If you’re a
trans person, your friends, family , co-workers and other acquaintances are
probably talking to you about last night’s Big Event: Diane Sawyer interviewing Bruce Jenner.
Some have
said that Jenner’s “coming out” is a “tipping point” for public awareness
and, possibly, acceptance of transgender
people. For one thing, very few people
who were as famous in their own right have publicly transitioned. (Although he’s gained something of a
reputation as an LGBT rights activist, Chaz Bono is known mainly for having
famous parents.) For another, everyone
knew Jenner as the rugged and handsome (at least when he was young) Olympic gold-medal
winner and actor. And, as the
twice-married media star revealed to Sawyer,
as a male he was never attracted to other males and now considers
herself “asexual”.
In other
words, the interview should help people to understand, as Jenner said, that
gender identity is separate from sexual orientation—or, for that matter,
proscribed gender roles. Although most people
thought Chastity Bono was a cute kid, most didn’t think of her as a “girly”
girl. When she “came out” as a lesbian,
she fit the image of a “butch”, albeit a more glamorous version. Thus, it didn’t challenge many people’s
notions about trans people when Chastity announced she was going to become a
man named Chaz.
That is not
to say that Chaz’s public transition was not courageous. In its own way, it might have been even more
daring than Jenner’s because, even though only five years have passed since
Sonny and Cher’s daughter became their
son, public awareness—and, I’d say, acceptance—of trans people has grown by
leaps and bounds. I’d say that we’re
experiencing something like what gay men (and, to a lesser extent, lesbians)
experienced during the years just after the Stonewall Rebellion.
To be sure,
there was still a lot of ignorance and hate that too often ended up in rejection
and violence—as there is now. But by
the time the AIDS epidemic broke out, almost everyone in the Western world knew
that he or she had a family member, friend, co-worker or other acquaintance who
was gay. As a result, people realized
that being gay wasn’t a “choice” or a sign of depravity and much of the stigma
around it faded. To be sure, there are
still folks showing up at funerals of murdered gay people with signs that say
“God Hates Fags”, just as there are still people who say that we—trans
people—aren’t human beings. But such
people are becoming the minority and, I hope, with people like Jenner going
public, their numbers will shrink further.
Who
knows? Perhaps in the not-too-distant
future, some celebrity will cause less
consternation by saying, “For all intents and purposes, I am a woman” than for
saying that she is a Republican! ;-)
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