Area trans advocates see Caitlyn Jenner’s emergence in mostly positive terms
June 4, 2015 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Though advocates applaud Caitlyn Jenner for her courage in coming out as a woman on the Vanity Fair cover this week, local activists are taking the opportunity to emphasize that not all transgender experiences are the same.
“My reaction is mixed,” Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst said Tuesday, the day after the Vanity Fair cover was revealed.
“We have the potential here really to see more of the struggle that someone goes through in transitioning, and for someone to get a better understanding of the experience of a certain segment of the transgender community,” Beemyn said.
Jenner, a Olympic track and field athlete in the 1970s formerly known as Bruce, represents a part of the transgender population that can afford a medical transition into a woman who meets conventional beauty standards, Beemyn said. Beemyn identifies as genderqueer, preferring the pronouns “they” and “them.”
“What does it mean that the most visible trans people are the ones who are out there on magazine covers and in lecture circuits?” Beemyn said.
The magazine cover shows Jenner, 65, in a white lingerie corset, the images shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. The cover took the Internet by storm, provoking a wide range of reactions on social media and earning Jenner a million Twitter followers in just over four hours on her newly created account, breaking a record previously held by President Barack Obama for amassing the most followers in the fastest time.
Beemyn noted that Jenner’s transition follows a similar formula to that of Christine Jorgensen, who became the first to make headlines in the 1950s as a transgender woman in the United States. Both spent decades as a man before making a full transition to a woman whom others describe as “beautiful.”
“It doesn’t challenge people’s perceptions of gender, and reinforces the gender binary in some ways — in a lot of ways, actually,” Beemyn said. “Her narrative is a very traditional one.”
But at the same time, Beemyn believes that Jenner’s public transition will help bring more visibility to the transgender community, much like Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out in 1997 helped lesbians and gays.
“Parents are recognizing that this is not something that’s just a phase,” Beemyn said. “Things are definitely changing — not fast enough by any means, but they are starting to change.”
Longtime transgender activist Tynan Power, of Northampton, agrees that Jenner’s wealth allowed her to make her transition more easily than others, and emphasizes that no one should be expected to be a “spokesperson” for all transgender people. Power is a transgender man.
“It’s not fair or reasonable to expect each trans person to represent all trans people’s experience,” he said.
In that vein, Power has disputed any recent criticisms directed toward Jenner as an individual, writing on his Facebook page: “Dear Cisgender ‘allies’ who are critiquing Caitlyn Jenner’s transition/appearance/life/existence, because it is not progressive enough or representative enough, please know that THIS trans person is reading your comments as attacks on a trans person. It does not make you cool and it does not make you an ally. It definitely does not make you my friend.”
Ben Power (no relation), the executive director of Sexual Minorities Education Foundation Inc. in Northampton, said he believes that Jenner has “changed the rules of society” by appearing on the cover of a magazine that typically showcases non-transgender women.
“I know she has a lot more resources and a position of fame and fortune, but even so, it gives hope to other trans people that we can be photographed in a beautiful way, that we can be respected on the cover of a major magazine,” he said.
Power, also 65, has identified as a transgender man for more than 30 years. He said he can identify with the struggles Jenner must have gone though in the process of transitioning.
“See, this is not something she’s just doing now — that’s what a lot of people don’t get,” he said. “In her mind, she’s been a woman all her life, she just couldn’t do anything to make that more real on the outside.”
Marcella Runell Hall, dean of students at Mount Holyoke College, praised Jenner for her bravery, and said she hopes her public transition helps create dialogue about gender identity. In September, Mount Holyoke clarified its admission policy to consider any student who identifies as a woman, whether or not she was born female, becoming the second women’s college in the country to do so.
“There’s so much courage in what Caitlyn is doing, and there’s also so much privilege in terms of resources and the ability to tell the story on her own terms,” Hall said. “I wouldn’t want it to be lost in all of that that there are many other people who are also brave and also have courage and need our support.”
Gena Mangiaratti can be reached at gmangiaratti@gazettenet.com.
