Caitlyn Jenner and Privilege

I feel like yelling at my screen.  People are being immensely frustrating.  Apparently, Caitlyn Jenner is the nexus of privilege. And I don't mean to pick on Megsy in that link, I've seen the opinion in plenty of places, but this particular video left steam coming out of my ears.

While most of the world is celebrating Miss Jenner and her various accomplishments in recent months, feminist and trans bloggers can't seem to decide how to feel.  We're all split up about how to judge the actions of this woman.  I mean, you know, is it okay that she looks cisnormatively sexy?  How about the fact that she had the money to pay for all these things?  Does she really deserve all this media attention?

Ugh.

I think it's easy to get upset and confused about how culture works.  Life is hard for the vast majority of trans people.  It's just this big challenge layer on top of all the other challenges that people face.  So, yeah, it can be a real pain, and the general media does a pretty piss poor job of covering that accurately. 

But I also don't think we need to get hung up on it.  Culture doesn't care what's fair, it cares about what's interesting to the most people at once.  Bruce Jenner had been a celebrity before, and after a major event in life Caitlyn Jenner is a huge celebrity.  Think about how the nerd world would explode if Nathan Fillion turned out to be gay, or some kind of perfect robot (which means they could build more of him).  It would turn communities on their heads, there would be a lot of discussion of it, he would get a lot bigger than he is today.

Caitlyn Jenner is getting a lot of attention for reasons close to that. People already knew her, or at least they thought they did.  But she's also making a big deal out it.  She had the Diane Sawyer interview, she had the Vanity Fair cover, she's doing a reality show.  The world didn't react to other "privileged" people the same way because they weren't told to.  Lana Wachowski and Martine Rothblatt are big names in their industries, but they didn't have a two month long hype fest leading up to their transitions.  They aren't celebrity personalities.

Caitlyn Jenner isn't being fawned over - she's putting herself out there.  She's saying, "hey, I've blended in for a long time now, but that's not me and I can't take it anymore."  A high percentage of trans people live in poverty and despair, but a higher percentage live a lie in the middle of cis culture.  Those are the people she's elevating. 

Janet Mock, in herarticle on Miss Jenner, said that she was hesitant to respond because Jenner didn't need to have more visibility, and that's what she focuses on.  People like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox fight openly and publicly about one of the most disenfranchised sectors of the already anathematic transgender population.  I'm not saying they don't need the most help, but that this stupid reality show and the pomp and praise surrounding her is helping a different group. 

Middle class, otherwise privileged trans people who are afraid of losing what they have if they transition could look to Caitlyn Jenner and say, "maybe I can do it, she's a lot like me."  I know, they're privileged, but greater acceptance of trans people will only come when just about everyone has a trans loved one - see: the gay community. 

I don't really want to talk about Jenner's physical appearance, or what it says about the trans community (hint: it's irrelevant), but as far as does she deserve this media attention?  Who freaking cares.  The most likely thing to come out of all this is that she will advance trans rights by being visible and open, and by starting the conversation.  It gets a lot harder to be a bigot when you have to say out loud, "I'm pretty much a bigot."  So hopefully those conversations will change some minds.