Every year on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, there’s one campmate that gets everybody talking before they even set foot in the jungle.
And this year, it’s Caitlyn Jenner.
While we have plenty of homegrown famous faces in the current series, notably legendary footballer Ian Wright and Girls Aloud and passport-losing icon Nadine Coyle, there’s no denying that Caitlyn is the real top billing here.
Not only is the 70-year-old an Olympic legend, previously being labelled the world’s greatest athlete, she is part of one of the world’s most famous families, the Kardashians. Cait was married to Kris Jenner for 24 years and is the parent of supermodel Kendall, billionaire Kylie and The Hills star Brody, the step-parent of Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Rob, and the in-law of Kanye West.
It’s no wonder the show shelled out a reported £500,000 to get Cait down under.
But as excited as I was knowing that Caitlyn would spill some serious Kardashian tea in between bites of cockroaches and kangaroo nether regions, I was also slightly dreading the reality TV star going on the show.
Cait came out publicly as a transgender woman in April 2015 at the age of 65, appeared as Caitlyn on a groundbreaking Vanity Fair cover two months later, and completed reassignment surgery in January 2017.
Rather depressingly, I feared that four years after Caitlyn legally changed her name and gender, there would still be a horrible transphobic reaction to her being in the jungle.
And sadly, a quick search on social media proved me right.
During the premiere of I’m A Celeb on Sunday night, Caitlyn was deadnamed (calling a trans person by their pre-transition name) repeatedly as people deliberately referred to her as Bruce Jenner in callous tweets. People – mainly men – joked about the star pre-assignment, repeatedly called her a man and made generally disgusting comments about her looks, all while calling others ‘snowflakes’ for complaining about them.
One person argued that Caitlyn shouldn’t have been called an ‘Olympian and reality star’ in her bio because she won the gold medal in the men’s decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics pre-transition.
Sure, you can find anything on social media if you look hard enough. But this wasn’t one or two tweets. It was a flood, and some made their way onto my timeline, even though I follow – or I thought I followed – people with the same beliefs as me; i.e. trans women are women and trans men are men.
Caitlyn is one of the most visible trans women in the world, with probably the most high profile trans journey thanks to the media coverage of her reassignment. Pretty much everybody knows that she underwent this journey, and is a woman. So if she’s being deadnamed, what hope does anybody else have?
Yes, Bruce was an incredibly famous, legendary Olympian, was on the front of a Wheaties box and went on to be the patriarch of the biggest family on reality TV. Yes, it may have taken people a while to adjust when referring to Caitlyn. But there is a difference between accidentally using the wrong pronoun and apologising immediately, and deliberately writing a person’s dead name alongside a transphobic tweet about their genitals. It’s not just bants, it’s transphobia.
Many of the people tweeting about ‘Bruce’ may not think they’re being transphobic, the same way some folk who use the word ‘f**’ or ‘n*****’ argue they’re not homophobic or racist, they’re just sick of being ‘politically correct’.
But gleefully refusing to acknowledge a trans person’s gender and name is erasing them as a person. Caitlyn does have more privilege than most, of course she does, but her speaking about transitioning is bringing the trans experience into sitting rooms that may not be educated on these issues, and that’s incredibly important.
Her fame and privilege can be questioned and critiqued but they don’t give anyone the right to be transphobic towards her.
You don’t have to like Caitlyn as a person. I mean, I love the Kardashians as much as the next reality TV obsessive, but I think she’s come across as arrogant on I Am Cait at times and her prior support of Donald Trump is extremely troubling.
But I can disagree with her politics while respecting her gender. You don’t have to vote for Caitlyn if you don’t like her attitude – go ahead, nominate her for every bushtucker trial going.
But if you’re complaining about her in the camp while misgendering her – well, sorry to tell you, but your transphobia is showing.
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