‘Bruce Jenner’s Transformation Is a Lose-Lose for Liberal Ideology’

Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner recently came out as “transgendered” and “a woman”.  The left wants to celebrate, but Daniel Davis at The Federalist points out that this has exposed a contradiction embedded in modern liberalism:

This is a problem for the broader liberal sexual movement. It wants to celebrate transgenderism, but it cannot do so without referring to—and thus, at least tacitly affirming—gender norms. . . .

Marc Lamont Hill of the Huffington Post caught on to at least part of this problem on Twitter recently. After making clear that he supports for Jenner’s new gender identity, he wrote:

Between the Vanity Fair spread and “she’s so pretty” convos, we’ve smuggled in the same old cis/Eurocentric narratives about womanhood.

— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) June 1, 2015

If we only celebrate and welcome Caitlyn Jenner bc she conforms to tradition cis/and European standards of beauty, we are making a mistake.

— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) June 1, 2015

Hill understands that affirming someone’s gender identity involves affirming some cultural instantiation of that gender identity. As a post-colonial liberal, he wants to tear down those standards because, in his view, they perpetuate social injustice and gender inequality. . . .

Hence, the liberal contradiction. If you truly celebrate Jenner’s transition, you have to do it by recognizing some cultural narrative about womanhood, thereby perpetuating gender “inequality.” But if you’re committed to the abolition of gender norms, there’s no way you can affirm Jenner’s femininity, except in the meaningless abstract. It’s a lose-lose.

Jonah Goldberg at NRO offers further examples and discussion.

Ian Tuttle compares “transgenderism” to “transability” (better known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder).

Katherine Timpf remarks on the popular backlash against Jenner when he came out—not as a woman, but as a conservative!  It’s an interesting irony to note, but most of the examples seem to be no-name individual Twitter users.