Watching the trans community’s reaction to Caitlyn Jenner’s high profile transition has been interesting. Other well-known trans women such as Laverne Cox, Janet Mock and Paris Lees have all broadly welcomed Jenner. They understand that having someone else to fly the flag, and take the heat, is extremely valuable to all of us. I’ve mostly been happy to go along with that.
Many trans women have pointed out that Jenner’s wealth and privilege have allowed her to transition in a way that is denied to almost all of us. It is hard not to be jealous of her access to top quality surgeons, stylists and photographers, not to mention that car. Others, inevitably, have felt duty bound to try to take her down, because the desire to police other women’s behaviour is by no means confined to New Statesman columnists.
Rather more seriously, some trans women of color have suggested that Jenner’s transition was born from a desire of white, mainstream media to have a trans icon who can replace Laverne Cox and Janet Mock in the public eye. From what I have read I’m convinced that Jenner’s trans identity is genuine. I no more think that she’d transition solely as a publicity stunt than I think that Mike Huckabee would have actually pretended to be trans just to perve at girls in high school. The cost is way too high for someone who isn’t genuinely trans.
Nevertheless, I am sure that Jenner will become the mainstream media’s go-to trans person, partly because she was so well known before transitioning, and partly because she’s white. I hope she’ll make a good job of representing us — all of us — but I fear that she’ll find it hard.
There was something nagging at the back of my mind when I was thinking about this. I have been writing a paper on trans characters in SF for the Trans Studies Now conference. Jenner’s transformation reminded me strongly of John Varley’s book, Steel Beach. It was a classic manly-man becomes girly-girl story.
Now of course such people do exist. A stereotype is always based on some degree of reality. We’ve got Jan Morris who climbed Everest with Hilary & Tensing; we’ve got Kirsten Beck who was a US Navy SEAL. Jenner is rather more girly than them, but then look at the rest of her family.
Nevertheless, the thing that bugs me about Steel Beach is that it is popular with cis people. It is almost as if that is how they want trans people to be; how they think we should be. The reality, it seems, is a bit too complicated, and not nearly as sensational.
On Wednesday I was listening to my interview with Sarah Savage in which we noted that both she and Fox felt under pressure to present their gender in a binary way on My Transsexual Summer. And then on Thursday I was listening to Elif Åžafak and Robert Irwin talking about Western narratives about Islam. Suddenly everything fell into place.
You see, Jenner’s job is to play a fantasy version of herself on TV. I say fantasy version because we all know that “reality†TV shows are heavily scripted, don’t we? For that matter, Jenner’s transition process has also been meticulously planned. Jenner will be making a TV series about her transition. She’ll doubtless guest on other shows as well. She’ll be under pressure to bring in audiences, and to do that she’ll have to present herself in a way that is palatable to cis people, whether she likes it or not.
Jenner has apparently said that she wants to use her high profile to do good for the trans community. I’m sure that she’ll try. How much she’ll be allowed to do so by studio bosses is another matter. What happens when the audience gets bored and she’s seen as just another aging woman?
I wouldn’t want to be in Jenner’s shoes when some smartass executive decides that it is time to run with the regret narrative. I’m pretty sure that, sooner or later, someone will.
Tangentially: have you seen or will you be going to see Ozon’s recent film “The New Girlfriendâ€? Looking at the reviews, I’ve seen a general appreciation for the film, but a couple of harsh Below The Line responses attacking it as terribly transphobic, so I wonder if there’s something I’m missing. I didn’t see the male character as a caricature played for laughs — though there is sometimes a comic tone I think it’s the character’s own sense of release, enjoyment and innocent awkwardness animating those scenes. Neither is it Dressed to Kill. Since it’s based upon a Ruth Rendell story viewing it is accompanied by a constant fear that all is going to work out for the worse, as grief, secrets, and disparate needs combust, though it doesn’t resolve in the obvious way. If Almodovar had adapted it I think the film would have been both harsher but also more blatantly compassionate, whereas Ozon is a bit cooler overall.
That’s the first I’ve heard of it, but having checked a few reviews it appears to be a classic “trans people are dangerous perverts” story. Even if it doesn’t turn out like that, the script apparently encourages the viewer to think that it will.
I was struck by the similarities, and differences, with Kelly Maloney’s transition this week, as I watched the documentary on her surgery journey.
Both white males, heavily involved in male sport, both 60, both transitioning.
And Kelly almost dying from the surgery to make her look ‘beautiful’. And Kelly filled with regret that at 60, her hair will never be what she wants, her face will never be what she wants: she wants to be a young woman and to grow into her womanhood from that point. And no amount of surgery, photo shop, wealth or privilege was going to give her what she wanted.
Whilst Caitlyn looks like the icon of female beauty.
I just felt terribly sad for Kelly. She wanted so much more.
And it’s not that I think what she wanted was unreasonable. It’s simply that those of us not destined to be on the cover of Vogue, or Vanity Fair, do get a youth to try and be that, and do get time to come to terms with not being that.
But for Kelly, it was a bit of a brutal brick wall, as she was 60 already, with thinning hair.
And Kelly is all the things on the surface that Caitlyn is: white, sports orientated, wealthy.
But not conventionally magazine cover beautiful.
No thoughts on it making Caitlyn’s journey easier: just sympathy for how hard Kelly’s coming to terms with not being an icon of modern beauty is.
Not being beautiful happens to lots of women, so I try not to see it as particularly a trans issue.
Not getting to be a girl has happened to many trans women, but hopefully fewer and fewer of us. I rejoice for my younger sisters.
Being beautiful but never finding love because people find trans girls abhorrent is something many of us fear, but is by no means inevitable.
Not being able to get pregnant, even though you’ve found an ideal husband who would make a wonderful father; that’s seriously annoying.
I’ve been thinking about patriarchy, versus kyriarchy. I’ve always retained patriarchy and I feel that’s where the most pertinent power struggles lies. And that all the other struggles are still within that. Of course, this reveals my ‘Britishness’, in that I see class as the power horse behind how patriarchy both works, and invades.
And I was thinking about trans and patriarchy and fertility. The essential position in patriarchy is that men would dispense with women were it not for the inconvenient biology that requires a Top Of The Repressing Class man’s sons to be born of a woman. And that the woman must grow, and nurture the son, until he’s old enough to be removed from her female influences (always suspect and dangerous) and therefore the ongoing war to prevent women from ‘ruining’ a male child by having too much influence, too much softness, too much empathy etc…
And it occurred to me that the worst element in being trans in this Patriarchy, is that you are infertile in your identity. A trans woman cannot grow and birth a child. A trans man cannot inseminate a woman.
So in the eyes of the patriarchy, you’re null stuff. You don’t fit in. There is no _use_ for you in the system.
And that’s not only a trans issue, it’s can sometimes be a religious one, where the fertility of the functioning couple is the only element that’s considered important. An infertile woman can be divorced, or a new fertile wife added to the marriage.
And it’s too dangerous to suggest that the man may be the infertile partner. That’s the stuff of lost kingdoms and accidental falling off your horse onto a sharp blade.
An infertile man is the very death of the Patriarchy. He requires sons. A trans man is infertile, and useless, to the Patriarchy.
Just thoughts. Musings. I wonder that Caitlyn’s age is part of the acceptance of her beauty. She’s post-menopausal. She becomes iconised with the woman of her generation who are beautiful and glamorous and post-menopausal.
Perhaps that makes her ‘easier’ to see as a woman for some. As they’re not looking at her and thinking “Yeah, but you can’t have a baby. You can’t produce. You can’t be ‘real’.”
Women who are not trans, who suffer from infertility, are often told they’re not ‘real’ woman as they can’t have a baby. Just like an infertile male who is not trans, is told they are not a ‘real’ man. In fact,both groups spend a a lot of them with a lot of pain, and getting a lot of support and therapy.
Some as they want children and can’t have them themselves. And that’s loss.
But some as they see themselves as less, broken, faulty, not real, and it’s got nothing to do with whether they want children or not. It’s that they don’t come up as ‘real’.
So may questions and concepts about identity, being asked so very recently. Whether a woman chooses to become pregnant or not: a question as old as contraceptives. So for many groups of woman all over the world, a question they’ve yet to be allowed to engage in.
As I said, simply thoughts and musings. No conclusions. No ‘huge’ thing to say. Something to discuss over dinner, and wine. 🙂
Apart from… this is why I choose to retain ‘patriarchy’ as the term to describe the dominant seeking culture.
I tend to stick with patriarchy because so few people know what kyriarchy means. In practice I try to remember to be intersectional.
But yeah, lots of interesting fodder for feminist SF stories.
Caitlyn has indeed access to the top plastic surgeons she can afford. She has the opportunity of being able to outwardly and fully express her change of gender. Many people in the world do not. She has been photographed in a feminine corset [of course, men can wear corsets and certain male homosexuals positively live in them].
However, as far as I’m aware, the corset has [historically] generally been seen as something women wear to be alluring to men. Caitlyn [and anybody else in the west] can pretty much wear what they please. Women have worn trousers for some time. Caitlyn currently would seem to be adhering to societal ‘norms’of feminine expression. Is it time that expectation was…tested?
I don’t understand your point. Are you suggesting that because Jenner appeared in a corset that all trans women are somehow guilty of being overly sexualized? Most trans women I know don’t even own a corset, and a substantial number of them are lesbians.
Jenner may well have been happy with how she was photographed, but my contention is that she would not have been on that cover had she not been sexualized. And that’s a problem with the media, and cis people’s expectations, not with trans women.
But feminism allows for women to be sexualised if that is their choice? Or, in other words, allows women to sexual in their own right.
It should be an informed choice. It shouldn’t be ‘all women are sexualised and very pretty and thin and wear certain clothing and therefore all women must wear that and clothing and be that sexualised’.
But sexualised style in dress, manner and make up (and photography) is where many women wish to be. Not for others to Gaze in the Male Gaze sense of possession, but to state “This is me, and I like it.”
The days where to be a feminist you had to have your hair cut short, wear dungarees, throw out your make and never wear a bra… as that’s the ONLY way you could be a feminist are long gone, thankfully.
Go to the war zones, with women hiding in bunkers for bombs. You’ll find some of them stating they long to find a red lipstick, or stroke a pair of high heels. As that’s how they see themselves and they miss the choice to be that. Likewise, you’ll find women in the bunkers who couldn’t care about lipstick and never think of it.
Identity is personal, as well as public. You can choose things for yourself that happen to have public approval. Don’t mean you’re seeking that approval.
I have three corsets btw. I wear them for me.
I was talking about Choice Feminism on Bristol 24/7 last week, but in a discussion like this I fear that if I make the sort of points you did it will be used as “proof” that I’m “really” a man.
I made a huge reply.
The internet appears to have eaten it.
*sigh*
No sign of it at this end. Sorry.
Sorry I was unclear. I was trying to head for the sexualisation angle and the media ‘expectations’ of what women and men wear to be ‘seen’ as sexually alluring. I’m not trying to restrict choices; I would rather see them expanded.
The trouble is that if a trans woman doesn’t look perfectly feminine then the media and the TERFs will hold that up as “proof” that she’s “really a man”. If she does look perfectly feminine then they say she’s just aping a stereotype and encouraging sexualisation, which is also “proof” that she’s “really a man”.
Trans women can’t challenge stereotypes of what it means to be a woman, because however they look it will be wrong.