Bruce Jenner has no idea the minefield he stepped into when he decided to live as a woman. The slightest deviation from approved language or thought lands you in deep trouble with the paladins monitoring the ramparts of the “new normal.”
Jenner placed seventh in Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and offered an interview to the magazine in which he said he tried to project a “good image” for the trans community. What did he mean by that?
One thing that has always been important for me, and it may seem very self-absorbed or whatever, is first of all your presentation of who you are. I think it’s much easier for a trans woman or a trans man who authentically kind of looks and plays the role. So what I call my presentation. I try to take that seriously.
I think it puts people at ease. If you’re out there and, to be honest with you, if you look like a man in a dress, it makes people uncomfortable. So the first thing I can do is try to present myself well. I want to dress well. I want to look good. When I go out, as Kim says, you’ve got to rock it because the paparazzi will be there. The second thing I want to do in living my life authentically is be intelligent on the subject. Hopefully as time goes on I’ll learn more and more and more and get better at that.
That was enough to set off trannie alarm bells.
“Queer Latino” writer Matthew Rodrequez, in something called Identities.Mic wrote, “Jenner is essentially talking about the idea of ‘passing’, which is not always the goal of every transgender person. The pressure to ‘pass’ — to fit society’s idea of what a cisgender man or cisgender woman looks like — weighs heavy on many trans people.” Jenner was scolded for having the resources to at least roughly resembly a woman.
The condemnatory Tweets came fast and furious.
It may take a while for new trannies to get the hang of acceptable lingo.
Chastity Bono, now living as a man named Chaz, got into a spat with the daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Benning now living as a man named Stephen Ira. Bono compared his transgenderism to being born with a cleft palate.
Beatty’s daughter wrote on her blog, “I do not have a birth defect. If you feel like you have a birth defect, fine. That’s how you feel. Go feel that. Do not put it onto me. Do not define me that way, and do not define other trans people that way unless they claim that label.”
The new transgender world is a mine-field that is ever changing.
Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse
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