Over the last several days, I've been trying to marshal my thoughts around Caitlyn Jenner coming out (pun quite unintended) for Ted Cruz. I've had to struggle with this for a while because the last thing I want to do is to bash her in some unseemly fashion. That hope aside, I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm probably going to stumble here anyway. Still, here I go........It took me a while to get to the point where I had any understanding of transgender issues. The whole "who I am inside my head" notion was one that, I am not ashamed to admit, I took a while to comprehend. My journey began with Chelsea Manning, currently serving life in prison for exposing secrets to Wikileaks. I expressly recall writing something on my page about her and pausing, taking a breath, and then writing the pronoun her. The truth is that that pause and that breath made all the difference in the world. I still don't understand it entirely, but I get that one's anatomical gender is not necessarily the same as one's gender expression. And then, last week, when I heard Caitlyn Jenner suggest that she could be Cruz's trans-bassador I really did not know what to do with myself.
Ted Cruz ain't nobody's LGBTQ ally. I think I can say that without fear of contradiction. Quite the opposite in fact. Cruz, as a Southern Baptist, is pretty clear how he feels about transgender issues. So when Caitlyn says that he's her guy; when Caitlyn says that she opposes gay marriage, I feel myself slipping right back to square one and wanting to misgender a person and call them outside their name.
The conclusion I've drawn is this: privilege is like an infection. It starts off so slowly that you don't even know you have it. Next thing you know, you've got a full blown raging fever and you have no idea why you're laid up in bed with a damp cloth on your forehead. You're sick. You didn't see it coming but you know you can't do a damn thing but fight and hope that it passes. This is, I think, what's happening with Cait.
Cait, before she was Cait, had access to every privilege American society can provide. She was White, male, athletic, well-known and rich. And she was all that before she was a Kardashian.
What her words about Cruz tell me is that Caitlyn is not yet awake to the reality that Bruce's privilege as a White male, is different (WAY different) from hers as a White wealthy, well-known, trans female, which is different still from the space inhabited by a trans female of a different socioeconomic class or race.
We always knew that White male privilege was a real thing, but what Cait's words about Cruz remind us, or perhaps show us clearly for the first time, is that the blindness and deafness to others' circumstances and experience of the world is also a real thing and that privilege is blinding and deafening.
That Caitlyn is unaware of Cruz's antipathy to her needs as a transgender person comes as no surprise to me. Cait is a celebrity. Were she to throw a fundraiser for Cruz, I'm pretty sure he'd attend....and take her money too. And then, as President, he would champion legislation that limited her rights, because God....
That Cait is ignorant of the fact that government - whether you like it big or small - has a role in securing her rights as a human being, is also entirely unsurprising. As Bruce, all the government did, all day every day, was pander to the needs of such as he. That is the nature of this system. Every benefit gained by any group other than White males, has had to be fought for. Cait's predecessor persona never had to fight for equal pay; access to the ballot box; equal consideration for jobs. None of that. As Bruce, she woke up and the world was at her feet. As Cait though, things don't work quite the same way. For Cait, government action or inaction is going to impact her life a whole lot differently. But again even as Cait, she is insulated from reality (which differs significantly from the 'reality' portrayed in her TV shows), and I'm not sure that 'her girls' are in a position to school her. How many of them live the lives of poor, unseen, unheralded trans people, struggling daily just to survive....or stay alive?
Prior to 2015, Cait lived like a king. The world was an oyster, in which she was entitled. She didn't choose to step into her trans-truth as an unknown teenager or young woman. She didn't try to navigate the world as a trans person without name recognition and money. She has done it now when she has various advantages not available to others making the same journey and yet she manages to be completely, blissfully, wonderfully unaware of these advantages.
Deaf and blind. She sits on the front porch of her life calmly sipping mint juleps and doing the equivalent of supporting sharecropping cuz she ain't got no share to crop; supporting Jim Crow, cuz she ain't neither Jim nor his crow; believing in separate but equal because her separate is equal. What a lucky girl she is our Cait!
Kardashian notoriety & money protect her from some of the worst effects of Cruzian rhetoric against people such as she and that's why she can, without blinking an eye, say that she's standing with Ted.
I'm going to hope that at some point, the blindness will pass, her sight will be restored and she will begin to hear the stories of heartbreak and hardship the sisters and brothers outside her circle face. That's the best I can hope for.
Editing on 4/26/17 to add
The blindness doesn't seem to be passing. In spite of everything, including unwinding transgender protections for students, Cait's a big Trump fan. I give up.
3 comments:
You've done a better job of wrapping your head around this than I, in part because in my straight, cis, male privilege, and the homophobia that I am trying to unlearn, I've never understood trans issues. I'm trying, but it's a slow, clumsy, uncomfortable process. So every part of the Caitlyn Jenner story confuses me. Except the part where she is still operating from and benefitting from the privilege afforded wealthy, White, famous men. In that regard, although it ain't mine to determine, I found the idea of Caitlyn as the posterchild of trans seems very, very wrong.
The best description of Cait I have read. It surprised me that you seemed to need to explain how it remains difficult for you to wrap your head around trans identity; strikes me as a little bit of apologetic albeit well meaning permission for others to validate their own ambivalence or worse. Our mutual lack of surprise at her blind entitlement though, is beautifully described. Thank you for your continued writing, it educates me.
If ambivalence at transidentity was your takeaway, that is the fault of my writing. I started at ambivalence and moved to acceptance (not tolerance. Tolerance is wh as t you have for ants at your picnic, not human beings). I accept Caitlyn as Caitlyn. But Cait's predecessor socialized her in a particular way and yhat early socialization is injurious to her trans sisters and brothers. And to the rest of us as well.
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