KamaAina (62,380 posts)
What does it mean to be Caitlyn?
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-d78a-What-does-it-mean-to-be-Caitlyn
ON MONDAY June 1, we experienced Bruce Jenner’s big reveal. Vanity Fair magazine released its July cover image of the former athlete and reality star formerly known as Bruce Jenner, with the catchily alliterative headline “Call me Caitlyn.â€...
Jenner is not a “gender outlaw†breaking down boundaries and a mechanism for positive change. Jenner represents the status quo, in opposition to the positive, progressive force and changes that decades of women’s suffrage and activism have fought for.
We can view this image of Jenner as being not “a man becoming a woman†(itself a contentious and somewhat counterfactual statement) but as “a man becoming a man’s idea of what a woman should be.â€
This is writ large over the Vanity Fair cover: an idealised body is presented clothed only in lingerie, the makeup is done to perfection, and every flaw is magically Photoshopped out of existence. Pandering to the male gaze, the body language is coy, seductive, submissive. This is not liberation, this is not revolution, this is not life-affirming. This is the crass stereotyping of what it means to be a woman, meeting every reactionary, culturally conservative ideal of what a woman should be — passive, objectified, dehumanised.
So, what they're saying is something really interesting...I think what liberals want from trannies goes something like this:
1. Be a tranny, sure, but...
2. Don't try to be pretty, because...
3. If you do, we'll crap all over you for it, because...
4. Most people of the gender you pretend to be don't look as good as you, and...
5. You're ****ing our shit up.
Basically, to follow this line of thinking, someone who wants to go to the bother of reassigning themselves the the opposite sex should
take care not to do it
too well, lest they perpetuate gender stereotypes.
DUmmies would have Bruce Jenner (and his name is Bruce, no matter if he tucks his junk between his butt cheeks or not) look like this:
Instead of the image he presents on the cover of Vanity Fair.
Allow me to say this differently:
a 65-year-old Olympic champion known worldwide as a man decides to pretend he's a woman, and wants the world to see him as a woman, but to effect this
change, he's not supposed to strive for his ideal of feminine beauty. He's supposed to look like a typical, fat, hairy, angry womynist ragebag or he's perpetuating gender stereotypes. How was that supposed to go, lurkers? "Yeah, I want to change completely, but can you make me look like LynneSin from Democratic Underground? Sure, I want to be a woman, but I really think I need to start at the
absolute bottom of the heap. Can you arrange that for me?"
