Caitlyn (formerly known as Bruce) Jenner has been in the news a lot lately. The Olympian has struggled with sexual identity for years—in fact, his whole life—and now that he has transitioned to Caitlyn, Jenner feels at rest with herself.
Transitions like Jenner’s have always puzzled me, based on the utter lack of physical/biological support for transition. Jenner’s Vanity photo shoot does not show a woman’s life as it often is nowadays—knee-deep in your toddler’s toys, trying to juggle work’s demands with your child’s soccer practice and your significant other’s work schedule. In true Vanity fashion, it shows a glamorous, sexualized, idealized definition of “womanhood,” which has little basis in reality.
Jenner’s photos show an enviable profile—sleek, slender, and undeniably powerful and fluid. What they also show is a man, who, through modern medicine, makeup, and a carefully-chosen wardrobe, resembles greatly (if not exactly) the stereotypical female Hollywood beauty. Jenner may choose to identify as Caitlyn, and with women, but there are several qualifications that (s)he is deficient in. Jenner was not born a woman, and has not lived most her (his) life as a woman. Jenner has had to deal with society expecting a specific set of (male-identified) behaviors which, from his transition, we can clearly see Jenner does not identify with. However, just because Jenner has identified with iconic, popularly espoused female gender behaviors does not mean that (s)he has gone through the societal, familial, and biological rigors that come with being born biologically a woman and being expected to adhere to a set of female-identified behaviors.
One thing I empathize strongly with Jenner in is the enormous pressure from feeling out of place, out of sorts, and external to the group one is “supposed” to belong to. To feel like one doesn’t belong, and especially to have those sorts of feelings so cataclysmically at play within one’s own mind and body is a horrible, horrible battle to have to fight.
Now to Rachel Dolezal. She has arrested the public’s eye, opinions, rants, deep gasps, and (justifiably) an opening of the discussion of appropriating colored culture (and whether, indeed, this is an example of it). It was announced today that she has also resigned from her position with the Spokane NAACP chapter. Let me state right away that I think the evisceration that she has received has been, whatever her sins, inhumane. Clearly she has a troubled past, and while this doesn’t excuse any immoral or illegal behavior, I think this is a topic that should be treated with far less vitriol and far more introspectiveness than has been shown.
She has championed minorities in our culture, and (while enjoying a great deal of prestige and success from it, of course) has helped raise awareness of injustices that permeate the racial strata of our country.
She has also lied continuously while doing it. She is no more African American than I am Arab (regrettably; I am mildly upset that I wasn’t born an American Arab).
What does it say if one is willing to lie about belonging to an ethnic, genetically identified group in order to help said ethnic group? Doesn’t that seem a bit condescending? Doesn’t that seem a bit like prolonging the issue (lack of respect of differences, a lack of respect for your own background)?
What does it say about diversity of said groups if Dolezal felt that in order to make a difference she had to completely alter her physical appearance in order to “fit in” to her chosen set of beliefs and behaviors of the culture [one of activism on behalf of ethnic minorities] she identified with? Doesn’t that seem a bit suppressive?
A culture, group, society or organization that compels someone to radically alter their appearance from their natural, biological state (barring the correction of disorders and medical sicknesses of course) is not one that is perpetuating diversity. If one feels overwhelming pressure to conform one’s behavior and appearance in order to join the group that one desires to (in Rachel’s case, the rights movement for minorities), that is the antithesis of the “diversity” movement; that is streamlining and minimizing diversity.
What does it say about our society that since Bruce Jenner identified with societally assigned “feminine” behaviors and ideals, he felt the need to forsake his biologically male body in order to achieve equilibrium with her (his) own set of preferred behaviors and ideals? Is that really a society of diversity? Because I don’t think so. A society that assigns a binary value to behavior—and doesn’t allow for free transfer of behaviors that are “female”, or “male”, is not a society of diversity—it is an atmosphere of suppression.
And so a man is compelled to be surgically altered in order to be accepted in identifying with female-identified ideas and behaviors, and a woman is compelled to cosmetically (and possibly surgically) alter her appearance in order to be accepted in identifying with colored-identified ideas and behaviors. One was lauded as revolutionary and the other was cast out as a violator of morals. One must ask— why are we using different scales to measure incredibly similar cases? And, perhaps more importantly, why aren’t we examining the culture that has brought both of these stories to our attention, and putting it, rather than these two people, under the microscope?
Six Months Later 