More on Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner

This is not a topic that I would think to write about out of a clear blue sky. But this whole thing that has been stirred up around Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn has just gotten me thinking about a bunch of stuff. I have identified myself as a feminist since my early 20's. Over all those years I have fought against the sexualization of women. Not that I have necessarily been in the streets about it. More in my own life and where I might have influence on other lives. It offends me and I think degrades women for Caitlyn to pose for Vanity Fair using all the bells, whistles and technologies available to her, the end product being a dolled up caricature of a woman. For chrissake, this is a 65 year old person. What the hell is the matter with posing as a 65 year old woman?? What kind of message is being sent to girls, boys, women and men by this ridiculous caricature? That the only kind of woman worth anything is a young, beautiful one?

The other part of this that really bothers me is that Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn, has been a part of a family that has made celebrity into some kind of circus act. They have dedicated themselves to appealing to our very basest instincts such as greed, an obsession with "looking good" and other degrading bullshit. I get that it is a good thing for all of us that a famous person has come out as transgender. I just don't think that posing in this circus act way for Vanity Fair does one damn thing to "normalize" this variation on our humanity. It just makes it seem glamorous. So in other words, this, like all the other cheap antics of the Kardashians, is just another glamorous thing for the rest of us to long for and never quite achieve, gay, straight or transgender. I believe the harm this image does outweighs the good in the long run of things. What would have been so bad with being a 65 year old transgender woman, plain and simple? Instead we have an image that promotes self delusion and foolishness. And, believe me, I understand that Caitlyn gave up her youth playing the part of a man she didn't feel herself to be.

I want LGBTQ people to live in a world in which they can be people. Just people, not stupid caricatures. To marry, have civil rights, have children if they wish to. I want to live in a world in which sexual and gender identification is no longer some kind of a hot political issue. I wouldn't mind seeing the end to sexism and racism. I want a lot of shit that I probably won't live to experience. I'm just not sure that glamour poses on the cover of magazines does much to advance us toward those ends.       This is me, last year, age 65: