Throughout the past three years, it’s been horrifying to see where and when people have finally had enough of Donald Trump. Horrifying because for many people, they were totally fine with him demonizing immigrants. They were totally fine with him demonizing all Muslims. They were totally fine with him mocking prisoners of war, veterans and gold-star families. They were fine with his barely-veiled anti-Semitic dog whistles. They were fine when he was blatantly racist. But then slowly it dawned on those people: oh, right, he hates a lot of white people too. Oh, right, he’s a fascist who is literally putting children in cages. Oh, right, he thinks Nazis are “very fine people.”
Caitlyn Jenner was actually fine with all of that. She still supported Donald Trump and the Republican party even though they hated her. She still supported Trump even when it was clear that he believes women are sub-human. It was only this week, when it was discovered that the Trump Administration is going to try to define transgender out of existence, that Caitlyn is finally over Trump. She wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, which you can read in its entirety here. She details she believed that Trump would stand up for the LGBTQ community, and she remained “optimistic that this was how I could leverage my privilege for change.”
I believed I could work within the party and the Trump administration to shift the minds of those who most needed shifting… Despite the criticism I received from segments of the LGBTQ community for engaging with this administration, I remained hopeful for positive change.
Sadly, I was wrong. The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president. The leader of our nation has shown no regard for an already marginalized and struggling community. He has ignored our humanity. He has insulted our dignity. He has made trans people into political pawns as he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energize the most right-wing segment of his party, claiming his anti-transgender policies are meant to “protect the country.” This is politics at its worst. It is unacceptable, it is upsetting, and it has deeply, personally hurt me.
Believing that I could work with Trump and his administration to support our community was a mistake. The recently leaked Department of Health and Human Services memo that suggests — preposterously and unscientifically — that the government ought to link gender to one’s genitalia at birth is just one more example in a pattern of political attacks. One doesn’t need to look back far to witness the president assault our nation’s guardians with a ban on trans people serving in the military or assail our nation’s future with a rollback of Obama-era protections for trans schoolchildren.
It’s clear these policies have come directly from Trump, and they have been sanctioned, passively or actively, by the Republicans by whose continued support he governs. My hope in him — in them — was misplaced, and I cannot support anyone who is working against our community. I do not support Trump. I must learn from my mistakes and move forward.
Again, she was totally fine with all of the sexual assaults, and the mockery of assault victims. She was totally fine with the children in cages. She was totally fine with the Nazi rallies. She was totally fine the Muslim Ban. She was totally fine with the flagrant collusion with Russia. She was totally fine with the thick veins of racism, Islamophobia, jingoism, nationalism, nativism and anti-Semitism that run through this administration. She was only not-fine with it when Trump’s open and blatant transphobia bashed her in the face… after two years. Give me a f–king break, Caitlyn.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Peak White Privilege! It’s not important unless it happened to me then the world must stop!
Exactly!! When will people wake up and understand we are all in this together and it has to be a United, collective effort to fight back and win against this crap. It kills me that people refuse to understand that yeah, they’re coming after all the minorities, but at some point they’re going to come after you too. Wake the fuck up, geez.
i’m no fan of cait but isn’t this what she’s currently going through – waking up? do we still welcome people late to the party or do we screen everyone with the perfection meter? i really don’t know. especially now with the midterms that things are so crucial and uncertain.
So much this ^
Fuck her for not caring about anyone but herself. I watched I am Cait hoping to see a newly trans women who formerly lived a life of white male privilege understand the community she was now a public face for. Unfortunately that’s not Cait. She has never been open to hearing anything that didn’t align with her sense of privilege. She is any too late. She can go right ahead and fuck off
She felt her White Male Privilege would transfer to her transition (no pun intended, really! lol). She’s *finally* waking up to the fact that in the way that matters most, it hasn’t. Welcome to the new America…where it’s all insanity, all the time!
I can’t help but feel that she stepped over so many women to become one.
You nailed it.
She doesn’t mean one word of this and hasn’t read or written this
It is and always has been about her. Her shift is because of worldwide disdain for her position
And she will still vote for him in private because – let’s face it – none of this will ever affect Caitlyn in any way. That is how Trump got to where he is, by pitting small groups of people against other small groups of people (“real Americans” against immigrants; the religious against LGBTQ; conservatives against liberals; etc.). If everyone he has demonized joined together, he wouldn’t be in office. People like Caitlyn, wealthy, white, privileged, will always put their own self interest ahead of others’ human rights.
Caitlyn seems like a deeply unhappy, even miserable woman.
I have no idea how she and so many others have been able to turn a blind eye to, or outfight accept, the actions of this horrible president. I think she’s just super miserable and can’t have any compassion for others.
I can’t speak to how miserable she may or may not be, but she has always struck me as extremely self-absorbed. So for her to even denounce Trump feels pretty major for her, even as she’s been ok with all his other atrocities.
But I do agree that many Trump supporters seem filled with anger, rage or misery. So much hate for their fellow humans, so much fear that somehow all they have will be snatched from them. I can’t imagine living like that.
Seriously. On the news yesterday, they had a quote from a woman IN MINNESOTA, almost 2,000 mi. from the Mexico/US border, who was told at a Dump rally, that “THE MEXICAN CARAVAN” will be coming to take over and squat in white people’s lake homes in the off season!! THIS is what she said in the interview!! That “people who live in the homes in the summer, and leave them empty for the winter, will come back to find MEXICAN squatters taking over their homes” and that she was “very afraid!!”… OMFG!! THIS is what the RThugs are putting out there.
Of course, when Seth Meyers put this on, this is what he replied: “Of course, people who have walked THOUSANDS of miles to the border, are going to walk TWO THOUSAND MORE MILES up to Minnesota IN THE WINTER to take over your lake house!” And then he did a face palm lolol. Fantastic!
This would make a fantastic Melissa McCarthy movie. A woman in Minnesota prepares to fight the caravan, nailing plywood on her windows, stocking up on canned food.
Christ how stupid people are.
I just wonder where she got the idea from, that Trump would ever care about LGBTQ? How? Just shows the level of her delusions.
I guess its pretty easy for Jenner to ignore all these topics- she is white and rich, lives her life in her Malibu Mansion and does not have a care in the world. She is not affected by it, so she is fine with it.
I tend to think she never really believed that, she was playing politics, imo, trying to justify her support for the GOP.
There is a collective delusion where 45 is not the words coming out of his mouth, but some savior of change. It’s frightening on a level I don’t think many of us can fully grasp because it is more than our minds are ready for.
The news ran multiple sound bites of Dump saying how (prior to election, while campaigning), that he was a “full supporter of the LGBTQ community”. How *anyone* with a functioning brain cell would believe that is beyond me.
My suspicion is that she just isn’t very knowledgeable or passionate about politics. Plenty of people aren’t. They may have vague feelings making them seem suited for one Party or another, but they mainly just focus on their own lives within their own limited circle. Rich people especially are insulated from a lot of the effects of bad government policies. So of course they wake up to someone like Trump only once their own ox is gored. That’s actually quite normal. We all have to choose our own battles or else we would be in a constant state of paralysis and overload.
I’ll take it. She woke up, that’s the important thing. She’s quite clear now that Trump is not someone to support and she can’t influence him.
You can add the endless funding of endless wars and climate change denial to the list of things she’ s fine with. But don’t demonize people for being late to the resistance. We need their votes.
Yeah, I think we need to cut some slack to anyone who jumps off the Trump train, no matter how late. As you said, we need their votes. I don’t know how many minds Caitlin will change but every little bit helps.
This was my feeling too, agree with everything said about how she apparently doesn’t care about all the other horrible things he’s done, but at least here is a celeb supporter that is vocally disavowing him, better late than never.
Nah, I feel like demonizing people that support morally repugnant policies until it effects them is perfectly valid. Why would anyone humor a trash person like that for their vote? I’d rather they stay their ass home. But this is the kind of thinking we’re gonna see in 2020, and it’s gonna make me nauseous.
You’d rather she stay home than vote Dem? I don’t think we (as a country) can afford that. Too many people staying home is part of the reason we ended up with Trump.
Yes. I should add the caveat that my politics are also veering further and further left the older I get and the Democrats center-right politics are no longer enough. There’s an entire subset of people that would eagerly vote for more progressive policies and candidates that aren’t getting reached because so many folks are focused on trash bags like Caitlyn seeing the light when it’s convenient for them. So again, Yes, I’d rather she stay her dumbass at home.
+1
Yes I would rather she stay home because she is *not* part of the group that stayed last time, she was part of the large group of White Women who showed up and voted for Trump.
I’m sick of the party going after these selfish GOP’ers who will happily watch their fellow humanbeings suffer, be jailed or murdered so their stock portfolios can get fatter. Selling out others for money. They are not dependable and will sell us out ASAP when it’s convenient. I would rather we focus on those who have sat out elections due to not feeling included. I would rather we get new blood into politics who are from the lower or middle class who know the pain of looking between the couch cushions to get coins to buy dinner.
Reef – so now in addition to waiting for the perfect candidate, we have to wait for perfect voters?
No wonder Trump is in the Oval Office.
MTE
“he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energize the most right-wing segment of his party”
Um, newsflash, Cait: it’s not the “most right-wing” segment that is anti-LGBTQ, ESPECIALLY the ‘T’, it’s the MAJORITY OF REPUBLICANS. This is not some version of RW extremism, this IS the Republican party writ large. They don’t care about marginalized members of our society and they never have.
There are a couple different bills currently languishing in the senate that would protect Trans troops and members of the community but they are unable to pass because they only received two “yes” votes from the GOP. Like it or not, the Democratic party is the closest thing we have to the party of equal rights. If you vote Republican, you don’t GAF about anyone except for rich whites, straight-up.
Classic white naïveté.
Notice that nowhere in her useless OpEd is “I am committed to restoring as a Democrat, voting for Democrats, and donating to Democrats who seem to be the only party interested in acknowledging me as a human being with unalienable rights.”
As Kaiser acknowledged, she was fine with everything else. Never spoke up about the other atrocities. Only when it PERSONALLY affected her did she dredge up sympathy. She will go the Ivanka route: Disapprove, but still stand by, because at the end of the day, she has spent the majority of her life as a privileged, white man. And that shit will take years to decompress.
But isn’t this typical of his supporters? People are fine with him as long as his actions dont directly affect them. It’s when it’s something that they care about that is being threatened then all the sudden they wanna take some moral high ground.
Her wealth and whiteness will help ensure that she is pretty much isolated from the worst of it. Sadly, black transgendered women, impoverished members of the trans community, trans children, and every other vulnerable segment will have targets on their backs. As if their safety wasn’t in danger BEFORE this bullshit, now it will be even worse.
I want to give her credit for not digging in her heels further, but I struggle to feel empathy or understanding for her. Saying she was wrong and regrets supporting Trump is ultimately useless, ya know? Voting blue is more effective than saying she’s sorry.
Caitlin is a straight up as**hole. F*ck her and her stupid epiphany.
Exactly!!! Bruce was a POS…..she is an as***hole. That’s it! She is horrible. I think she really believed she could become a politician or something. Soooooo delusional!!!
I am dying to find out what Caitlyn’s friends on her show “I am Cait” think of her sudden awakening. From what I remember there were a few women who were barely containing their disgust at Caitlyn’s political views.
Ugh. That’s all I can say.
That, and there’s a meme about how Caitlyn, Janice Dickinson, and Melania look like the same person and now whenever I look at any of them, I can’t not see it.
The other day I was flipping through a magazine at the doctor’s office and opened up the page to an ad featuring what I thought was a giant photo of Melania. It took me a minute to realize it was actually Christy Turlington. Eek.
She’d still be a supporter if he wasn’t turning against her lifestyle and the LGBTQ community. Ignorant people is how we got in this nightmare disaster. Dumbass supporters only heard what they wanted, and blocked out the bad, insisting he’d never be bad, and liberals were just making up stories. Caitlyn, you really helped screw over a lot of innocent people by voting for that obvious monster
Welcome to the desert of the real.
—Morpheus
wow!!!! Perfect!
Bitch, please! Caitlin we already know you are dumb as a box of rocks, so how about just going away. By all means, please also take your famous-for-nothing extended family with you.
Who cares though. I prefer Laverne’s opinion. More Laverne please.
She wasn’t leveraging her privilege. She was in freaking denial that she didn’t still have it anymore. She makes my teeth ache.
“Sadly, I was wrong.”GTFO.
This circles the point author Chimamanda was making and got flamed for it
That is whilst trans women certainly have their own angst with their identity growing up . If they presented as boys and were socialised as boys/men before transitioning there is privilege there to how society views and treats them (even if this privilege is unwanted/invisible to them ) and thus trans women lived experiences are different from natal women(this in no way invalidates their identity it just is )
Caitlin spent most of her life socialised as a rich privileged white male (an olympic champion to boot ) and it shows
She feels there is no benefit being on his train so she change sides.
So many of my trans friends are terrified and Cait now realizes she made a mistake? GTFO. A friend couldn’t find a surgeon to do his top surgery in his state (the ENTIRE state ) even when he had cash to pay for it. He has to go to another state, over 8 hours away to have the procedure done. Cait’s sudden come to Jesus moment is too late.
I’d really appreciate it if the mainstream media would stop allowing Caitlyn Jenner to be the mouthpiece for trans people when it is obvious they only let her talk because she’s famous. Laverne Cox, Dean Spade, Jack Halberstam, Janet Mock–we couldn’t let these people be voices for trans people? Even Jazz Jennings has better things to say than Caitlyn Jenner, and she’s a teenager.
So how about it, Washington Post? Can we agree that this is the last time you publish this person, now that she finally figured out facts?
Actions speak louder than words. Until she does anything other than spout words I don’t believe she has changed her opinion much.
You’re a day late & a dollar short here Caitlyn. Give us a break!
Who’s opinion is she hoping to change with this piece? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that 95% of trans people realized from the get-go that Trump wasn’t in their corner. Does she hope to reach other Republicans? Because news flash-they DON’T care.
Who is even listening to this bitch now anyway? Not me.
Day late, dollar short
This isn’t even the first time the trans community have been attacked by this administration and she’s self reflecting now? Bitch, take several seats.
Three years and about a million crimes, scandals, and horrors too late.
We tried to warn you.
Caitlin’s problem is that she can’t get over putting herself first. Whatever else happens I remember the woman she killed by not driving as though she had a trailer on back. She didn’t stop because she didn’t remember her heavy load. Enough said.
What she was really fine with was the tax cut. She’s a crass opportunist, just like Trump.
She’s pathologically self-obsessed. Where was she when Trump was mocking a disabled reporter? Where was she when he was mocking a Gold Star family? He’s never made it a secret that he loathes all people who aren’t heterosexual so she should have known this was coming. No big surprise here Caitlyn so don’t act all shocked and horrified that the Trump administration was planning this all along. Why don’t you take your mock outrage and do some actual work with LGBTQ organizations to fight these fascist bastards.
This is a load. She voted with her wallet, and now it came back to bite her. She couldn’t be more transparent. You weren’t trying to be a warrior, you were trying to protect your assets. No one is buying it, Cate.
What I want to know is…does this mean she realizes that the republican party PERIOD does not give a crap about her community or is she just placing blame solely on Trump and will continue to support republicans in the future? I’m sure the answer is the later. I feel bad that the trans community’s loudest voice is a rotten person like Caitlyn. They deserve better.
Great writeup covered everything.
Yep. Lots of people don’t care until it personally affects them. I hope karma bites those people in the behind!
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
God what a dummy…
I don’t know what’s wrong with some of the people in this comment section but even if a trans person is a morally repugnant human being, that does NOT make it okay to use their dead name in any context whatsoever. That does not make you a morally superior person, ever.