The Bottomless Self-Hatred of Caitlyn Jenner
In what was probably not the best use of my time, I watched all sixteen-hour-long episodes of I Am Cait for My Year of Flops column during its second go-round at The A.V. Club.
The show found a fabulous gaggle of intelligent, passionate, and empathetic trans women trying to teach someone who has led a pampered, sheltered, and conventional life of power and privilege what it means to be trans.
Unfortunately, I Am Cait was a reality show that depicted trans life mainly as a matter of drinking wine with your girlfriends. These women tried to get Jenner out of her comfort zone. They wanted to give her a social consciousness and sense of herself as an outsider with the potential to do tremendous good as the most famous trans woman in the world.
They tried—God knows they tried—but they failed. The sorry truth is that Jenner was immune to self-reflection and did not want to grow emotionally, change, or engage in rigorous self-examination.
Jenner wanted to go back to living exactly as she did before but as a trans woman. She enjoyed her life of power and privilege. She did not want it to change.
Jenner seemingly learned nothing from her experiences filming I Am Cait. Her politics did not change when virulent transphobia became the core of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
The GOP seems intent on undoing all of the progress the trans community has made over the past few decades.
It’s no longer a matter of winning voters with hot-button issues like gender-affirming care for minors or trans women in women’s sports. It went beyond that. The government seems intent on erasing trans identities by legally codifying that there are only two genders that cannot be changed.
That means that if Caitlyn Jenner were to transition now, legally, she would still be a man.
Jenner has been on the front lines of the trans sports debate. Unfortunately, but predictably, she is most assuredly on the wrong side of just about every trans issue.
She is, for example, a big fan, advocate, and proponent of Riley Gaines, who is famous for being transphobic and, to a much lesser extent, swimming.
Riley is so obsessed with trans women that she got upset because, while fellow hatemonger Piers Morgan was being transphobic, he wasn’t being transphobic enough for her.
When Morgan tweeted, “Absurd CNN interview just now with trans sprinter CeCe Telfer, treating her like some poor victim of Trump’s ban on trans athletes in women’s sport. She was born male, looks & speaks like a man, runs like a man, and is smashing women’s records. She’s not a victim; she’s a cheat.” Gaines got big mad for referring to a trans woman as a woman.
With a wildly misplaced sense of self-righteousness, Gaines seethed in response, “He* was born male, looks & speaks like a man, runs like a man, and is smashing women's records. He's* not a victim; he's* a cheat. Clear language, please.”
This led the British jackass to tag Caitlyn Jenner to ask whether Gaines refers to her close personal friend Caitlyn Jenner by male or female pronouns.
Jenner answered the question for Gaines. “(Gaines) uses male pronouns when speaking about me. While I prefer the female pronouns, that is entirely her prerogative and decision. I do not believe in forcing people to use specific language,” was her response.
That’s a little like saying that I would prefer not to be called a Christ-killing, hook-nosed, money-grubbing Skylock, but if someone wants to address me that way, it is entirely their prerogative. I might not want antisemitic slurs directed towards me, but I would never interfere with someone’s right to call me a disgusting heeb without consequences.
The response to Jenner’s tweet was split. Plenty of commenters followed Gaines in misgendering the Olympic legend. Thankfully, Jenner is cool with that! She’d prefer to be called a woman, but if you want to greet her with, “How’s your hammer hanging?” she’d think it was your prerogative, as she does not believe in forcing people to use specific language.
Other commenters gushed that Jenner is an ideal trans woman: a die-hard Trump supporter who seems to hate trans people only slightly less than the Conservatives slinging transphobic slurs against her on social media.
Republicans will always have a place for minorities who act against their self-interests, who can be singled out as “one of the good ones.” That’s the uncomfortable role Jenner plays in Donald Trump’s Republican Party as a famous trans woman who partners with transphobes like Riley Gaines and Nancy Mace to work against trans rights and the trans community.
She tweeted Mace, “The radical rainbow mafia is something I know all too well. Have received more death threats, acts of violence, etc., from this group of radicals more than anybody else. Keep up so much of the good work you are doing!”
Mace, overjoyed at having finally found a trans woman deluded and self-hating enough to cosign her anti-trans campaign, tweeted in response, “You’re a rock star!”
Jenner is the trans version of what is known as a Pick Me girl. She wants the world to know that she’s not like all those “weird” trans women with their infernal need for respect and consideration. She’s a trans woman whose political orientation is fundamentally anti-trans. She honestly does not seem to believe that she deserves rights.
That won’t keep her ostensible political allies from hating her. It similarly will do nothing to curb her self-hatred. It doesn’t matter what she does or says or how cuddly she is with leading figures in the anti-trans community. They overwhelmingly hate her for who she is (a trans woman in an age of fierce transphobia, in a ferociously anti-trans party), not what she says or does.
When Nancy Mace thinks you’re an awesome trans person every trans woman should emulate, you know that you haven’t done something wrong, but rather everything wrong.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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