“She felt that the message was unfair and not inspirational to others who are in the process of going through the process. Not everyone has the financial means to change everything so quickly.”
Caitlyn Jenner is not obligated to be inspirational unless she wants to be.
Few of us mortals have the financial means of any celebrity who appears on a VF cover. So what? Other people are obligated to hide things because others can’t afford to live that way?
“she cannot speak in a normal tone or [of?] voice anymore.”
I don’t think that’s true at all; facial feminization surgery has no effect whatsoever on people’s voices. It’s very clear to me from listening to her that she has begun to try to train her voice (either on her own or with a voice coach) to sound like a woman’s voice (not that I think it was ever very deep), something that’s very difficult to accomplish for many trans women and takes quite a long time. Her voice right now sounds somewhat strained, like she’s expending quite a bit of effort – exactly like many other trans women I’ve heard early in transition. As I mentioned earlier, I was extraordinarily fortunate in that regard. Not so much in other respects. We all have our advantages and disadvantages. (Some friends and I sometimes jokingly talk to each other about what gifts “the trans fairy” hath given to or withheld from each of us.)
One vocal tic I’ve noticed in Caitlyn Jenner and my transgender friend is a new tendency to articulate “t” sounds more precisely. So, for example, the word “little” has the “t” sounds articulated much more precisely than is natural for the accent (in which “little” might naturally come out as “liddel.”) is that something that is considered more feminine by voice-training coaches or something? Now that I’ve noticed it, I find it irritating,
I can’t answer that, because I’ve never paid much attention to discussions of that subject among trans women, but do know that there are all sorts of complicated rules one is supposed to follow and breathing exercises one has to do in the course of the voice-training process. There’s even a Wikipedia article about it, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_therapy_%28transgender%29. (Caveat: the article seems to me to be suspiciously free of citations. From everything I’ve heard, what it says about positive results from vocal cord surgery isn’t true; the experts almost universally advise against it as not beneficial, and potentially harmful.)
Training isn’t usually as necessary for trans men, because testosterone actually does deepen the voice, whereas once one has gone through puberty, estrogen or anti-androgens do nothing to make it higher. (Despite all the awful jokes in old cartoons about men whose voices suddenly become high-pitched squeaks after they’re injured in the groin area.)
We can hope that we get better at identifying trans people while they’re still children, so that they don’t go through puberty with the wrong gender. OTOH, it’s scary to think of a child transitioning-- they’re so young, could they be mistaken? It’s a horrifying thought that a child would transition to the other gender by mistake. But it’s also pretty horrifying to go through the wrong puberty. So I don’t know what to think.
Caitlin should be able to do what she wants with her body and how she wants to present herself without criticism. As a woman who wears no makeup or fingernail polish, I can’t really relate to her and I don’t “get it.” But this isn’t necessary for me to relate. I don’t feel any particular sisterly relationship with other women who focus on such enhancements. I’m sure if I knew her, I would like her, as I like most people. I’m not sure why folks get caught up in a pronoun and a photo. It should be OK for any individual to show themselves as the gender they choose and take a photo in whatever clothes or pose they want. I do admit, her choices don’t help me understand the transgender transition. But again, this is not, or should be, her goal.
I want a world in which Bruce feels as free as Caitlin to wear makeup and fingernail polish.
Like CF, I feel for transgender children who go through puberty with the wrong gender. I don’t think there is an easy answer.
Exactly.
She made it pretty clear on the Diane Sawyer interview that at this point in her life, she’s just trying to drop the lie and be herself, not carry the mantle of the entire transgender community. Much less should she be shackled with representing an “inclusive” persona which reflects every kind of expression of female-ness.
I don’t think it is her voice that sounds unnatural, but she speaks like her her mouth doesn’t move . I suspect that is from botox. It sounds the way someone talks with a mouth full of cotton , post oral surgery.
“As a woman who wears no makeup or fingernail polish, I can’t really relate to her and I don’t “get it.” But this isn’t necessary for me to relate. I don’t feel any particular sisterly relationship with other women who focus on such enhancements.”
Having such enhancements (makeup and fingernail polish) is different from focusing on such enhancements. I don’t relate or not-relate to other women based on those things. I really don’t pay attention to whether my friends do their nails or not.
My local public radio station, WNYC, has had a series this week on transgender children. The first two episodes interviewed kids, their teachers, their parents, and school district guidelines about transitioning in a public NYC elementary school. The third, which I haven’t heard yet, is a Q&A with an expert.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/child-goes-she-he-confidently/
http://www.wnyc.org/story/how-schools-support-transgender-children/
http://www.wnyc.org/story/expert-unpacks-gender-identity-children/
All three sites have a link to listen to the stories and a transcript.
Who’s saying that “girly femininity (is) the only way to be a woman”? Business, news, sports, science, and cooking magazines all show a variety of women. If you limit your reading to the fashion magazines, then you’re going to have a more limited view of women because their target audience is different than the target audience of magazines like Time and Scientific American. If you want a broader narrative, you have to invest your time in the media that gives it to you.
Better yet, let’s not be so fixated on a binary world. 
IMHO, everyone is somewhere on a continuum of gender expression and sexuality, and we should not be so obsessed with forcing someone to label themselves and stick to it.
Exactly. If this were the case, I would venture to guess that fewer people would feel that they had to “transition.” They could just express their gender the way that felt right from the get go.
I have read about children who are born with uncertain gender due to XXY chromosomes and other reasons, whose parents resist gender assignment surgery in infancy and try to just let the child grow in whatever direction is natural to them. I can imagine that this must be incredibly difficult at times, when “boy or girl” is virtually the first question, and everything is rigidly divided for no good reason.
There are really at least 3 topics here. Caitlyn, as she wants to be and is (and has a right to be.) Then, how the shoot- and others like it and general messages about attractiveness- can affect others. Then, some real life perspective from one poster.
We don’t have to blame Caitlyn for society’s presentation of attractiveness. I don’t think she’s some sort of “traitor” to women, nor the only standard. If she feels beautiful, great for her. But we can observe her presentation and comment, as this does from CNN:
“That I am pointing out the carefully stage-managed reveal of Caitlyn does not detract from the courage and import of Jenner’s decision to transition, nor even the manner in which she chose to make it known…It is, however, an acknowledgment of a transition that is likely only marginally representative of those experienced by most in the transgender community. It’s also a transition that has centered very heavily on her looks, making her story of transition nearly impossible to separate from its physical manifestation.”
It’s true we have some other media sources for images of women. But, one way or another, they usually conform to expectations. It’s big news there’s some size 22 model- and it’s not Mama June Shannon. It’s a girl with a pretty face.
And I think, austinmshauri, that by the time we even get to that picture of a woman scientist, the messages are deeply embedded. Look at the crap Hillary got for her looks before her brains. Look at our TV media news figures, all those pretty young things.
It’s just a commentary, an expansion of the discussion. Shouldn’t be a threat to us, next time we decide whether or not to dab a little on or go with a color that flatters us.
“It is, however, an acknowledgment of a transition that is likely only marginally representative of those experienced by most in the transgender community. It’s also a transition that has centered very heavily on her looks, making her story of transition nearly impossible to separate from its physical manifestation.”
I think it’s difficult to separate out any gender transition from its physical manifestations. Because if there aren’t physical manifestations, how is it a transition? Otherwise it’s just a born-with-male-parts-guy saying “I’m a woman now.” I don’t wish to put words in Donna’s mouth, but I don’t think that simply saying “I’m a woman now” would have been enough for her, without some of the accompanying physical changes that she undertook.
The person I know who transitioned started exactly that way. She grew her hair a little longer, dressed a little differently, and informed people at school that she wanted to be referred to as “she” and by a different first name. It was many years before she could afford any surgery.
ETA - but this was 30+ years ago and involved someone very young, and at college. Would the student health center have had hormone therapy for her? No idea.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/09/kids-react-caitlyn-jenner_n_7546902.html
Kids’ reactions to pictures of Bruce and Caitlyn.
Sweet!
This is tangential, but this discussion makes me wonder about how we are socialized into girl things and boy things. I was born female and enjoy so called feminine things like wearing dresses and using make up etc. Undoubtedly because I was shown at an early age that that is what girls “do”. Of course we know that not all girls do this.
I’m having trouble articulating what I want to say. I guess I’m asking if it’s possible to grow up without any indicators of what it means to be female or male, how would we act? I’m sure not every male to female trans person is eager to indulge in make up or dresses but I would think many are because they are finally able to act like the gender they feel they were born into and do things society says are in the realm of females.
“Exactly. If this were the case, I would venture to guess that fewer people would feel that they had to “transition.” They could just express their gender the way that felt right from the get go.”
There may be some people who transition because of the ‘binary gender’ stuff, but I doubt it is all that many. In some ways, it is saying that gender is a construct, that gender identity is all about gender expression, and it isn’t. Among other things, it doesn’t talk about the dysphoria with genitals, for example (which varies with trans folks from what I can tell), someone who feels their genitals are totally wrong, who feels disgust with them, wouldn’t be happy simply wearing nail polish or wearing men’s clothing and have a short haircut. We can argue that the binary gender stuff is a construct, but the reality is that most people tend to feel themselves one or the other, the gender neutral/blended gender/none of the above represent a relatively small group of people. If you id as a woman, the idea in the end is to get to the point where you can look in the mirror and see someone who is you and more important, feel it, the way that a gender congruent person does in their lives and to be accepted as such. While I won’t argue that some people who are gender mixed/different might like the idea of being like Johnny Weir and having that accepted, and perhaps that some people who fall in that category today might transition to be more comfortable, that isn’t the reality for most I would hazard an educated guess. The dissonance transgender people feel is more than likely very different for each person, there is no one narrative, but I also believe the dissonance a non standard gender person feels is going to be very different from the transgender people.
It is part of the problem with what Caitlyn said IMO, when she said she felt free to dress girly and wear makeup and talk about fashion and such with other women, in the wrong context it makes it seem like the only reason she is doing what she did was to be able to do that, when that is only a manifestation of something deeper, it leaves out issues of the body, of genitals, and how the person perceives themselves, and I doubt many of those who transition, if given the freedom to wear dresses and makeup and nail polish, would see themselves as anything but a ‘man in a dress’ and be unhappy with it (and think about this one, F to M transgender people already have a lot of freedom in how they can present, women can have short hair, not wear makeup, wear mens clothing, you name it, yet they still transition…why if all it is is about gender expression?).
As far as young kids transitioning, from what I know they don’t allow kids to start HRT until they are at least 16, to make sure that they are for real. What they will do before puberty is put them on hormone blockers, which unlike HRT is reversible (if you drop the blockers, they will go through puberty from what I have read), so if suddenly the child decides they aren’t a girl or a boy, they can revert relatively easy (I am not a doctor, but from what I have been led to believe, after dropping the blockers they will develop normally).
Actually, I am a bit envious of Caitlyn
Not the hiding who she was for decades part, that must have been painful.
But the reinventing herself at midlife part, with the support of her family.
She’s eight years old than I am, and she still, hopefully has lots of time left to deepen her relationships with family & friends as Caitlyn. But when your family is stuck on an image of yourself during the most difficult time of your life, and feels it’s too late to renew connections, it is very sad, because I have always believed that you never stop growing and evolving, if you never give up.
( sorry, just noticed I was spelling her name wrong)
Re: having a more gender fluid society, I haven’t read a lot about it, but I don’t know if it would prevent individual dysphoria.
I think that is a separate issue from having traits which have in the past been thought of as feminine or masculine.
I would say it is impossible for an individual to grow up with zero exposure to gender roles and indicators. Well, unless it’s some kind of experimental spinoff of The Truman Show 2.0.