The Interview last night was...not a disaster. There was some doubt about that running up to the occasion.
But Bruce did okay, for the most part. I mean, I could have written some o the words she used. In fact, I did write some of them, as you could find in my autobiographical pieces I shared over the first ten weeks of this year.
I'm not claiming that Jenner used my writings inappropriately...or even that she read them. It is the case that many of us transgender people analyze the experience and progression of our lives in similar ways, so it is not surprising that we might use some of the same words.
The walls closing in.
Crushed
Finding my Way
Walls
separating me from
almost everyone
closing in
strangling
compressing
crushing
the life
out of me
I could die
or I could let
the compactification
squeeze
the new me
the real me
out from within
Was it really a choice?
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--September 25, 2009
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Sexuality is about who we go to bed
with. Gender is about who we go to bed
as.
Actually those last words were voiced by Dr. Norman Spack of Boston Children's Hospital, who was also interviewed on the show, and not Jenner.
I wrote that description...in the early 90s. I do not lay claim to being the first person who ever put those thoughts together. We are all subject to having our synapses stuffed full of what we hear and what we read. Not everything gets a footnote attached to it forever.
I'm me. I'm a person. This is who I am. I'm not stuck in anybody's body. My brain is much more female than male.
--Jenner
I won't object to that phrasing. There will be some feminists, however, who object to reference to a "female brain."
People look at me differently. They see you as this macho male, but my heart and my soul and everything that I do in life—it is part of me. That female side is part of me. That's who I am.
--Jenner
Some people don't like to use the "soul" word. But that is as good a word as any for that nugget of self we discover when we go identity-diving in search of who we truly are.
I understand Jenner's reluctance to get involved with a discussion of sexuality, since she that wasn't what she was there to discuss. But it wouldn't have hurt for her to embrace the label of lesbian. The again, maybe she had the foresight to see the avalanche of crap that might have poured down upon her by doing so...emanating from so many different sides of the political spectrum. More likely, she's just not ready for that. She is, after all, conservatively religious.
In the interview, she came out as politically conservative as well. She even voiced the thought that she would be willing to address the needs of the transgender community with Sen. McConnell and Rep. Boehner.
Good luck with that.
And I mean that! While I personally would struggle to understand how any trans person could identity with that party, it couldn't hurt to have conservative transfolk (I know she is not the only one) pushing for our equality from the other side.
My whole life has prepared me for this moment.
--Jenner
I should start by saying I'm pleasantly surprised by how the interview went with Bruce Jenner. Diane Sawyer deserves kudos. She handled the interview beautifully... I think it went quite well in total.
I came away pleasantly surprised. The answers she gave, had I been in that same circumstance, may have been nuanced a little differently, but the message was the same.
--Joanne Carroll, TransCentral, PA
Why now? I just can't pull the curtain any longer, okay? I've built a nice little life. I just can't...again, Bruce lives a lie but 'she' is not a lie. I can't do it any more.
If I die, which, I could be diagnosed next week with cancer—and boom you’re gone. I would be so mad at myself that I didn’t explore that side of me. You know? And I don’t want that to happen.
--Jenner
And that makes Jenner extremely vulnerable. I'm sure I am not the only one hoping like anything that we don't end up with another Mike Penner/Christine Daniels incident.
Surprisingly, it was reported that perhaps the wisest words spoken by anyone associated with the Kardassian clan came from Kanye.
Look, I can be married to the most beautiful woman in the world. And I am. I can have the most beautiful little daughter in the world. I have that. But I'm nothing if I can't be me. If I can't be true to myself. They don't mean anything.
--Kanye West
Other celebrity reaction:
We have the chance to write this moment in history together. Let's empower people like Bruce all over the world by being loving & not mean.
--Lady Gaga
I was proud of Bruce Jenner in Montreal and I'm proud of him tonight. Some have to fight more than the rest of us for their happiness.
--Rob Lowe
Bruce Jenner is a beautiful, brave human being. Sending him lots of love. He's saving lives and opening minds tonight.
--Ellen DeGeneres
Dear Stranger: if you're making unkind Bruce Jenner jokes you have me to answer to. I seriously feel protective this week.
--Lena Dunham
It’s an incredibly brave thing to do, especially when you’re older. “I admire her for doing it and I support her 100%.
--Elton John
it actually makes me quite emotional. He has my 150% support in every way. I think that the whole transgender thing is the new frontier.
--Boy George
You have to be so brave to live this truth of who you are.
And if Mrs. Jenner is transitioning, I give all my support to her and love and appreciate everything she’s given to America. She’s fighting a fight for a lot of kids that are being kicked out of their own homes.
--Patricia Arquette, whose sister is trans
I don’t think we should say, ‘Oh, you have to come out this way, or you have to come out this way. It’s not fair. I wish Jenner happiness and an authentic life.
--Jeffrey Tambor
1976 Olympic bronze medalist in the decathalon, Mykola Avilov, joked that now he was going to have to adjust to having been beaten by a woman.
When Brody was about 18-months-old and Brandon was about 3-and-a-half-years-old, Bruce came to me one day with a very somber look on his face and said, 'There's something about me that I really need to tell you, something you need to know.
--Jenner's second wife, Linda Thompson
Thompson shared her shock when Jenner admitted to identifying as a woman, and questioned him extensively.
Bruce lamented, 'I have lived in the wrong skin, the wrong body, my whole life. It is a living hell for me, and I really feel that I would like to move forward with the process of becoming a woman, the woman I have always been inside.'
It's impossible for those of us who are comfortable living in our own skin to fully grasp what an imprisonment that must feel like to be born into the wrong body. Bruce has already 'gone through the fire' ... it is certainly not our place to judge him or others who may feel trapped, ostracized, or alone.
--Thompson