Why it’s still awkward to talk about Caitlyn
The reaction to ex-Olympian’s gender switch highlights a mismatch between fast-moving culture and language, writes Megan Garber
THIS week, Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, the Olympic decathlon gold medallist who was married to Kris Kardashian, appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair. The reaction to this from the rest of the media was largely supportive. It was also a bit awkward. The Associated Press initially referred to Caitlyn as “Bruce” and as “he”. The Washington Post, in a similar vein, retracted a headline that referred to Jenner as “Bruce”.
An analysis of the tweets about the Vanity Fair shoot announced that “people are generally using the correct gendered pronoun when mentioning Jenner’s official Twitter account,” finding that, in the first flurry of discussion, 1 179 tweeters used “she”, compared with 176 who used “he”.
This was presented as good news — evidence, essentially, of the progress that has been made when it comes to progress itself. Which it was, sort of. Compare the response to Jenner’s transformation to the reaction two years ago when Chelsea Manning’s attorney announced that Manning identified as a woman and wished to be referred to with female pronouns.
News organisations debated whether she should actually be referred to as “a woman” named “Chelsea”, and Manning ended up taking the matter to court, which ruled that she should be referred to, indeed, as a woman.
What has been pretty much taken for granted in the conversation about Jenner is implied by the media reports’ quick corrections of their errors: the idea that Jenner gets to decide how she is identified by other people.
The guidelines of the American media advocacy organisation Glaad (originally the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) that advise that one should “use the descriptive term preferred by the individual” have been adopted by mainstream news organisations.
There is a sense — as people struggle to show support using the right pronouns, the right adjectives, the right assumptions— that there are, in fact, correct terms to be used: “she”, not “he”; “woman”, not “man”; “Caitlyn”, not “Bruce”. These terms are correct because, as Glaad says, they are preferred by the individual.
We live in a fast-moving culture. Memes rise and fall in the space of days, often hours; new words become clichéd almost as instantly as they are formed.
In the same way that long-held assumptions about language (“his or her”) get abandoned in favour of other approaches (“their”), so do cultural institutions.
Only a few years ago, same-sex marriage was a pipe dream; now it is on its way to normalisation.
Marijuana, until recently the stuff of black-market subculture, is quickly developing into a fullblown industry.
The shifts can feel, to those of us living within them, whiplashing. Cultural conventions have not yet caught up to cultural realities.
HE MAN: Bruce Jenner at the 1976 Olympics
Etiquette and language, the discursive products of quandaries that have been hashed out over time, can be slow to catch up with the fast-moving realities of the culture. And so, a bit of awkwardness when it comes to talking about Caitlyn Jenner is inevitable. The vocabulary is, to many, unfamiliar. The lines between “transgender” and “transexual” are murky. People, generally, mean well; people are also, to some extent, confused. Culture is fast; convention is slow.
In Jenner’s case, what we are seeing, essentially, is a subculture — in this case, the trans community — becoming, gradually but also sort of suddenly, mainstream.
The trans community already has conventions and mores, precise words and phrases that are the product of dialogue and trial and error. The challenge is to work out how they translate to the level of mass culture as paradigms shift.
There is something that happens in that shift, as convention catches up to culture. Call it a paradigm lag. It is the nebulousness that sets in, temporarily, as subcultures seep into the mainstream. It is the pro- cess of education and explanation that was on display, for example, in Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer, which seemed aimed as much at educating the public about transgenderism as it was about telling Jenner’s particular story.
It is the time needed to figure out whether “transgender” or “transsexual” or “trans” is the correct adjective for a particular person. It is the learning curve of culture.
In Jenner’s case, much of the language that will describe her comes from a similarly imperative place: there are guidelines; it is up to people simply to follow them.
The murkier aspects of legislation will probably take place in the form of questions about the lines between appreciation and objectification. How should we talk about Jenner’s new appearance — which she has fought for, and is part of her identity — without objectifying her? How do we avoid the kind of casual misogyny that is so deeply ingrained in our conversations about women’s bodies?
Again, the AP write-up is instructive: “Bruce Jenner,” the news wire initially announced, “made his debut as a transgender woman in a va-va-voom fashion in the July issue of Vanity Fair.” So was that analysis of gender pronouns used to describe Caitlyn, which pointed to tweets that called her “beautiful” and “gorgeous” and “the hottest Jenner”.
These were meant to be supportive, but they also effectively suggested that Jenner is fair game for the stuff that women deal with: an obsession with their looks, ob- jectification, support about their behaviour expressed as support of their appearance.
On the other hand, though, Jenner’s transformation is specifically about the transformation of her physical form. In choosing Vanity Fair to announce her transformation, she was also making a statement: Vanity Fair is glamorous. It will get the fashion right, the lighting just so. It has a way of turning people into art. As a colleague pointed out, “a Vanity Fair cover story with Annie Leibovitz’s photos is at the same time an exercise in glamorisation and humanisation — making [Jenner’s] tale both more epic and more specific”.
The balance between the epic and the specific, when it comes to language and to deeper questions about objectification and respect, is now for the culture to figure out, collectively.
And, if history is any guide, it will do that in fairly short order.
The current awkwardness in the conversation about Jenner will subside; common language will emerge; norms will announce themselves. We’re in a grey zone right now. We’re just catching up.
As “Bruce”, Jenner was known for clearing hurdles. There is a moment, after the great leap is made, when the hurdler hovers in the air, detached from the track, seeming suspended over all that is solid. The ground, for that tense instant, is far away.
That is where we are right now: hovering, uncertain, suspended. But we are moving forward, as quickly as we can. And soon, gravity being what it is, we will land. — ©theatlantic.com
How do we avoid the kind of casual misogyny that is so deeply ingrained in our conversations about women’s bodies?