Caitlyn Jenner

2015

Caitlyn Jenner Horrified Me

Caitlyn Jenner horrified me. But not for the same reasons she horrified most people. In 2015, Caitlyn Jenner burst upon the world. She was previously known as Bruce Jenner, an athlete known in pretty much every home in America, and many across the world. Jenner’s coming out as a trans woman shocked people from coast to coast, and caused some others to stand and applaud. As in any other dramatic change, some people were thrilled, some people were offended, and most others had no idea how to react.

I had a strong reaction. I was horrified. Not because of some sort of religious objection, though that appeared quickly, and just as quickly was discounted, because the honest reaction was something much more visceral. Fear. Horror. Abjectly uncomfortable distress. While I knew this sort of thing had been done in other people’s lives, I had managed to ignore it. But now, for the first time, I was honestly confronted with the unavoidable reality that a man had become a woman.

Parts Is Parts

Caitlyn was born as a man. Caitlyn had “man parts”, looked like a man, had competed in sporting events as a man. Good grief, Jenner was one of the most athletic men in the world! If even that man could have this happen to him, what did that say about me, and my concerns? Caitlyn Jenner represented everything that scared me about gender!

I was vocally against Jenner. We had conversations about her at church, and at home, and I firmly denounced what she was experiencing. People shared jokes on Facebook making fun of her, and I laughed. I insisted on calling Jenner “he”. Doing so made a lie out of what she was saying, and doing. I desperately needed Caitlyn Jenner to be a lie. I honestly didn't even grasp how very badly I needed it to be a lie.

It Wasn't True. Was It?

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be real. Jenner was certainly making the whole thing up. So, that made it safer. If she wasn’t real, then all the stuff I had been feeling and thinking and experiencing wasn’t real either. If Jenner was pretending, lying, still a man, then I was still a man. Right? I WAS a man, darn it! Thus, she was clearly lying.

Once you make up your mind about something, it is much easier to deal with it. So, Caitlyn became a non-entity to me. Why? Because Jenner was lying. The problem is, as discussed elsewhere, pushing away your problems doesn’t really get rid of them. It didn’t change anything about the reality of my life, and me as a person. It was a band-aid, something that made me feel better for a time. I was able to convince myself, primarily from the strong negative reactions of people around me, that Caitlyn Jenner was a fraud. But in reality, nothing  had changed. It just got swept under the rug, for a time. It was hidden, even from myself.

But now the clock was ticking. There would come a time I would realize that she was telling the truth.