

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Jamie Ray link
6/10/2015 07:50:12 am

Where do I begin, to tell a story…
I think with her assumption that all women (white? 68? straight? middle class? in the USA?) have a shared experience based on their reproductive status (periods, birth control, sex) or the male gaze. It is a very cis, straight, view of women. And something she and I do not share.

Or that she thinks she has little in common with transwomen (like everyone focusing on what she is wearing rather than what she is thinking, the economic reality for most transwomen, and the violence against transwomen which is violence against women).

Then with her forgetting that most transgender people suffer in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, with being forced to act like their birth gender, while they pine to act and dress in their true gender. That maybe the effect of that dysphoria is that Jamie wants to wear Levi's and plaid shirts, and Caitlyn wants to wear nail polish. Because for all our lives (I was lucky I came out at 17) we were forbidden to. Maybe Caitlyn will get over it, maybe not, but why be so judgmental?

But mostly it is her tone and disdain for Caitlyn Jenner and other transwomen, and her difficulty in accepting that they are women as valid as she is, even though they were not assigned female at birth. Although she does not say explicitly that once a man always a man, it is clear that on some level she still thinks that Caitlyn Jenner and Chelsea Manning are men who "expect to be called women" as if there is some doubt.

Akiva link
6/9/2015 05:44:08 am

a) Stop using her old name. STOP IT. Start using Caitlyn. It's literally the easiest thing in the world, and your refusal to do so is totally disgusting.

b) Agreed about gender expression stuff. But butch cis women aren't hurt as badly by it as butch trans women (and really, any trans woman who isn't the paragon of femininity and might want to wear jeans and a t-shirt someday---the horror!). If trans women are honest about being butch, they aren't seen as women, and in too many places they aren't even allowed to access life-saving transition services. Maybe you should talk to some butch trans women about it.

c) I can't believe you're quoting that nasty transmisogynist hit piece in the NYT with such a mild disclaimer. If the author knows all about the media's expectations for women and STILL makes it all about how terrible it is that Caitlyn Jenner is excited that she gets to wear the stuff that she probably pined for and secretly cried over when she was a little kid in the 1950s, then she is not a feminist, she is a heartless fucking misogynist.

And that doesn't begin to get into the power dynamics: Jenner didn't have a choice about transitioning publicly (tabloids started speculating a year ago and they never would have stopped hounding her if she hadn't given in to their thirst for blood), and people (including the author of that awful NYT article) would be infinitely nastier to Jenner if she didn't look sufficiently feminine. Yes, they're nasty to every woman who's not sufficiently feminine! But trans women get it about a hundred times worse than cis women. For example, I (don't) look forward to seeing that writer publish an opinion in NYT every month ripping apart the current cover model for _Vanity Fair_.

I've been subscribed to your blog for literally years, but I think I'm done now. This is fucked up, and you have a lot of learning to do.

Reply
Staci
6/9/2015 06:34:04 am

If butch trans women are not seen as women perhaps it's because for those people *all* butch women are not seen as women to them. It's not a competition. Butch cis women are allowed to lament their own plight. Nothing about a butch woman saying, "gee, these aspects of what I deal with suck and I wish it was different" says parts of other people's reality don't also suck. You wanna win some kind of oppression Olympics? Fine, your challenges are bigger, worse, more terrible than any other woman. Feel better? But other women still don't have a cake walk and when all you can do is berate other women for talking about their own challenges it doesn't really contribute to women wanting to embrace you.

Reply
Ray
6/9/2015 06:53:24 am

I think you are being way too harsh on BW. I got the sense from this article that she was trying to relate Caitlyn Jenner's experiences to her own and pointing out an area of trans/non gender conformity that is also not as widely accepted. Doing this doesn't diminish anyone else's experience and if anything, gets others to think in a different way. Its not a contest, and while pointing out that trans women have it worse is true, that's not the point. We all have our own experiences, negative and positive, and masculinity on a female body may be an easier road in some ways, that doesn't make it a crime to relate to someone on a personal level.

Reply
BW link
6/9/2015 05:55:51 am

(a) I use her old name when referring to the past; I use "Caitlyn" when referring to her in the present. When I talk about how people reacted to "Bruce Jenner coming out as a woman," I am talking about exactly that past event. I didn't "refuse" to use her name. I'm really bothered that you said so. In every reference to her that's current, I use her correct name and pronoun. Is it possible that you missed this?

(b) I have talked to several trans women about this, including a few butch-identified trans women. I don't think we disagree here.

(c) As I hope was clear from my post, I thought the author made one astute point in the article. The idea that I was somehow endorsing the whole article really bothers me.

In sum, if you've been a subscriber for years, I'd hope that being offended by one post wouldn't make you unsubscribe. But if it does, I guess it does. I'd love to keep you around, because I think it's really important to talk about these issues within our community. Your conclusion that this post is "fucked up" makes me think you're reading a whole lot into it that isn't actually here.

Reply
Woodstock
6/10/2015 04:17:25 am

I happen to agree. Your language in this post and use of Jenner's pre and post transition names was spot on and sensitively done.

Reply
Allan
6/9/2015 07:43:16 am

You rock.

Reply
Barbara
6/9/2015 09:14:44 am

You're braver than I am. I have learned to say exactly nothing on this subject or be subjected to a maelstrom of ugly that I am not prepared to deal with.

Reply
Jenna
6/9/2015 09:16:33 am

great post!

Reply
karinfromuranus
6/9/2015 03:26:06 pm

dont worry about the lack of understanding. it is just the currently en vogue "this is trans-bashing" reflex that makes all other discussions impossible....

Reply
Jonathan link
6/9/2015 05:55:12 pm

"Which is true, at least to some extent."

It is — but I'm not sure that Caitlyn Jenner's womanhood is the correct peg to hang it on. Her atypical experience doesn't erase the reality of other women's oppression under patriarchy, any more than that of the Queen of England (as someone said elsewhere). The motivation for the that type of article is almost always prejudice, however well reasoned (and that one isn't).

No, Caitlyn Jenner doesn't speak to my own experience either, nor to that of anyone I know (trans, cis or whatever). And having my social media swamped with pictures of another normatively-attractive woman in her underwear was extremely tedious. But I solved this in the same way as with celebrity culture in general: by a blanket use of "Hide This Post", not by writing a bigoted anti-trans diatribe in the New York Times.

Reply
Cynthia
6/10/2015 03:52:50 am

I think was disturbs me the most in this whole mess is that you were so upset by one person's completely screwed up response to what was a very well done article. To be totally transparent, I can't ABIDE this whole "the discrimination I suffer is so much worse than yours is" nonsense, so that was a lot of what put me into a rage about the awful response that lady had. It's damaging and divisive when we should understand enough to support anyone who needs it, not being too busy pointing out who has it worse...my girlfriend is butch and i have no doubt that a lot of the very same people who would see me kissing another femme girl and think "good for you!" would see my girlfriend and think "god why doesn't she just become a man already". No, Caitlyn Jenner may not be the best example to hold up because of her connections and fame, but the fact is she's gotten the conversation going faster and farther than any transition has to date. It's up to us to make sure those conversations are worth it and helpful. You know there are a ton of people like the above poster - people who want so badly to be offended so that they can "stand up for their beliefs" that if they can't find anything they'll just make it up. I know how hard it is but please don't let people like that upset you. Your article was well written and insightful. You have nothing to defend yourself for. Nothing at all.

Reply
Woodstock
6/10/2015 04:19:03 am

More likely people would see you kissing your butch girlfriend and think "if she wants a man why doesn't she just date one?" missing the point entirely.

Reply
Jenna
6/29/2015 12:00:16 pm

I hear you, BW. Well said.

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