Our Favorite Punching Bag

The trans community is in a love hate relation with Caitlyn Jenner and the latest fire storm was when she came out in favor of presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

Caitlyn Jenner: ‘I like Ted Cruz’
Washington Post
By Justin Wm. Moyer
March 4, 2016

It was supposed to be the pinnacle of one journalist’s career: Dawn Ennis, who said she is the first transgender person in TV network news to come out, interviewing Caitlyn Jenner in what Ennis thinks was Jenner’s first interview with a professional transgender reporter.

“It was the first time I met someone who, to me, personally is a hero,” Ennis — who worked for ABC — told The Washington Post in a telephone interview. “She really got to me.”

But the dream interview, published in the Advocate on Wednesday, took a funny turn when Ennis asked about Jenner’s politics.

Though Jenner allowed that “the Democrats are better when it comes to these types of social issues,” she had an answer — that focused on economic and fiscal policy.

“Number 1, if we don’t have a country, we don’t have trans issues,” she told Ennis. “We need jobs. We need a vibrant economy. I want every trans person to have a job. With $19 trillion in debt and it keeps going up, we’re spending money we don’t have. Eventually, it’s going to end. And I don’t want to see that. Socialism did not build this country. Capitalism did. Free enterprise. The people built it. And they need to be given the opportunity to build it back up.”

Okay I am not going to discuss politics in this post (Surprise!) but rather how Ms. Jenner and the trans community.

In an article on the Advocate’s website, Dawn Ennis reports that,

“Yes, my journey is different than most people,” Jenner tells me, as we begin our conversation discussing her docu-series on E!, I Am Cait, which returns for a second season Sunday. “To be honest with you, I don’t really talk to the media. This is very rare,” Jenner reminds me early in our hour-long conversation in her fluffy white living room.
[…]
“What I have learned in this community is every journey is different. No two stories are the same. Not even close,” Jenner says as she leans in and looks me in the eye. I can feel her intensity from where I'm sitting, just three feet away.

And that is so true, we are each on our own journey and we have our own path to follow, Ms. Jenner’s happens to be coming from a place of wealth and power that most other trans people do not have or even dream of having. I think we have to recognize that, because she is coming from a place that is vastly different than most of ours she is going to have different views that was shaped by her socioeconomic status.

This sentiment persists, even though Jenner has done an enormous amount of work to benefit others, both through her show and privately. Yet to many of the millions who watch her, she appears aloof and not in touch with everyday folks who snack on fries from the drive-through before they get home, who go bowling or hang out with a pitcher of beer at the local watering hole with friends, complaining about how much they hate their jobs.

Exactly, she is out of touch with the struggling middle class and those who are so marginalized that they have no idea where their next meal is coming from or where they will sleep that night.

There is one thing that we cannot question is her right as a trans person to have her own views, we may question her view but we cannot question that she is transgender.

Much of the blowback is aimed at Jennifer F. Boyland for being on the Ms. Jenner’s television show. Ms. Boyland wrote on her blog…

Caitlyn Jenner, Ted Cruz, and the Flavor of Tarantulas
By Jennifer Finney Boyland
Published: March 4, 2016

No, I wasn’t surprised by Caitlyn Jenner’s expression of support for Ted Cruz. I heard her say as much hour after hour this fall as I worked on her show. Everyone needs to get their mind around the fact that politically she is, like half the country, a conservative, and the sooner you get your mind around this, the angrier you can be.

The fact that she’s swooning over Ted Cruz–a bigot, a hater, and an all around dunderhead–is galling, but no more galling, to me, than a political philosophy that exclusively benefits the wealthy and leaves the rest of us to struggle. Cruz’s policies on trans rights are horrific, but not a whole lot more horrific than those of anyone else in the GOP currently running for office.

Once again, exactly, half the population is Republican and to insist that all trans people should be Democrats is wrong. I believe it does not make sense for a trans person to be a Republican because I believe that policies are ruining the country and is strongly anti-LGBTQ. That being Republican is against our interest, there still are a number of trans people who vote Republican.

Ms. Boyland goes on to say,

I think it is fair to say that this strategy failed [sitting down to reason with her] to turn her into a Democrat.

In fact, I don’t think there’s any such strategy that would have this result. And so, yeah: hanging out with her was infuriating. On the second day of filming, I tried to quit the show. I had a lengthy conversation with the show-runner saying, “I just can’t do this. I want to go home.”  There is footage of this somewhere.

But I stayed in there. In part, because on Survivor, (my favorite show), I always get angry when people “quit the game,” as if they really didn’t understand what they were signing on for when they agreed to spend 39 days boiling rice and eating tarantulas.

I believe that many Republican’s put their financial interests before all else, they see the Republicans protecting their wealth. And trying to get someone to change their views who is more concerned about their wealth over human rights is very hard.

I do not like Ms. Jenner’s political views but I do not question the fact that she is trans. What I would like to see is Caitlyn Jenner going to the Republican convention; maybe if she gets snubbed badly enough it just might get her to see the reality in her political beliefs.