Dear Caitlyn Jenner

Dear Caitlyn Jenner,

I am a woman whose biologic, gender and sexual identities are comfortably aligned in the dominant fashion, but am ready, willing and trying to embrace the full spectrum.  I have made a lot of progress.  I accept the limitations of a binary approach to identity and the word ellgeebeeteecue rolls off my tongue with a smooth familiarity.  But I’m far from perfect.  Caitlyn, there were many ways that you could have introduced your transgender identity, but I must say I was dismayed by your coquettish picture on the cover of Vanity Fair, which looks either like it is one cottontail short of a Playboy bunny or a World War II pin-up picture that lovelorn GIs pasted to their lockers.  Both are open invitations to objectify a female identity.

I succumbed to this temptation.  There I was in the check-out line at the grocery story carefully examining your crotch for a tell-tale bulge of genitalia.  As I examined your breasts I tilted the magazine to avoid a distracting glare.  Were those breasts real or were they some sort of technological air-brushed confection?

I would like to move beyond spectacle, gossip and prurient curiosity, but I need your help.  In your interview with Diane Sawyer, you said that you had the “soul of a woman.”   What are the hallmarks of that female soul?  I have no idea, perhaps because I have no frame of reference.  Is it my female soul that draws me to the kitchen with the other women while the men chat at the barbecue?  Is there a biologic basis for a soul?  Scientists have found anatomic and neurophysiologic differences in the male and female brain, which for women translate into a superior ability for communication and emotional tones consistent with our evolutionary role as caretakers.  I have also learned that the fetal brain develops separately from the genitalia and there is no straight line between how the genes of the X and Y chromosomes are translated into proteins, and how these proteins interact with each other.  Are you still with me Caitlyn?  It’s confusing and I’m no neurophysiologist, but basically I’m saying that I can see a biologic basis for a hard-wired female soul, and that, yes, a woman can be trapped in a man’s body.

So I accept your inner gender identity.  But it is your external gender expression that I have trouble with.  Certainly there are plenty of men who fully embrace their feminine side, but transgender territory is defined as the further need to be recognized as a woman, both in the mirror and by the outside world.  Unlike the biologic imperative of gender identity, this gender expression is culturally determined and thus offers choices.

Caitlyn you are now the most visible standard bearer for transgender women, and what I am unfortunately seeing is that your version of a woman is all about clothes and make-up.  When you wear a corset on the cover of Vanity Fair, when your breasts swell beyond your plunging neckline, when you travel with your own make-up artist, and when a room in your home is designated at the “glam room,” you are giving a full frontal embrace to the well-polished stereotype of a woman as a purely sexual object, an artifice that is not closely allied with intelligence, compassion or nurturing. Ironically, you are simultaneously trying to break down stereotypes by adopting another.  And it is a polarizing stereotype at the furthermost reaches of the spectrum.  I feel cheapened – being a woman just has to be about more than clothes and make-up.

Your ESPY award for courage was presented by Abby Wambach, the soccer star who is married to a woman.  Abby was wearing a modified tuxedo outfit.  Some who know her sexual orientation might snidely comment that she looks a bit “butch,” while others might simply note that her outfit is androgynous.  Here is another irony in the spectrum.  Women have made great progress in expanding the range of acceptable clothing.  Corsets, uncomfortable dresses, panty hose and heels are no longer required and women can easily shop in the men’s department.  In fact, the T-shirt and top I am wearing today are from the men’s section of Target.  The same cannot be said for men, who have to move farther along the fashion spectrum to clearly fall into the range of women’s only clothing.

So here is my question.  Caitlyn, if you had shown up in Abby Wambach’s outfit, would the world have considered you a transgender woman?  Could you consider yourself a woman wearing such an outfit?  How much of your external identity is defined by what you wear?

Yes, I should cut you a break.  My gender identity is something that I have just taken for granted.  I have no interest in fashion, dress comfortably and in fact, at age 63, have come to view breasts not as assets, but as potentially life-threatening annoyances.  None of this threatens my female identity.  In contrast, you have struggled to establish your identity in the context of the Kardashian household.  For the past 25 years you have been ensconced in the impenetrable hyper-estrogenic bubble of five primping women who selfie their asses, tweak, pluck or tattoo eyebrows, plump their lips, extend their hair, hoist their breasts and shave God knows where.  Perhaps it is no surprise that you have followed a similar path.

I know you are new at this, only a year into your public transition. In contrast my identity as a woman is based on my cumulative experience of being treated like a woman – the flowing confidences and gossip I have shared with other women as we arrange hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen and the sudden change in tone and conversation when I attempt to join the men at the barbecue.  And of course the sexism, both inadvertent and deliberate.

You have not had ample opportunity to experience both the comfort and discomfort of being a woman out in the world, or to flesh out the multiple identities of a woman.  In the coming years I hope your gender expression moves beyond the superficial aspect of clothes and becomes more nuanced, informed by your real-life experience as a woman (and not just a transgender woman).  I hope you will feel just as comfortable wearing gender neutral clothes accessorized only by a defining flowery scarf.  You see, my embrace of the spectrum is based on exploring what the two poles have in common, rather than what separates us.  Caitlyn, you have a unique opportunity to experience the entire gamut of gender expression and help us all move freely between the kitchen and the barbecue.

Sincerely yours,

Liza Blue