From the moment that Caitlyn Jenner announced her gubernatorial run, trans Americans braced themselves.
This is a vanity run – she cannot win. But she can do a lot of harm to the transgender community in the process.
The world already saw Cait throw trans athletes under the bus.
Now, she is letting the worst people alive use her as a prop to attack other trans women.
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It’s never a good thing when a member of the Trump crime family is on social media.
Donald Trump Jr. shared a malicious comparison between two different trans women.
One was Caitlyn Jenner. The other was Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine.
One was a glamorous photo of Cait being professionally photographed while fully dressed up.
The other was a grainy photo of Rachel Levine at work.
Cait was labeled “conservative girls,” while Rachel was labeled “liberal girls.”
“It seems to hold true no matter what!!!!” Don Jr gleefully commented.
He claimed: “Conservative girls are just better looking.”
The son of the disgraced former president commented: “maybe that’s why the libs are always outraged for no reason.”
That by itself was bad enough.
The meme would have been despicable if it had featured cis women.
Featuring trans women made it especially vicious — and thus on-brand for the Trumps.
Caitlyn then shared the despicable meme, featuring Don Jr.’s commentary.
Clearly, she felt flattered by the comparison.
Worse, she also added some laughing emojis — as if it were funny.
What Cait’s aim here was is as transparent as it is predictable.
First, she wants to show that she’s “not like a regular trans woman, she’s a cool trans woman” among vicious bigots.
She did this before, when she suggested that trans girls should not compete alongside cis girls in school.
This was vile and hypocritical of her.
Notably, Cait herself has competed in women’s golf tournaments.
She was simply malice signaling in desperate hope for approval from the worst people in the world.
But giving this cruel meme her blessing is more than just shallow and all-around crappy.
Because, as we said, this would be bad even if it were a malicious comparison between cisgender women.
People of any gender, be they cis or trans, are more than their looks.
It’s super weird when politicians are judged by their sex appeal or whatever just because they’re women.
This is worse, however, because Caitlyn has to know how vicious the pressures are on trans women.
The number of trans women who have balked at coming out because they worry that they’ll be “ugly” if they transition … it’s a huge deal.
Sincerely, there are trans women who have only come out after their epiphanies that they don’t have to be “hot trans girls” to be themselves.
Additionally, a number of factors can make it extremely difficult for trans folks, especially older trans folks, to meet traditional beauty standards.
Caitlyn herself should know this.
First, though some trans kids are lucky enough to get access to affirming healthcare, not all are.
This means that some trans folks do not get puberty blockers and are forced to go through the wrong puberty.
And that’s not even counting trans people who didn’t realize that they were trans until adulthood, when that ship had sailed.
In some cases, it requires tremendous amounts of money for a trans person to sculpt their adult body to match cis-centric beauty standards.
Caitlyn, of course, has a tremendous amount of money.
She should know that almost no other trans women on the planet have the kind of financial privilege that she experiences.
So, let’s see, by endorsing this meme, Cait:
-Reinforced the idea that women, including trans women, can and should be judged for their appearances.
-Rubbed it in the faces of every other trans person on the planet that her wealth helps her to better conform to gender expectations.
Based upon that alone, you’d almost think that she’s a clueless POS with no qualifications to run a McDonalds, let alone the country’s largest state.
And, of course, you would be right.
Caitlyn just seems to be measuring how much harm she can do to the greater trans community during this farcical vanity run.
It’s important to note that even members of marginalized groups can be bigoted.
A trans person cannot be “cisphobic” — that’s not a thing — but they can harbor internalized bigotry.
In this case, Caitlyn promoted transmisogyny (that very special blend of transphobia and misogyny experienced by trans women), and that will never be okay.