Caitlyn Jenner's Gender Transition

About

Caitlyn Jenner's Gender Transition refers to the public debut of the American Olympian track-and-field athlete and the step-father of Kim Kardashian, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, as her new transgender identity on the cover photograph for the June 2015 issue of Vanity Fair. Since the unveiling of Jenner's new name and image, the celebrity's sex change has been met by mixed reactions on the social media.

Background

Jenner had expressed transgender feelings since at least the 1980s, but she did not come out to the American public until April of 2015 in a 20/20 special interview called Bruce.^[1] In that special, Caitlyn told the public she would be coming out as a woman soon. On June 1st, 2015, Jenner and Vanity Fair released an photograph of the magazine cover on a newly created Twitter, @Caitlyn_Jenner; this Twitter post received over 200,000 retweets and 220,000 favorites.^[2]

The image was taken by famous celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz and was accompanied by several other photographs and an in-depth article, titled "Introducing Caitlyn Jenner" about Jenner's experience transitioning.^[5] Upon its release, the cover photograph attracted much attention due to Jenner's new look and her achievement of being the first transgender woman on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

Within hours of Jenner's new Twitter account launch, she gained more than a million followers, breaking a record previously held by United States President Barack Obama. ^[4]

In the hours following Jenner's Twitter announcement, the name Caitlyn Jenner and the hashtags #CaitlynJenner and #CallMeCaitlyn began trending worldwide.^[6] Meanwhile, computer programmers Caitlyn Dewey and Andrew McGill created the Twitter bot @she_not_he,^[11] that automatically identifies specific mentions of Caitlyn Jenner in which she is referred to as a "he" and sends a reply with a polite message correcting the choice of the gender pronoun. In an interview with The Independent, Dewey explained the inspiration behind the project:

4chan's "Medal Repeal Petition"

Also on June 1st, a Texas resident named Jennifer Bradford filed a petition with Change.org asking that Caitlyn Jenner's Olympic Medals be repealed.^[14] The petition argued that if Jenner was to be considered a woman, then that meant her medals won for competing as a man were invalid and should be revoked. As of June 4th, the petition had over 12,000 signatures, and was two-thirds of the way to its goal of 15,000. However, the petition was actually created by users of 4chan's /b/ board, who created it as a plot to troll "feminists and trannies."^[15]

I Am Cait

E! Entertainment Network, the home of Keeping Up with the Kardashians (on which Jenner frequently appears as a supporting character) announced on June 1st, 2015 that they would be airing an eight series documentary series following Jenner through her transition, entitled I Am Cait, beginning on July 26th 2015.

Celebrity Reactions

Drake Bell

Hours after the initial tweet, actor and former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell posted a tweet saying he would still refer to Jenner as "Bruce". The tweet, which was later deleted, received extremely negative feedback.^[3]

Snoop Dogg

On June 3rd, 2015, Snoop Dogg posted a meme to Instagram which called Caitlyn Jenner's transition a "science project" and complained that people weren't paying attention to the real news of rapper Akon building a solar farm in Africa. The Instagram post, which Snoop did not delete or edit, received negative feedback from the press. ^[7][8]

Cleveland Cavalier J.R. Smith also posted this image and received negative feedback.^[9]

Timbaland

On June 1st, 2015 Timbaland posted an image macro to his Facebook profile featuring a man gesturing and the text “His momma named him Bruce, Imma call him Bruce”.^[10] The post received negative media feedback, but was shared by over 1,670 people and liked by over 8,000 people as of June 4th.

Jessica Lange

Upon the release of the cover, many Twitter users remarked that Jenner looked very similar to American film actress Jessica Lange. So many people noticed the similarity that Jessica Lange was trending alongside Jenner on Twitter. When told about the comparison by a reporter at online publication The Daily Beast, Lange reportedly said "That's so wonderful.' It was also reported that Lange had to be told what Twitter was and what it meant to be trending.^[7]

ESPN Award Backlash

On June 1st, 2015, ESPN announced that Caitlyn Jenner would receive the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at their annual award show, the ESPYs. ESPN received much criticism from viewers and others on social media for the decision. Many Twitter users tweeted in support of another candidate, while rumors began that other athletes had been passed over so that Jenner could receive the award, including Iraq war veteran and disabled athlete Noah Galloway, and deceased basketball star Lauren Hill. On July 15th, Caitlyn Jenner made her first public appearance since completing her gender transition to receive the award at the ESPY Awards ceremony, which was met with two standing ovations during her ten-minute speech.

Peter Berg's Reaction

Meanwhile, protesters in opposition began using the hashtag #BoycottESPN to express their discontent; by June 4th, 2015, the hashtag had been tweeted 1,062 times.^[13] Following Jenner's appearance at the ESPYs, American film director Peter Berg criticized the decision by sharing an image created by Main Stream Media Sponsor Boycotts in which a paparazzi photograph of Jenner is juxtaposed against a photograph of U.S. Army veteran Gregory Gadson who played a role in Berg’s 2012 military sci-fi action war film Battleship (shown below).

Search Interest

References