12-15-2015, 05:18 PM
I saw a news article today about how some people in and out of the LGBT population (including Ellen DeGeneres) are put off by Caitlyn Jenner's conservative/Republican views on gay marriage and a few other topics.
That fire was apparently stoked further by her comments when she was interviewed as one of TIME Magazine's contenders for 2015 Person of the Year.
This is part of her open letter addressing the feedback.
![[Image: Screen-Shot-2015-12-14-at-11.55.23-AM-390x250.png]](http://caitlynjenner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-14-at-11.55.23-AM-390x250.png)
...I guess I’ve come to understand that maybe I have made some mistakes, and I need to make my real feelings more clear.
This week a lot of attention was brought to my comments in my TIME interview, in which I said that my appearance is important to me, that I want people to be at ease when they encounter me, and that people are still uncomfortable if a trans person looks like “a man in a dress.”
I think I caused a lot of hurt with this comment, and I’m truly sorry.
What I was trying to say is that our world really is still a binary one, and that people who look “visibly transgender” sometimes can struggle for acceptance and may be treated poorly by others. And while this may be true, it’s also something that needs to change.
Some people look gender non-conforming because they want to look that way – they don’t want to conform to society’s expectations. Those people have every right to look and present exactly as they choose. And then there are other people who don’t have the resources to access the medical procedures that would help them look the way they would like to look. Procedures, incidentally, that most health insurance plans refuse to cover. All of these people are my brothers and my sisters, and I am fighting alongside them, too.
My comments probably made it seem like all I care about is fashion, or makeup, or appearance. I can tell you I really enjoy all of that—it’s who I am. It’s the world I come from, and as a person in the media I have certain expectations for myself. But I am only one person. There are a lot of ways of being trans. And I want to help create a world in which people are able to express their gender in any way that is true and authentic for them. And most importantly – a world in which how a trans person is treated isn’t dependent on how they look.
I am guessing this is probably not the last time I will say the wrong thing, or say something the wrong way. I promise to keep learning, and to try to be more articulate in the future. We have a lot of hard work to do. I am looking forward to doing it together.
http://caitlynjenner.com/2015/12/still-s...-to-learn/
That fire was apparently stoked further by her comments when she was interviewed as one of TIME Magazine's contenders for 2015 Person of the Year.
This is part of her open letter addressing the feedback.
...I guess I’ve come to understand that maybe I have made some mistakes, and I need to make my real feelings more clear.
This week a lot of attention was brought to my comments in my TIME interview, in which I said that my appearance is important to me, that I want people to be at ease when they encounter me, and that people are still uncomfortable if a trans person looks like “a man in a dress.”
I think I caused a lot of hurt with this comment, and I’m truly sorry.
What I was trying to say is that our world really is still a binary one, and that people who look “visibly transgender” sometimes can struggle for acceptance and may be treated poorly by others. And while this may be true, it’s also something that needs to change.
Some people look gender non-conforming because they want to look that way – they don’t want to conform to society’s expectations. Those people have every right to look and present exactly as they choose. And then there are other people who don’t have the resources to access the medical procedures that would help them look the way they would like to look. Procedures, incidentally, that most health insurance plans refuse to cover. All of these people are my brothers and my sisters, and I am fighting alongside them, too.
My comments probably made it seem like all I care about is fashion, or makeup, or appearance. I can tell you I really enjoy all of that—it’s who I am. It’s the world I come from, and as a person in the media I have certain expectations for myself. But I am only one person. There are a lot of ways of being trans. And I want to help create a world in which people are able to express their gender in any way that is true and authentic for them. And most importantly – a world in which how a trans person is treated isn’t dependent on how they look.
I am guessing this is probably not the last time I will say the wrong thing, or say something the wrong way. I promise to keep learning, and to try to be more articulate in the future. We have a lot of hard work to do. I am looking forward to doing it together.
http://caitlynjenner.com/2015/12/still-s...-to-learn/