The Transition of Bruce Jenner

Alexis Shippy
February 26, 2015
Dr.Godfrey
Women and Gender Studies

Bruce Jenner: Transitioning I know we all keep up with the Kardashians, but are we keeping up with Bruce Jenner and his gender transition? Slowly and slowly Bruce Jenner is becoming more womanly. We all see it and have questions of our own whether it’s true or not. But because he is a celebrity and it might not be acceptable to some people in society, it is kind of put on the back burner. This example with Bruce Jenner only leads to bigger problems between intersex children who are actually both male and female but are forced to pick which one at birth they want to be basically formed into. Although Bruce Jenner was born male he later decides to transition to female, but the man word I will stress is “decides”. Intersex children should not be “assigned” a certain gender but rather allowed to go undecided until they decide which path they want to go in for themselves. The same thing applies to transgender individuals, who shouldn’t be ridiculed for deciding to go in a different path. Bruce Jenner has been a lot of things throughout his life. He has been an Olympic superstar, on the Wheaties box, the author of inspirational sports books, and a sometime actor and celebrity game-show contestant. Through all the accomplishments in his life there has been yet focus on his reportedly transition from male to female. There have been many other celebrities that have been here before but never has it involved someone of such public importance whose transition is happening for everyone to see. In an article about the transition of Bruce Jenner, Dwight Stones, a former Olympic high jump medalist who has known Mr.Jenner forever says “I think he is going to have a tremendous impact on popular culture. The parents of kids who are suppressing this, or trying to find a way to reveal themselves to the people they care about, are going to know who Bruce Jenner is. That might smooth the way or make the reality less difficult” (The New York Times). Bruce Jenner soon started to alter his physical appearance. It served to be no secret that Mr.Jenner has been having plastic surgery for many years. People have been monitoring his recent changes for months now. His increasingly long bouncy hair, his pink manicure, his new makeup, and his altered body which already includes maybe even breasts. In this article they even attempted to talk with advocates of transgender issues, but they declined in interviews to discuss specifics about Mr.Jenners situation saying that, “until he announces what is going on, it is wrong to make any assumptions. His prominence has provide momentum for a continuing national discussion on the topic” (New York Times). Denise A. Norris, the director of the Institute for Transgender Economic Advancement actually had comments on this situation saying that “the United States was going through what she called a trans-peak, with the issue often in the news” (Norris, 2015). She also mentions others who are transgender besides Mr.Jenner, for example she mentioned Caverne Cox, a transgender actress in “Orange Is the New Black”. There have been lots of other transgender people in recent years according to The New York Times:
“Chasity (now Chaz) Bono, whose parents are Sonny and Cher; Larry (now Lana) Wachowski, a producer, director, screenwriter; and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, the solider convicted of leaking classified documents in the Wikileaks case. The most famous example in sports remains the tennis player Renee Richards, who started life as Richard Raskind, had gender reassignment surgery in 1975 and won the right to play on the women’s tennis court” (New York Times).

In conclusion, I bring us back to the movie Orchids we watched which relates to a woman who was born male, telling her story of being an intersex child. We learn about how and what she had to go through being born intersex. This relates to the article I am doing about Bruce Jenner because he is telling his story as well although he is different from Phoebe (the main character in Orchids), he is telling his story publicly and by him being a celebrity seems to draw more attention to his story. The way we see intersex and transgender individuals are sometimes as questionable or sometimes we look at them with curiosity or maybe in disgust. In reality we should view gender as something that can never really be understood or even explained, so therefore I feel that instead of ridiculing intersex or transgender people we should learn to be accepting and willing to hear them explain their story the way that they would like to tell it.