Like 17 million other North Americans, I sat in front of my television last Friday night to watch the much-anticipated Diane Sawyer 20/20 interview with Bruce Jenner. ABC promised two full hours with the former Olympic gold medalist turned reality TV star to answer the question anyone who picked up a tabloid in the last year when waiting in line at the grocery store was asking: “Is Bruce Jenner transforming into a woman?”
In the last year, paparazzi tailed Jenner around California catching photos of his increasing long hair, missing Adam’s apple and his pink, manicured finger nails. (The manicures have been going on for years, people. I called attention to them, amongst other things, in my open-letter to Jenner in VICE three years ago, questioning if his aesthetic and surgical choices were a devoted, life-long comment on gender politics.)
Jenner’s divorce from Kris Jenner didn’t help, but really, did the marriage? Then, there was that fatal three-car accident in Malibu a few months back in which Jenner found himself in the middle. All eyes were on him. Finally, right before the ABC special aired, a paparazzi exposed photos of Jenner outside his beach house wearing a black and white Maxi dress and smoking a cigarette. (A Virginia Slim, no doubt.) Imagine Jenner as a transgender icon? The idea seemed HUGE.
Jenner invited the world into his Malibu home and, sitting across from Sawyer, he symbolically let his hair out of a ponytail then, confirmed the rumors.
“I’ve always been confused with my gender identity,” Jenner admitted. “For all intensive purposes I am a woman.”
Jenner called the woman he was becoming “HER”. This moment was breaking for not only trans-identified people, but North American culture at large, especially when the Christian Republican Jenner laid out the distinction between one’s sexuality and gender.
“Sexuality is who you are personally attracted to, who turns you on,” Jenner told Sawyer. “But gender identity has to do with who you are as a person and your soul and who you identify with inside.”
Jenner went on to explain he has toyed with gender since he was a child, throughout his three marriages (it was Kim Kardashian that first busted him in crossdressing in recent years), numerous children, assorted careers and public persona. At 65-years-old and recently divorced, he could not live a lie anymore.
“I look at women all the time and think how lucky they are that they can wake up in the morning and be themselves. I just can’t hold the curtain any longer. Bruce lives a lie. She is not a lie. I can’t do it anymore.”
The following day, social media exploded with support and congratulations for Jenner. His coming out as transgender spoke volumes. (Yes, Jenner still wants to be referred to with masculine pronouns until otherwise noted.)
According to Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Jenner’s announcement sparked a chain of positive reactions all over the country: “Cleveland-area transgender woman shares her journey” or Utah transgender teen crowned prom queen.
Keisling said Jenner did the trans-community proud. TIME magazine noted the “transgender tipping point”: the lived and shared experience of Jenner and other trans folks forces cisgender people to rethink the basics of everyday existence. The celebrity of Jenner elevated his story into a mainstream discussion and provoked compassion, advocacy and support for the social and legal equality of transgender people like never had been done before.
However, this should be looked at as the beginning of something big for social justice. Jenner’s wealth has afforded him the luxury of a seemingly secluded transition in his Malibu home, but it’s a Catch 22 when you account for the heavy public scrutiny he has faced for decades. But according to E!, his transformation will be documented in an eight-part series that starts July 26.
Jenner used his celebrity status to open up a crucial conversation about transgender equality to the mainstream. This is a watershed moment for awareness.
