"I know exactly what I want and who I want to be,
I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine,"
"Oh No!" - Marina And The Diamonds
Caitlyn Jenner, famous because of her MtF transition, has become a figurehead within the Trans Community. Several weeks ago, though, she offered an interview to TIME Magazine, which had set her among the Person Of The Year ranking, which sprang mixed opinions within the public.
The firstly-published interview on the magazine was a short version where some questions were skipped in order to make only the most important point part of it. It had a good reception by the Trans Community, as most of her points about being a transgender until then, and brought no problem. Recently, though, TIME has released in its online version the full post, and it hasn't been received as
much acceptation.
From the several points of her that stand as the most controversial from the so mentioned interview, there are two major highlights to take a look at, the first one being
"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 reason of the controversy surrounding this fragment is how it fails to recognise the dimensionality of the Trans Community: the fact that someone born male wants to dress up as a girl doesn't mean they want to have boobs and a vagina; actually, it doesn't even mean they identify themselves as women at all.
The second of her points that brought strongest reactions was to
"be intelligent on the subject."
The detail in it that caused most people to cringe was the fact that she had missed the diversity within her own community, making her seem inherently not intelligent on the subject.
As the article goes on, the objective facts start fading away and the author's opinion becomes the central point, so I'm going to stop my summary here and give my opinion instead. We already saw in Ellen's show that C. Jenner is rather a conservative traditionalist, we shouldn't pretend we're surprised as we're doing now. On the other hand, while it's true that Jenner is not an ideal role model for progressive transgenders, I find her simply amazing because of how she says what she thinks without being influenced by society's stereotypes about transgenders: it's true that everyone should look normally to every kind of human behaviour, but it's also important to remember that being under an LGBT tag does NOT mean sharing those views, and that is great because it shows us that we're all different.
It's okay to educate people on equality and diversity, but it's also great that not all of those people to be educated are the same kind of person.
No comments:
Post a Comment