Ever since Bruce Jenner has
come out of the closet, people have sympathized with the idea of ‘turning into’
the other sex. Blogs have been published and Peggy Draxler of CNN, along with a
bunch of other pundits, went as far as labeling Bruce as ‘brave’ (Draxler). I
personally am fully opposed to this opinion. First of all, I think Draxler
misses the point. She is debating over what to praise Bruce for “Are we praising her for her courage to be her? Are we praising
her bravery as a human -- or as a celebrity?”, instead of questioning whether
or not she should praise him in the first place. I feel like Draxler is following
the crowd by assuming that Bruce’s acts were heroic and brave. Moreover,
Draxler adopts the “she” pronoun, which in my frank judgment is unasked for :
after all, no matter how many surgeries he goes through, Bruce will still be a
‘he’, the ‘he’ that God, or any other supreme power I might say, wanted him to
be. At the end of the op-ed, Draxler brands Bruce’s coming out as an “important
story”, and a “[huge feat for] the transgender community” (Draxler, Draxler).
Reacting to this, I don’t think this announcement is something to be proud
about : one can definitely have odd sexual orientations, but I don’t think it called
for to spread the news all over social media and on one of the most popular
magazines worldwide.
Furthermore, Draxler argues another point, this time explicitly.
She is frustrated at the way this story was published, mainly because Bruce was
a celebrity prior to his coming out : “we should be less proud of the fact that
we had to hear such an important story from someone who was famous before we
heard it at all”, meaning that the story was based on the fact that Bruce
Jenner, once an Olympic champion, turned to a woman. Draxler thinks there
should have been more emphasis on the transformation itself and its importance
to the transgender community. That is another argument I’m entitled to attack.
The message was sent. Whether it was Jenner or anyone else, the issue has
spread and I think hearing the story from another person wouldn’t have changed
the outcome.
But then again, one might find some sense in the author’s
arguments and agree that Caitlyn represents in fact a glimmer of hope for the LGBT
community. The former have repetitively been attacked and a public figure
defending them would supposedly do them some good. In addition, one may agree
with the fact that Caitlyn’s coming out focuses entirely on Caitlyn herself
rather than on the oppressed community, noting that she was a popular Olympic champion,
and co-starred in the famous show ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’, which
leads to the possible legitimacy of the author’s argument.
Work Cited
Draxler, Peggy. "Why are we interested in Caitlyn Jenner". edition.cnn. June 4, 2015.
moodle
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