BlackCommentator.com June 04, 2015 - Issue 609: Is Caitlyn Jenner The Right Poster Girl for Trans Equality? - Inclusion By The Reverend Irene Monroe, BC Editorial Board

June 04, 2015 - Issue 609

Is Caitlyn Jenner
The Right Poster Girl
for Trans Equality?

"Many trans critics of the Vanity Fair cover
have stated how Jenner’s photo-op as a
1940’s and 50’s glam pin-up doll feeds into
the heterosexist gaze and voyeuristic fixation
concerning trans bodies and appearances that
objectifies and sexualizes them, and also contributes
to the violence and discrimination they confront."

Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, has once again captured the world’s attention. And this time not as America’s beloved 1976 Olympic gold medal decathlete or patriarch in the TV reality series “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

This time Jenner captures the world’s eye, applauses and admiration for her bravery to come out as a trans woman debuting on the July cover of “Vanity Fair” magazine.

And she looks AMAZING!!

Laverne Cox, transgender activist and actress on the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black," wrote on her Tumblr, “Yes, Caitlyn looks amazing and is beautiful but what I think is most beautiful about her is her heart and soul, the ways she has allowed the world into her vulnerabilities.”

MSNBC commentator and trans author Janet Mock gleefully chimed in with her tweet: “Introducing Ms. Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of @Vanity Fair: #CallMeCaitlyn #girls like us.

And President Obama giving his thumbs up stated “It takes courage to share your story.”

While a world of supporters applaud Ms. Jenner’s courage act of coming out there are always more than a handful who don’t.

Drake Bell, the star of Nickelodeon’s “Drake & Josh” tweeted his transphobic remark stating ‘’Sorry….still calling you Bruce’’ to his 3.22 million followers.

And Mike Huckabee’s, 2016 Republican presidential hopeful, bone-headed remark that was intended to insult Jenner instead informed American voters just how utterly clueless and outdated he is.

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’"

To date, Jenner is the most recognizable transwoman with a global platform who can give visibility and advocacy to transgender civil rights. But will it?

Among Jenner’s supporters there are mixed feelings of how the Vanity Fair spread disturbingly promotes white “cisnormative beauty standards.” Many media outlets have gleefully shown Jenner’s doppelgänger to be movie actress Jessica Lange.

In critiquing how certain transwomen appearances fit hegemonic notions of beauty and femininity, African American Morehouse College professor, CNN commentator and LGBTQ ally Marc Lamont Hill tweeted on three separate occasion his concerns:

“Between the Vanity Fair spread and “she's so pretty" convos, we've smuggled in the same old cis/Eurocentric narratives about womanhood."

“If we only celebrate and welcome Caitlyn Jenner bc she conforms to tradition cis/and European standards of beauty, we are making a mistake.”

“My critique isn’t of HER, it’s of US."

Many trans critics of the Vanity Fair cover have stated how Jenner’s photo-op as a 1940’s and 50’s glam pin-up doll feeds into the heterosexist gaze and voyeuristic fixation concerning trans bodies and appearances that objectifies and sexualizes them, and also contributes to the violence and discrimination they confront.

While Jenner has stated that the coming out process “ isn’t one size fits all” and she’s not apologizing for she choice, Jenner’s debut undoubtedly raises questions concerning her ulterior motives. And voices from the trans community lambasting Jenner are also making the airwaves.

Zoey Tur, helicopter pilot, journalist, and who completed her own transition in 2014 views Jenner’s coming out moment as a public spectacle and an opportunistic cash grab to promote her upcoming reality show for “E! Entertainment"

"Many feel that Jenner is pitching a reality show and using this build-up to gain more momentum and getting paid to do an interview, and they don't like it...This is not about selling TV shows. This is about saving lives,”Tur toldTMZ Live.

And while Jenner four oldest children from two previous marriages support her transition, “they disagree with their father’s decision to use not only the same production company that made ‘ Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ but many of the same people, including several original executive producers,” the Vanity Fair article stated.

I, like many, have my queries about Jenner’s coming out moment. Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover came out on June 1, the first day of LGBTQ Pride. Is Jenner publicly stating she’s part of the community? Or trans advocacy? Or was the June 1st day also part and parcel of a calculated move to promote only herself.

But Cox reminds us that while most trans people coming out moment are memorable many aren’t positive ones.

"Most trans folks don’t have the privileges Caitlyn and I have now have," Cox explains. "It is those trans folks we must continue to lift up, get them access to healthcare, jobs, housing, safe streets, safe schools and homes for our young people. We must lift up the stories of those most at risk, statistically trans people of color who are poor and working class.”

And Cox’s is correct.

Our transgender brother and sisters of African descent, for example, are one of the most discriminated against among us. And a 2012 study corroborates this fact.

The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), in collaboration with the National Gay and Lesbian task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) released a groundbreaking study in September 2012 “Injustice at Every Turn: A Look at Black Respondents in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey” exposing both the structural and individual racism and transphobia transgender people of color confront. The study is a supplement to the national study "Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey."

With misinformation about transgender people in our country still rampant and egregiously offensive, its impact is deleterious. And because of how transphobia, in this present-day and in its present form, has taken shaped in and outside black communities, most of our black trans populations not only have much higher rates of suicide, truancy, HIV/AIDS, drugs and alcohol abuse, and murder, they also have much higher rates of homelessness the study revealed.

What saddens me about the discrimination toward our transgender brothers and sisters is that their contributions and advocacy are usually not appreciated and/or recognized until after their death.

For example, Leelah Alcorn’s suicide note of December 2014 sparked a movement to end conversion therapy (also known as “reparative therapy”). A petition on the White House website with 120,000 plus signatures called for the enactment of “Leelah’s Law to Ban All LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy” not only went viral across mainstream and social media internationally, but the petition was also swiftly supported by Obama’s administration.

Another example, the annual “Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR)” is an international event memorializing transgender people murdered because of their gender identities or gender expressions. The purpose of TDOR is to raise public awareness of hate crimes against transgendered people and to honor their lives that might otherwise be forgotten.This event is held every November honoring Rita Hester, a 34 year old African American transsexual, who was mysteriously found murdered inside her first floor apartment outside of Boston on Nov. 28, 1998. The crime kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead" web project.

While Jenner’s life is privileged and comfortablydetached for the everyday lived reality of her trans brothers and sisters transgender advocates are asking that Jenner gives back to the community whose shoulders of “trancestors” she stands on, making her Vanity Fair moment possible.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, The Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Contact the Rev. Monroe and BC.