Thursday, August 06, 2015

I Watched “I am Cait” Last Sunday

And I have to say I was impressed but at the same time I saw a lot of “white privilege.” How many us could rent a RV with a driver to take a trip to the city. But her guests tried to impress on her the needs of the community, how most trans women are just trying the make ends meet.
4 challenges trans people face that you won’t see on 'I Am Cait'
Mashable
By Courtney Demone
July 24, 2015

Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out as transgender has been quite the moment for the trans community. From the Diane Sawyer interview to the Vanity Fair cover to the upcoming debut of her new reality show I Am Cait, a transgender person has never been so discussed and celebrated in pop culture and in homes across the world.

As a trans person, I am immensely grateful for this moment in which many people are, for the first time, seeing a transgender person as exactly that: a real person, instead of as a bad joke in a sitcom or a fetishized object in porn.
[…]
1. Transgender people experience job discrimination and have high rates of unemployment and poverty.
As long as you're watching I Am Cait, Caitlyn Jenner has a job and is making money. That's wonderful. For a lot of trans people, though, just getting a job can be very difficult. And 33 of the 50 states have no state-level gender identity protection, meaning in over half of the U.S. it is perfectly legal for employers to fire trans employees based solely on their being transgender.
[…]
2. Transgender people are frequently evicted or denied homes because they are transgender. Often this results in homelessness.
It’s unrealistic for everyone to have a home like Jenner’s $3.6 million Malibu mountaintop estate, but it is realistic for everyone to want to have a home. At some point in their lives, 19% of trans people have been denied housing, and 11% have been evicted, for being transgender. In order to cope with the lack of housing and employment, a significant number of trans people are forced to move to cheaper places, bunk with family and friends, or have sex with people just to have a bed to sleep in.
One thing I noticed about her “$3.6 million Malibu mountaintop estate” the pool and Jacuzzi were fill of water in the middle of a drought.

The author goes on to says that we don’t have healthcare and that for trans people of color it is a lot harder just to survive.

The episode that I saw all these topics were mentioned but just superficial and next week they are visiting HRC (Ugh!) to talk about discrimination (here we have a white upper middle class Gay institution talking trans poverty). To bad they didn’t talk to the Transgender Law Center instead, but one of the trans women on the show is from the San Francisco HRC office.

USA Today's EntertainThis writes,
Girls’ nights are nothing new for Caitlyn. She’s had them for a while, but tonight’s party is different: it’s only for trans women.

Who’s there? Actress (and potential flame for Caitlyn) Candis Cayne, GLAAD National Board Chair Jennifer Boylan and others, who all have different experiences.

“Caitlyn is a sweet smart good soul,” Jennifer tells us. “… but she has all the privilege in the world.”

Each woman goes on to share part of their story: Candis tells of the medical discrimination she’s experienced from doctors, another woman, Drian Juarez, talks about her time as a sex worker and how that got her through her transition.

It’s an eye-opening moment for Caitlyn, introducing even more experiences into her own. She is new to this community and, obviously, does not represent everyone — as no one person could. She’s starting to understand that.
[…]
Discriminatory joblessness is an issue for some in the transgender community and, as a few women point out, those unemployed may need the support social programs can provide. It’s for survival, one adds. Caitlyn sees it as something people can overly rely on.

The tension is only brief, but it highlights a worry in some: if Caitlyn is going to represent the transgender community, she needs to be wary of offending anyone in it.
The “In Crowd” on last Sunday’s show were Zackary Drucker, Jen Richards, Drian Juarez, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Chandi Moore and Candis Cayne.

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My laptop died and I will only be able to blog occasional when I have access to a computer.

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