Bruce To Caitlyn, In Pictures

Since I don't want to steal Caitlyn Jenner's thunder (as if I could), I won't say much today.  Instead, I'll direct you to a really good article that includes a slideshow documenting her transformation from Bruce over nearly four decades.  Just click here.
 
 

Caitlyn Jenner Enters The World

By now, you’ve heard that celebrity photographer Annie Liebowitz is taking shots of the most famous person currently undergoing a gender transition.  Her work is scheduled to appear in Vanity Fair.

I guess I am like almost everyone else in wanting to see what Caitlyn Jenner looks like.  But more to the point, at least for me, I want to see this next stage in her coming out into the world after spending 65 years living as a boy and man named Bruce. 

What I find interesting is that every news account I’ve seen and heard so far refers to her with feminine pronouns.  Until now, they had been using masculine ones.  It’s not a surprise, really, because when she announced that she was embarking upon life as a woman, she didn’t reveal her name.  She was still Bruce Jenner when Diane Sawyer was interviewing her just a few weeks ago.  It’s hard to call someone named Bruce “she”.

More to the point, she said that she still preferred, at that point, to be referred to as a man named Bruce.  I will not speculate on what her reasons might have been, but I know that all of us who have transitioned, or are transitioning, know that there is a moment when we are ready to come out into the world as the people we truly are.  For some that happens fairly quickly. I guess I am in that category, as I started living as Justine less than a year after I started taking hormones and about two years after I started counseling and therapy.  I’ve met others who lived years or decades longer than I did with the names and genders they were assigned at birth, for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes those reasons have to do with jobs, careers, marriages , family or other social relations.  Others simply have to become more comfortable with themselves in their new identities.

That last sentence might seem paradoxical to some of you.  No matter how early in life we realize we aren’t the gender we’re assigned at birth, and no matter how much we dream about living as our true selves, it still takes time to adjust to our new lives.  For some of us, the discomfort and self-loathing we felt in our old lives has shaped so much about our lives that it takes time—and sometimes brings us pain—to live without those things.  Also, those of us whose bodies don’t conform to our genders tend to be sensitive and vulnerable people.  Shedding our “boy skin” or “girl skin”, as it were, makes us even more prone to being hurt as well as experiencing joy.  Some, I believe, know they’re not ready for the intensity of the love and hate, the embraces and rejections, and the losses as well as the things we find and regain as we enter the world as our own selves, with our own names.

Whether she is experiencing all, some or none of what I’ve described, I am eager to see Caitlyn Jenner enter the world, and hope her passage is safe and joyous.

More About Bruce Jenner

According to the Corey's comment on my post yesterday, and Diana's post on her blog, we didn't have to wait for the future:  There has, apparently, been more consternation over Bruce Jenner's Republican Party affiliation than over anything else revealed in the interview with Diane Sawyer.

I am definitely with Diana on this issue.  Like her, I simply cannot understand how any LGBT person supports the "Grand Old Party".  

Once, when I was  at the LGBT Community Center of New York for some even or another, the Log Cabin Republicans were having a "meet and greet". I bumped into a few of them and they tried to recruit me--why, I don't know.  I must say, they were all pleasant, polite and well-spoken.  But they also looked like GQ covers come to life, with the credit card limits to match. So, as nice as they were to me, I simply couldn't relate to them, personally or politically.


I take part of that statement back.  I could tell that they were trying to mask, forget or simply live through some sort of pain or loss.  The difference between them and me--aside from the fact that they were gay men and I'm not--is that they had (or, at least seemed to have) more means to deal with whatever they lost, gave up or had taken from them as a result of their living openly as gay men.  You can't (or, at least, shouldn't) hate someone for that.  Instead, we can only respect and, to the degree that we can, support each other in our pain and loss.  

I have lost more than some, but not as much as some others.  The point is, as Diana says, we all go into the unknown when we "come out" or transition and, as Mara Keisling wrote in a CNN money article, every one of us loses something, and some lose everything.

Yes, Bruce Jenner has money and fame.  But she has, like the rest of us, lost a lot of time and experiences in living as someone other than her true self.  She says she didn't transition sooner because she didn't want to disappoint people who saw her as a role model of manhood.  Trying not to disappoint--which almost inevitably is a losing battle--is in itself a loss.  So is the joy she probably didn't experience from her accomplishments.  

So, while I don't support her politics, I support her journey.  That is all any of us can do for each other.

The Interview: Bruce Jenner

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! ;-)

Whatever He Is, He Isn't A Joke

For too long, too many people have seen transgender people as a joke.

Through my childhood, the punchline was "Christine Jorgensen."  Later, Renee Richards became the trigger to the laughtrack.  

By the time I started my transition, Michael Jackson would fill that role.  Even though almost nobody thought he was transgendered, the first thing most people think of when someone mentions trans people is "surgery."  Cosmetic surgery, to be exact, as if it were all about altering our appearance.  

Now, it seems, the new punchline is Bruce Jenner.  Rumors have swirled that the 1976 Olympic Decathlon champion and reality TV star has begun to transition.  Not surprisingly, entertainment and gossip magazines have published Photoshopped portraits of Bruce.  One such publication has a cover of him in pink lipstick  a blowout hairdo, a silk scarf--and former Dynasty star Stepanie Beacham's body--grafted onto his head.

I will not speculate on whether Jenner is actually going through a gender transition.  Whether or not he is, he needs and deserves to be left to live his life in peace.  And, even though he is the stepfather of children who have made a career of being famous for, well, being famous, he should not be the newest butt of jokes about transgender people.

(Please don't take my use of male pronouns in reference to Jenner as a judgment on whether or not he is transitioning or even transgender.  As long as he doesn't announce that he is trans or transitioning, or any intention of living as a woman, he should be referred to as "he" and "him".)