Caitlyn Jenner Just Proved She’s Exactly Like Other Republican-Voting Privileged White Women

By:  Lisa M. Hayes – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.

Everyone was confused when it happened. Caitlyn Jenner came out early in support of Donald Trump. She even campaigned for him touting his strong support of LGBTQ issues. It made headlines because it made exactly zero sense to anyone.

Caitlyn Jenner has always been a walking contradiction. Not because she is transgender, but because she seems to use her platform to meander through the issues in ways that seem contradictory and at times damaging. For example, going on Ellen to show off her fabulousness during an interview in which she said she wasn’t fully in support of the right of gay people to marry. It was a headscratcher.

However, her adamant and vocal support of Trump was more than head scratching. It was a dizzyingly confusing stance that put her at odds with the vast majority of the transgender community and lots and lots of other people who just didn’t get it.

So, surprising no one, after the Trump administration starting talking about stripping transgender people of their protected rights to live like everyone else, Caitlyn Jenner made a statement:

“Sadly, I was wrong,” Jenner wrote, adding, “The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president.”

She argued that Trump “has shown no regard for an already marginalized and struggling community.”

“Believing that I could work with Trump and his administration to support our community was a mistake,” Jenner wrote.

She pointed to a New York Times report that the Department of Health and Human Services has a draft proposal to define gender under Title IX as solely male or female at birth, with no room for change.

Jenner said her hope in Trump and Republicans was “misplaced” and that she “cannot support anyone who is working against our community.”

“I do not support Trump,” she wrote. “I must learn from my mistakes and move forward.”

Ok…

And here’s the thing. At that moment, Caitlyn Jenner joined the ranks of privileged white women who are perfectly willing to follow along until Trump’s tyranny affects them. It’s ok until it comes home and for Caitlyn obviously trampling the rights of trans people was her come to Jesus moment.

She was fine with kids in cages.
She was fine with angry hostile racist rhetoric.
She was fine with saber rattling with other foreign powers and ditching our long-standing foreign allies while palling up to the world’s most dangerous dictators.
She was fine with an alleged rapist supreme court nominee and mocking a sexual assault victim who came forward.

Hell, she was fine with “grab ’em by the pussy”. Maybe that’s because she didn’t have one when he was bragging about grabbing them.

But Transgender rights – she had to finally draw a line.
Which is exactly how a large swath of republican voting white women think.
If it’s not a problem for me, it’s not a problem…

Except that’s not how fascism works. The problem with fascism and hate is it spreads and very few people will find themselves immune forever.

I was talking to a politically right-leaning, white, upper-middle-class friend of mine who recently said, “I supported Trump. I was proud to say I voted for him. But I could so relate to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. I believed her. I could see myself in her. When he mocked her at that rally, I was done.”

And just like that, a white woman felt the sting of a poison that’s been running through our democracy since Trump took the stage as a candidate.
It was a day late and a lot of votes short for all the people whose rights and dignity Trump has been discarding all along.

Caitlyn Jenner’s statement is too little too late to be valuable. However, she’s proven you don’t need to be born with a pussy to be a privileged republican white woman. All you need to be is compassionless to the suffering of others but willing to throw down to protect yourself.