When I was a kid, Bruce Jenner was a pretty studly guy who happened to win a bunch of medals at the Olympics. Can't remember quite how many, I think he was in the Pentathalon? No, that includes horses. I don't think he rides. No matter, he was one hell of an athlete.
Now he's 'coming out' as transgender. This doesn't mean he's gay, in fact he emphatically denies being attracted to men. He still asks to be referred to as "him" and "Dad". The fact that he has a bunch of smarmy women called the kardashians calling him that is just too weird. I mean, they are far more...icky...than anything Jenner might be as a 'woman'.
Because homosexuality is all the thing these days, I appreciate it that Jenner kept himself on the 'down low'. He was transitioning to a woman for his own reasons, none of them including being the center of attention. It was his own business, thankyouverymuch, until someone spilled the beans. Suddenly the paparazzi were all over him. Smart person that he is, he realized that protesting that all he wanted was to be left alone would merely incite the 'ratsies' to trespass even more egregiously. So he opened it up to the public.
The media, desperately searching for a feeding frenzy, has tried to turn it into a circus, but he is handling them very well. He refuses to let it turn into a circus, although the tabloids are working hard to make it so. Being that the tabloids are already lying, bottom feeding scum, if he won't tell them what they want to hear, they'll make it up. What a bonanza...here's this male athlete-turned-woman...what salacious bullshit they will dream up is hard to imagine, but then, I'm not stupid. They'll come up with something.
The problem I have is, I just cannot turn my head around this. I just don't get it. I mean, he could be a cross dresser, for all I care. He has millions of dollars that will insure his privacy. I just don't get the idea of why go through all the medical, chemical and other things that go along with changing gender. Why go through that? Does he believe that 'looking' like a woman will actually make him one? It doesn't work that way. I know effeminate men who aren't gay and gay men who are as masculine as can be. I worked for an openly gay man who was awesome...he was right up front about being gay, and I felt nothing but relief when he told me. Now I could work for him without that quiet little voice in my head saying, "I think he's gay but I don't dare ask." I didn't have to pussyfoot around the issue. In fact we traded jokes about gay men and women, as well as jokes about straights. He was awesome to work for, and I liked him a hell of a lot. What I liked about him was how devoted he was to his partner and now legal husband.
Even before homosexuality came out into present day culture, I never really cared about it. I know, without any question, that one is born gay. To those that insist it's a 'choice', I ask them, did you choose to be straight? Of course not. You were born straight. Genes don't care. They're merely animated blueprints, smart enough to build a procreating creature, but not smart enough to realize that the release of an egg or sperm doesn't always end up in a baby. Thank goodness for that, because we're already destroying our planet with 7.99 million too many humans.
I also understand, to a degree, how one can be in one body and still yearn to be in the other gender. I think that's much more common than is realized. I know there are many women who wish they could travel to places that are outright dangerous for a woman to go to. The news routinely reports situations where a lone woman is gang raped by monsters in countries that 'should know better'...Egypt, India....America... Men have the best of the world. Most novels are written in the male voice, without any idea that the reader may be female and can only wish to have the adventures, and see the things, the male does.
I don't believe a whole lot of men envy women for that. Oh, in cases of the draft, yeah. There were plenty of draft dodgers in the Viet Nam era that claimed to be gay so he could get out of going to war. They often then turned around and bitched that they didn't get the bennies (small as they were) or the respect (these days) that came with combat experience. Can't have it both ways, coward. Draft dodgers are cowards. Bill Clinton, stand up, you draft dodging son of a bitch. Being male means being privileged...men are paid better, get better chances at everything, etc, and then, sometimes, they have to pay the price for that.
Read Shakespeare about the 'band of brothers' to get the full taste of the bond that war brings to men. Women can only dream of it.
But back to Jenner. I haven't been following it, but of course he's on the tv and the tabloids. Today I saw a picture of him. I think it was photoshopped to the max. I have to say this: Jenner, you were one awesome athlete. You were on the Wheaties box. You had it all, a buff build, gold medals hanging underneath your handsome visage, a family. I hope the paparazzi and the tabloids don't use you like they've done so many others. To them, you're merely a means of making money, and they'll smear you like they always do.
I really don't understand you. But I wish you happiness and peace in your new persona.
