The Pitters' Place

A few months ago Bruce Jenner was involved in an accident which he rear ended a car pushing it into oncoming traffic which it was hit head on by a hummer killing the driver. The investigation is still ongoing but the evidence seems to support gross negligence on Bruce's end in disobeying traffic laws which resulted in being unable to stop to avoid hitting the car in front of him. And a woman died because of it.

But, there has been no talk of this? All buzz centers on his transformation into a woman. I think the transformation is overwhelming acceptance of this change is fantastic and is a win for LGBT communit... I can't help but wonder though, what of this woman who was killed? Is this issue being glossed over in favor of what media thinks we want to know about?

Thoughts?

Now that this person is Caitlyn and not Bruce...

"If it bleeds, it leads."

Well, that's the media for you.

I looked it up, and it seems there was investigation and quite a lot of publicity over the issue back in February, with Jenner refusing the lawsuit. Eh, if she's at fault, she should accept whatever legal punishment is appropriate instead of exploiting her fame to get away with it.

(though I'm uncomfortable with how a bunch of commenters were gloating about it, calling it 'murder', and throwing transphobic insults all over the place. they're using someone's death to justify their bigotry. but that's the internet for you.)

I've been more caught up in the circus surrounding the "clash" of his coming out vs. current feminist values.

I didn't even know he'd been in an accident, much less that someone died.

I've been more caught up in the circus surrounding the "clash" of his coming out vs. current feminist values.

*her

And that's because people continue to conflate gender identity and gender expression, aided by lazy journalists. Crossposting one of my Reddit posts to illustrate the differences:

Let's take the example of a stereotypically feminine woman.

Gender expression: She wears dresses and makeup, has long hair, and has feminine mannerisms. She likes pink things and loves shopping and hates sports

Gender identity: She thinks of other women as the same gender, and of men as the opposite gender. She thinks of herself as a daughter, sister, mother. When she sees a group of women, or when other people talk about women, she thinks: "I'm one of them". When someone insults women, she feels personally insulted; and vice versa when someone praises women. When she thinks about looking good, she aspires to look like a beautiful woman, not a handsome man.

The two don't always align. For instance there are women who shun anything feminine and are naturally masculine (gender expression), but who still fully think of themselves as women (gender identity).

Gender expression is a social construct, even though it often has ties to gender identity. Our ideas of what constitutes masculine or feminine differs from culture to culture. A lot of it is heavily influenced by society and how people raise boys vs girls. Things like the idea that girls are bad at maths are all socially constructed and do not hold true across cultures or eras. This is one of the things that feminism concerns itself with.

Whereas gender identity is what makes people transgender - where someone's internal gender identity does not match what they are perceived as due to their body.

There has yet to be conclusive evidence as to what causes this, but there is currently more evidence supporting a neurological basis of transgenderism than there is for homosexuality, particularly regarding differences in sexually differentiated parts of the brain that more closely match one's identified gender than physical sex. The prevailing scientific consensus seems to be that it has to do with pre-natal hormone levels.

But gender identity, unlike gender expression, is generally immutable and unaffected by social influences. Meanwhile, recent research on transitioned transgender children showed that they gave similar results as their non-trans counterparts on tests of gender identification; i.e. a trans boy 'feels like a boy' in the same way a non-trans boy does, and scored similarly:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/ind ... sures.html

tl;dr there's no clash between feminism and the fact that trans people exist. A lot of it is also down to the misconception that all trans women are feminine and all trans men are masculine and decided that they were women and men respectively because of their interests. When the truth is that there's no shortage of extremely effeminate gay trans men, some of whom even work as drag queens, and likewise no shortage of uber butch trans lesbians who believe that lumberjacking is their calling in life; but that, like non-trans people, it doesn't make them any less men or women for it. Which is completely in line with feminism.