Why Bruce Jenner does not deserve to be a woman

He doesn’t just get to do this – he can’t just become one of us. He doesn’t know our struggles, our deep, primal duress, and he never will. The hardship of growing up will be foreign to him, the pain of being seen as lesser will never touch him and the humiliation of being reduced to but an object of desire will be a ghost before his eyes. He can’t just jump on the train in the last minute and expect to identify with all the other passengers’ journey. I am literally shaking at how presumptive he is – it’s opportunistic misogyny of the highest order and I won’t stand that as a feminist. Don’t know what I’m talking about yet? Well I think you might have guessed. The topic of today’s rant is none other than Bruce Jenner (or Caitlyn as he falsely calls himself). As you might know former star athlete and current Kardashian Patriarch, Bruce Jenner has come out as transsexual. 65-year old Bruce has apparently been “suffering” from gender dysphoria since adolescence and has been undergoing hormonal replacement treatment since the 1980’s. He has also been crossdressing and has announced that he will broadcast his transitioning in a reality show/documentary programme on national television. The media is fawning over him, raising him to the skies for his “bravery”, and some of my fellow (unenlightened) feminists, who’re supposed to be tolerant and open-minded are failing to see what this is really about: ATTENTION.

The only reason Bruce is transitioning now is because he wants all the world’s eyes on him. Ever since his family had such an explosive success in “Keeping up With The Kardashians”, Bruce has most likely felt forgotten and brushed aside. I mean he used to be a star, right? He used to be the athlete that everyone looked up to, and now he’s just an old man milling about surrounded by his much more talented, beautiful and strong female family members who’re now uberfamous. This has undone him, he wants to be back in the limelight and he’s employed a dirty tactic to become the talk of town again. I mean think about it, he claims he’s been feeling like a woman ever since he was a teenager, but only now, at age 65, he decides to do something about it. It’s obvious that the fact that he’s decided to undergo hormone replacement therapy only after the Kardashians rise to fame is NOT a coincidence. Had he been a real transsexual, he would have done something MUCH, MUCH earlier.

Besides, Bruce doesn’t just get to become a woman. He’s a 65-year old, republican man who has been living his entire life as a player. He’s had three wives and I don’t know how many mistresses. Now he’s choosing to step into the boots of a woman, thinking that he will in ANY way be a real woman. He will not have experienced anything that makes women women. He will not have grown up in a patriarchal society, he will not have been oppressed his entire youth, he will not have been held back by misogyny in the work force. He decides, as a famous millionaire, on a whim, that he wants to become a woman and enjoy the last 15 years of his life as one. He wants the sweet dessert and is laughing at real women who’ve been food poisoned by the entrée and the main course for decades. Being a woman is something that has to be earned, it’s something that comes from experience and it’s certainly something that doesn’t just come with some estrogen. Bruce will never know what it is to be a woman, he’s just a male freeloader who is grinning in the face of women’s. struggle. It feels as though As if this wasn’t enough, Bruce maintains that he’s straight, meaning that he is not attracted to men, but will continue to chase women once he’s transitioned. This mocks REAL, homosexual transpeoples’ experiences and makes gives him a very intentional freepass from any homophobia. It is evident that Bruce wants to go through this transition without sacrificing too much of his current lifestyle, and through remaining straight (continuing to have sex with women), he is not really making that much of a change. It really diminishes transpeople who’ve felt a strong attraction to the opposite sex for their entire lives, the homosexual men who’ve transitioned because they’ve actually been women their entire lives, not just when a career opportunity presents himself. I think it’s disgusting of Bruce to take on the role as a female, he gets all the perks, the money, the attention, the validation, but chooses to tailor his transsexuality in a way that causes him the least possible mental harm. It’s a disgrace. It is unequivocal that Bruce Jenner does not deserve to become a woman. Bruce Jenner will never know what it is to be forced to play with Barbies from an early age, to be catcalled, to be discriminated in the workplace. He is becoming a woman from a place of privilege and is merely using his transsexuality as a springboard to success and fame. I would argue that Bruce has never really felt like a woman at all, but when he saw how successful and beloved the women in his life had become, he just couldn’t stand being left outside in the cold with a pair of cajones. I stand up for real trans-rights, but people, unenlightened people, will probably call me transphobic because they’re not even close to the level of understanding of social justice that I am on. I want you all to stand up for REAL transpeople, unite under the hashtag #BruceIsNoWoman , let’s show the Patriarchy that pretending to be a woman for your own gain is not something that will be accepted in 2015