Commentary

A gay dad’s open letter to those who doubt Caitlyn Jenner’s heroism

A gay dad’s open letter to those who doubt Caitlyn Jenner’s heroism
Caitlyn Jenner accepts the Arthur Ashe award for courage at the ESPY Awards.
Caitlyn Jenner accepts the Arthur Ashe award for courage at the ESPY Awards. Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

When I was ten years old, I remember waking up in bed, cuddled up in my sheet from the night before. As I lay there daydreaming, I tucked the sheet around me and imagined it was a flowing ball gown; elegant, sophisticated and completely feminine. The fantasy came from deep inside me, and it was overwhelming.

That fantasy persisted into the Halloween season, and I proposed a “unique” costume idea to my mother: I would go as her.

Creative thinker that my mother was, she went for the idea.

On Halloween night, I pulled off the look quite well: Dress, makeup, pumps and pearls. I wasn’t a comic rendition of a woman — I looked like a younger version of my mother. Under the cover of Halloween, no one saw my motives, my self-exploration; nor did they react with knee-jerk misogyny, homophobia, or transphobia. I went off into the night and collected candy.

I hated it. What I discovered was that I wasn’t transgender in the least. I was, and am, a cisgender guy; a male in a male body. I probably had only gone a block when I began to loathe everything about the presentation. Not because it wasn’t working — it was. It just wasn’t me.

Perhaps walking that block in heels gave me a glimpse of what it feels like to be a closeted transgender person. I don’t know that for a fact; I can only imagine it to be true.

Was walking down the street in a dress courageous at so young an age? Was I a hero? Probably not. I wasn’t in danger. I had played my experimentation as a gag, a lark, a creative idea.

Now we’re in the age of Caitlyn Jenner. Public tabloid discussion has quickly moved from whether Bruce Jenner might be transgender to a debate about whether Caitlyn Jenner is a hero. And the latter discussion has gained a great deal of momentum since Caitlyn was awarded the prestigious Arthur Ashe Award for Courage.

My sons are both 12 years old, and we’ve discussed Caitlyn. They truly didn’t understand how she felt, nor her need to emerge as her true self. The issues involved needed to be explained. I told them why she, in my opinion, is a hero.

Apparently a lot of people out there need to have a similar discussion. HLN’s show Dr. Drew On Call recently assembled a panel to discuss whether Caitlyn was courageous and deserved an award. The panel consisted of television analyst Segun Oduolowu, transgender reporter Zoey Tur, and right-wing columnist Ben Shapiro.

As far as television goes, the panel and their interaction ended up being less like The View and more like Jerry Springer.

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Oduolowu immediately drove the conversation to a point of hysteria by screeching that Caitlyn Jenner was “a fraud.” He never explained how Jenner was not authentically transgender, but instead focused on lives lost to AIDS in the 1980s.

The cranky Shapiro was eager to hurl transphobic barbs at Tur. The insults worked — Tur threatened to send Shapiro home in an ambulance. Then she attacked Shapiro’s lack of emotional maturity.

Meanwhile, distasteful memes were making their way across the Internet; images that juxtaposed Jenner alongside disabled veterans. It was as though to say heroism was a competition; that if you’re heroic, it’s at the expense of someone else’s heroism.

I decided it was time for a letter.

To The Dr. Drew Panel and Those Who Question the Heroism of Caitlyn Jenner,

What exactly is a hero? When I hear the word, I think of my dad. He was a career marine who put his life on the line for his country. He was a man who put his kids and family first, and let us know he loved us every day. He sought to spiritually enrich us, and everyone around us, to the best of his ability. He always chose to do the right thing over what was easy.

When you say “hero,” I think of him.

When you say “hero,” here’s what I don’t think about: Your attitude, Mr. Shapiro. The way you talked about Caitlyn Jenner and addressed Zoey Tur was bold, brash and in-your-face, but it was definitely not heroic.

Willful ignorance isnt heroic. Reducing a person’s heart, soul and dignity to the physiological make up of their body cells isn’t heroic, especially when even the most perfunctory research would tell you that your assessments are factually inaccurate

You had no interest in enriching anyone there — let alone protecting them — and you reduced all of humanity by stating that “every cell in Caitlyn Jenner’s body is male, with the exception of some of his sperm cells.”

In fact, The International Journal of Science refutes your claim. It states that “sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary — their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions — known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs) — often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD2. When genetics is taken into consideration, the boundary between the sexes becomes even blurrier. Scientists have identified many of the genes involved in the main forms of DSD, and have uncovered variations in these genes that have subtle effects on a person’s anatomical or physiological sex. “

A hero doesn’t misrepresent easily accessed information to win his point.

Mr. Oduolowu, you faulted Jenner for not speaking up on behalf of AIDS victims in the ’80s. Since I buried over 40 close friends at the time, I found your rhetoric almost as offensive as Shapiro’s. My friends who died would never have attacked Caitlyn Jenner like you did. They would’ve understood the closet in which she’d been trapped, as many of them had been trapped in that closet, too. Their illness and subsequent deaths forced them out of hiding, and ultimately set an awareness in motion; an awareness that you are now benefiting from.

These friends would’ve been celebrating Jenner’s breakthrough.

Ms.Tur, your behavior is more familiar to me — it reminds me of my son Jesse. My son is a super-personable, bright kid. He has an elevated sense of justice. He also has a quick temper. When other kids used to treat him badly, he’d react and lash out. Invariably, he’d wind up getting in trouble, and not the instigator. It’s taken a few years, but now he sees how he was doing himself no favors. Our conversations went like this:

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Me: Hey pal, what went wrong in this situation?

Him: I got mad and got in trouble.

Me: Did the other guy get in trouble?

Him: No.

Me: Were you right that he harmed you to begin with?

Him: Yes.

Me: Who did your reaction harm?

Him: Me. I got in trouble. All the attention got on me instead of him.

Me: Exactly. He harmed you, and then you harmed you.

Him: There has to be a better way.

Me: I’ll help you find it.

Ms. Tur, I know that you were backed into a corner by an emotional bully. But striking back at an even lower level wasn’t heroic, and wasn’t effective. He was the true bully, but managed to make it look like he was legitimately under threat.

Meanwhile, images of disabled veterans were being placed alongside pictures of Caitlyn Jenner on the Interet — in the hopes of shaming her, and shaming anyone who considered her to be heroic.

I’m not addressing this letter to the people who put together the simplistic, superficial memes.

I wish to address the mob that responded to them.

Some of the memes included sports figures like Tim Tebow; an image that garnered 19,2000 “likes” and almost 15,000 comments, most of which were decidedly nasty.

The attack called to mind Jenner’s own words: “If you want to call me names, doubt my intention, go ahead, because the reality is, I can take it. But for the thousands of kids out there coming to terms with who they are, they shouldn’t have to take it.”

So, to the Dr. Drew Panel and the Mob, I ask: What is a hero?

To me, and to my sons, a hero is someone who, in the face of taunts, ridicule, and shaming, speaks out not for herself, but for others first.

Yes, Caitlyn Jenner is a hero. Not for being transgender. For standing up to you.

She’s a hero because you made her a hero.

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