I didn’t think I wanted to say anything specific about the Caitlyn Jenner announcement, but I sent out some tweets today that I think sum up my viewpoint very well. It started with this retweet:
The one thing about Caitlyn Jenner that nobody's talking about. @LevineJonathan http://t.co/gY4sWIl0OD via @MicNews
— Stefanie Gunning (@stefgunning) June 3, 2015
I then followed that with some tweets of my own:
Good grief, people are touchy about Jenner's transition. Y'all, it's going to take time for the less experienced to remember the pronouns.
— Twenty (@twenty20sight) June 3, 2015
Frankly, Jon Stewart is right. We should get more indignant that they're now treating her like any other woman: objectified.
— Twenty (@twenty20sight) June 3, 2015
A follower replied to one of my tweets with this:
@twenty20sight I was watching the Mike Franseca show when he was talking about it. Poor old guy is really really clueless.
— Badwolf (@BadWolvesx) June 3, 2015
To which my response was:
@Meerkatx One day, we'll look back at Jenner's transition and it'll be as big as when Ellen came out of the closet on her TV show.
— Twenty (@twenty20sight) June 3, 2015
So, yes, that pretty much sums up how I feel. One day, this will be looked at as a turning point. It’s been 18 years since Ellen’s character came out of the closet on national TV. Her show died after that episode, a rather slow and painful death, and her own career suffered for a time afterward, though she has since bounced back strongly. Time will tell if the same thing will happen to Caitlyn Jenner, should she ever need to work again (I’m pretty sure she’s got enough money to survive). Either way, 20 years from now, we’ll be looking at this moment and, though we should be thinking of Chaz Bono and countless others who did it first, it will probably be Caitlyn that we think of as the turning point in transgender acceptance. What we need to remember is that we’re currently in the turning point. There are a lot of people who just plain don’t have the experience of changing how they think of one specific person’s gender in their mind in order to use the correct pronouns in their speech. I’m certain Caitlyn herself is prepared for mistakes; the rest of us ought to be, too. The trick will be knowing when someone is just re-forging those pathways in their own brain, or when they’re deliberately refusing to get it right. In my experience, the difference is usually pretty apparent to anyone who’s paying attention.