Bruce Jenner’s two-hour 20/20 special with Diane Sawyer aired last night, and I think we have to give it to Bruce: that was a really great, informative, emotional and powerful way to announce to the world that he is a transgender woman. Before we get started, GLAAD issued a helpful tip sheet on gender pronouns and names, which we will be following for the time being, until Bruce identifies otherwise. GLAAD says we should refer to Bruce as “Bruce,” considering he hasn’t identified any other name he would like to be called. They say that using male pronouns for the time being is appropriate because “Bruce Jenner has not indicated that a new name or pronoun should be used, so please respect his wishes and refer to Bruce Jenner by his current name and with male pronouns until such time as he requests something different.” Now, for the interview. Some highlights:
Bruce says that he’s felt like he was a woman living in a man’s body for as long as he can remember. He used to wear his sister’s clothes as a kid, and as an adult, he wore women’s clothes off-and-on throughout the years. He tries to explain by saying that God “gave him the soul of a female.”
Right now, he calls his gender identity Her and She, and he often referred to “Bruce” in the third person, just like he referred to Her and She in the third person. As in, “Bruce lives a lie. She is not a lie. I can’t do it anymore.” I don’t really know how to explain it other than he’s still transitioning and the pronouns and public identity are still in flux.
Bruce identifies sexually as straight, as in he’s loved and been sexually attracted to women all his life. When Sawyer pointed out that he’s a transgender woman who likes women and whether that makes him a lesbian, Bruce really didn’t know how to answer.
Bruce was on the path to transition in the 1980s, before he even got with Kris Jenner and after his second marriage failed. He was even in therapy and on estrogen treatments.
He is currently on estrogen treatments and has been for more than a year. He’s also confirmed that he’s been undergoing various plastic surgery procedures but has not undergone gender reassignment surgery. Sawyer asked Bruce point-blank about GRS and he basically said that he wasn’t sure if and when he would do it but that if he did it, he would do it quietly and without media fanfare.
Sawyer asked Bruce about his thoughts on Pres. Obama being the first president to ever say the word “transgender” in a State of the Union speech. Bruce was sort of like “meh” because – AND HERE IS THE MOST SHOCKING PART OF THE INTERVIEW – Bruce is a Republican. At first he said he was “conservative” and when Sawyer asked if he identifies as a Republican, Bruce said “Yeah. Is that a bad thing? Neither political party has a monopoly on understanding.” He also said he would totally speak to GOP politicians about Transgender identity and the need for more legal protections and rights for transgender people.
Apparently, Kris Jenner knew about a lot of this a long time ago. What was interesting to me was that Bruce made it sound like he was very happy being married to Kris and that they would still be married if she was more accepting of his transgender identity.
Bruce is not doing this for attention or a reality show storyline. He’s just not.
Bruce contemplated suicide last year, after the stories about his laryngeal shave made headlines and the paparazzi started stalking and harassing him. He said: “That night, I thought, ‘It’s over.’ I was in this walking up and down this hall back and forth all night long. Heart pounding. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t the easiest thing to do right now is go in the other room, get a gun. Pain is over. Done. Go to a better place.’ Then I thought, ‘I can’t do something like that. I want to know how this story ends.’ “
There was a lot of information about Bruce telling his kids and what their reactions were. It sounds like his older kids, his sons, had an easier time accepting it. Bruce said that the first kid he ever told was Kim Kardashian and that for the longest time, she didn’t want to talk about it with him, but she’s come around (more about that in a second). What surprised me was that Bruce said the kid having the hardest time is… Khloe. Khloe and Bruce have always had a special bond, and I got the feeling that Bruce was hurt that Khloe didn’t accept his identity immediately. But Bruce acknowledges that it’s a process that takes time, and all of the kids have come around or are coming around.
Bruce says that Kim finally came around because she and Kanye West were talking about Bruce’s transgender identity and Kanye made her understand what Bruce was going through in a surprisingly beautiful way. This is how Bruce explained it: “Kim told me a story. She goes, ‘You know what really turned me around? I’m thinking about this.’ And I said, ‘What?’ She goes, ‘Kanye.’ They were talking about it and he says to Kim, ‘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 room, 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.’ From Kanye, yeah. And since then, Kimberly has by far been the most accepting and the easiest to talk to about it.”
Anyway, I could keep writing and writing about this. I really have to applaud Diane Sawyer, ABC and 20/20 for the way they handled this interview and the way they packaged Bruce’s personal story with a larger story about transgender issues, including the increased suicide rates of transgender people, the violence they face and the legal protections that just aren’t there. Bruce deserves a lot of credit for choosing to discuss all of this publicly and becoming a public face of transgender advocacy.
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Screencaps courtesy of ABC.
SOURCE: Cele|bitchy – Read entire story here.