A podcast I listen to regularly asked for thoughts on Bruce Jenner. Bruce has been in the news recently for having come out as trans and starting physical transition. As I write this, in full context, Bruce is currently in the news more for having been in a fatal car crash. I hope Bruce recovers. I hope Jenner turns out to have been blameless. But it puts into sharper relief exactly what my feelings on the matter are.
Mainly that I don't really care.
I don't know Bruce Jenner. I don't watch the Kardashians. I have no wish to fawn at the feet of untalented people who happen to have won a genetic and social lottery. Privilege makes me angry: not envious, but bloody annoyed mostly for other people. I didn't find them attractive before, and I'm not going to now either. I never watched the sports Jenner used to compete in. It isn't my business to care what gender anyone sees themselves. What the hell difference does it make to people? I don't get it.
Being transgender means you experience a dysphoria between the person everyone expects you to be because of your sex, and the unique person you actually are. That's the bottom line. The more people try to force you into a gender box, the worse that dysphoria becomes. That unique person is set, thanks to your early experiences and your biology, below the age of about three or four (according to the consensus from most research), but the dysphoria can hit you to different degrees throughout your life, thanks to the people around you. The tipping point where it becomes too much can occur at any time. So their coming out now means next to nothing without an in-depth knowledge of their psychology.
It's long been my observation that everyone who is trans is either a little crazy, and therefore just thinks they are trans because it suits their feeling of disconnection with the (mostly) sane world around them, or has been driven a little crazzy by the stress of covering up the person they really are for so long. For these latter people, coming out is the first step on a journey back to stability. It's why transition is theoretically free on the NHS and many other public health systems. It therefore makes total sense that someone who is trans would appear to be somewhat eccentric, as I hear Jenner has been.
So when people ask me if Bruce Jenner is “really” trans, I would reply we have no way of knowing what's going on in their mind with this little knowledge, but more importantly, if Jenner isn't, what the hell does it matter? If someone is a dillweed or a genius, their gender identity has no bearing on it. And unless Bruce is deliberately transitioning as a deliberate satire aimed at trans women, I fail to see why we would care. And even then, Jenner would have that right.
Bruce Jenner should not be a role model. Because Bruce is a "Kardashian". And not for any other reason.
If you like, or hate someone, if they rub you up the wrong way, if you adore them and all their works, that's completely fine. If the way that Jenner ends up expressing femininity offends you as much as his daughters frequently offend me, you have the right to be offended. Just don't do it because of the genitals you can't even see, hmm?
