After months of public speculation, Bruce Jenner, former Olympic gold medalist and Keeping Up the Kardashians star, is finally set to announce the gender transition we’ve all been waiting for. Good for Jenner! But mostly good for me, because Bruce Jenner’s private life is entirely my business and I want a piece of the action.
Sure, I have absolutely no relationship to Jenner, have seen zero episodes of the show, and have remained mostly ignorant to the triumphs and challenges of the trans community, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to witness every private detail that the paparazzi is willing to expose to me.
Are there photos of Jenner in a dress? How about wearing lipstick, earrings, or another marking of perceived femininity? Is there a brave paparazzi warrior among us who can nobly secure one of these images?
I love and respect trans people and will do everything I can to honor their personhood, but Jenner is a reality star so…it’s different.
America was built upon the right to be able to hunt down every fuzzy photo and vague anonymous tip until my curiosity is satiated. “Come to bed,” my husband begs me nightly as I doggedly search for new Jenner-related gender news. “You haven’t slept in weeks.” But he knows my reply: Not until I have visual and verbal confirmation of Jenner’s gender identity before anybody else.
Yes, I’m exhausted, but it’s my cross to bear. Somebody has to do it, and that someone is me.
What’s going on privately with Jenner is also my right to know. That is how privacy works, unless you are asking about my alleged “Little League Outburst” of ’07 because what happened will forever stay between me and Kip the snack vendor. But Jenner has left me in a hell of gender identity limbo for so long that sometimes I lose sight of my goal: to know the deepest vulnerabilities of people I will never, ever meet.
I deserve to know because I’m an American and it’s my right.
So many people in the trans community have suffered and continue to suffer as violence is waged against them, even in their own communities, but what about my community? How much longer will I have to stare at these pixilated images of a person trying to live their own life before they all just give in and agree to a Diane Sawyer interview? Must I continue to forget about my own children because of a matter Jenner seems determined to handle privately? Little do my children know: Food and other needs and pleasures are pointless when Jenner’s gender identity remains a secret to me.
It’s time for Jenner to speak to the whole world, for my comfort and yours—and so that the media can move on to badgering someone else.
