Transjennered America Hero Worship in our Time. By Matt Labash
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/transjennered-america_964980.html#
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been ignoring Bruce Jenner. As a child of the ’70s, I ignored him in the cereal aisle, where his Olympic-champion mug couldn’t entice me to pick his terminally bland Wheaties over more healthful Sugar Smacks. I ignored him in the ’80s, during his star-turn in Can’t Stop the Music, a disco-tinged Village People biopic that saw him nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for worst actor. In the ’90s, I don’t recall Jenner at all, as I was rather busy ignoring him.
The pronoun police at GLAAD distributed a helpful tip-sheet for journalists who should now see that Caitlyn “is—and always has been—a woman.” GLAAD commanded journalists to “avoid the phrase ‘born a man’ when referring to Jenner.” And the fierce guardians of free speech in the press did what they always do in such situations—they hung their heads and bleated obediently, cisgenders terrified to misgender. The Washington Post’s LGBT/straight etiquette columnist (yes, they have one) highly recommended GLAAD’s tips. And a Post colleague went so far as to set up a Twitter bot that would automatically correct anyone using “he” instead of “she” when writing about Brucelyn.
In less enlightened times—say, about a year ago—hyperventilating over such classification happened only in the rarefied climes of gender studies classes and Huffington Post cubicles. Now, we’ve all been conscripted. Even Facebook—the modern bible of bourgeois America, where bored housewives post pictures of their little soccer stars and last night’s Applebee’s entree—has come up with 58 different gender designations to appease the don’t-enslave-me-with-your-binary-choices crowd. And though I’ve never run a decathlon in Caitlyn’s Jimmy Choos, after perusing Facebook’s list of options, I think I have a better understanding of Jenner’s “journey,” as journalists seem constitutionally required to call it. Who among us hasn’t felt like a “Neutrois” trapped in a “Two Spirit’s” body?
Bad example—I have no idea what those designations mean. But to bring the illustration closer to home, I am a Latino. Despite being assigned an Anglo at birth, I’m Mexican on the inside. I love mole poblano, Dos Equis, and the films of Salma Hayek. And if I decided to turn my insides out, fully inhabiting my own Latino-ness by, say, changing my name to Pancho Villa and sporting the sombrero I got from that kid’s birthday party at Chevys Fresh Mex—well, then I’d rightly expect everyone to celebrate me as a genuine Latino, instead of as an Anglo pretender playing dress-up. Or maybe not. I’m no hero like Caitlyn.
Read or watch Jenner’s coming-out interviews, and in her quieter moments, when she’s bleeding through as an actual human being, rather than primping as a political mascot for disrupting the old privileged, microaggresive, cisgendered order (Jenner has additionally admitted to being both a Republican and a Christian, which really takes balls, pardon the expression), only a brute wouldn’t feel compassion for her doubts and fears and insecurities, for literally being uncomfortable in her own skin. Agree with her choices or don’t, but hers is a tough row to hoe, as voluminous medical studies bear out, showing the transgendered are at risk for everything from higher suicide rates to increased mental disorders.
But we are not to pity or even empathize with our heroes, we are to venerate them. So I will do my part, and play charades, and fall in line. I will walk outside, see the blue sky, and pretend with everyone else that it is pink. I will say, as NBC News said before me, “You go, girl!” Or maybe I’ll put it in my own words: “Ándale, chica!” as we transitioning Latinos say.
Matt Labash is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
Now, as you’ve inescapably heard, Jenner is downright impossible to ignore. Namely, for the reason that he is no longer a him but a her. After announcing in a Diane Sawyer special in April that he was transitioning genders, albeit retaining his heterosexuality, Jenner let the other Manolo drop this past week, declaring “Call Me Caitlyn” from the cover of Vanity Fair. Lovingly shot in full flower by Annie Leibovitz, after the breast augmentation, facial feminization procedures, and tracheal shave, Caitlyn looked nothing like a hulking former decathlete, but rather, a hulking Vargas girl or a creamy Old-Hollywood starlet, albeit a heavily airbrushed one.
Her new incarnation was met with pure rapture by an adoring Internet, where Caitlyn was compared to everyone from Jessica Lange to various female deities, her burdensome worm now transformed into a beautiful butterfly. Only a handful were rude enough to notice the Y-chromosome in the biological punchbowl—she’s still smuggling said worm under her satiny Edy Corset. (Caitlyn has indicated that she plans on sticking with her original-issue equipment for now, which has no bearing on
her womanhood.)
In all the hubbub, there was another transition as well. Bruce Jenner had spent the better part of the last decade being a tabloid joke, renowned for his dysfunctional family, bad haircuts, and even worse plastic surgery. But Caitlyn Jenner achieved instant secular sainthood as a profile in courage—a cross between JFK, MLK, and J. H. Christ, all swaddled in elegant Donna Karan couture.
The likes of Lady Gaga and Ellen DeGeneres saluted her bravery. She set land-speed records on Twitter, where her new Caitlyn account garnered a million followers in four hours, breaking Barack Obama’s old record, though he too tweeted, “It takes courage to share your story.” Just how much courage it takes in Transjennered America is a matter of debate. When your coming out is met with a two-hour ABC special and a 22-page cover spread in Vanity Fair, the leader of the free world is tweeting attagirls, Estée Lauder is considering endorsement deals, your first public outing will be to accept the Arthur Ashe Courage Award from ESPN, all to be followed by another reality show (sorry, a “docu-series”) called I Am Cait—well, call it courage if you must, but this definitely ain’t your grandfather’s Battle of the Bulge.
Then there are Caitlyn’s enthusiasts/enforcers in social media. A Twitter mob tarred-and-feathered Nickelodeon star Drake Bell, who was foolish enough to tweet that he’d still call Bruce Bruce. (“Ok Drake, your name is now Donna,” tweeted @Onision. “Enjoy being called what you don’t identify as, Donna.”) CNN’s media watchdog, Brian Stelter, couldn’t help but notice that some people were “misgendering” Caitlyn. “After all,” he tsked, “Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover was very clear, ‘Call me Caitlyn.’ ” An ACLU lawyer wrote that even mentioning a trans-person’s “birth-assigned sex is an act of hatred.”
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