Alec Ward | Heretic in heels

Fair Enough | Caitlyn Jenner's conservatism shouldn't make her a pariah to activists

By Alec Ward 02/23/16 12:50am

At Caitlyn Jenner’s speech last Wednesday evening, once the question and answer session began, I didn’t have to wait long for the question I’d come to Irvine expecting to hear. The first pre-screened audience inquisitor let it fly, asking whether Jenner, who has in the past been an outspoken Republican, finds herself more sympathetic to the Democratic Party in light of her experience of coming out publicly as transgender.

“Oh man,” said Jenner, “Here we go.” She began by acknowledging that the Democratic Party was “better” on LGBTQ issues than the Republican Party. But, she made clear, her economic politics meant her party affiliation was unchanged, before launching into what could have passed for a Ronald Reagan elevator pitch, stumping for lower corporate taxes, entitlement reform and a balanced budget, among other things.

The effect these pronouncements had on the audience was nothing short of electric. The ambient noise level in the room rose sharply as students throughout the auditorium turned to their neighbors and began to mutter disapprovingly. Jenner wasn’t being booed, but the message was equally clear. The audience did not approve.

The whole disruption lasted perhaps 20 seconds, but it spoke volumes. Despite her protestations that she is only “a spokesman for [her] own story,” Penn was shocked to find a trans person who didn’t embrace the left-of-center identity politics popular with self-described “intersectional” campus LGBTQ activists. Her unapologetic rebuttal of these politics seemed to arouse a special sort of anger among students who do sympathize with that strand of activism.

“Many poor trans women of color rely on welfare because of employment discrimination, discrimination that is enacted and supported by bigoted conservatives,” one student said in a Facebook post in which he pronounced himself “very disappointed” with Jenner’s speech. “I feel like if [the Republican party is] not going to support who she is, I don’t see why she should support them,” Wharton freshman Chrissy Walker told The Daily Pennsylvanian news team. “At this point, it’s not really up to her [whether she’s a spokesperson], what is up to her is how she wants to use that platform and how she wants to use that to the betterment of the entire community.”

The implication here is pretty clear. As a trans person with a public platform, those on campus who fancy themselves on the side of transgender equality seem to believe Jenner is obliged, regardless of her other beliefs, to share their politics. To them, that she does not is only explicable by ignorance — “she has a responsibility to educate herself,” patronized College sophomore Jacob Gardenswartz — or by some other blindness to the truth of what is really best for transgender people. That she could fully understand her own identity and the concerns of those who share it while still holding conservative values, it seems, is not a possibility that those on campus who claim to speak for trans equality can accept.

This is a serious flaw in an ideological framework that claims to champion the rights of those oppressed for their nonconformity. In any identity-based community, whether a sexual, racial or any other ascriptive minority, there is bound to be a diversity of views regarding what political outcomes best serve the interests of that group. To hear Jenner tell it, a thriving economy unburdened by national debt is a trans issue in itself. “I want every trans person to have a job,” she told 1976 College graduate Buzz Bissinger.

While that might not align with what the most vocal members of the trans community believe, an activist movement that claims to stand for the inclusion of trans people above all cannot simply dismiss trans people who hold such views as ignorant while keeping its credibility as being committed to real inclusion. Placing a political litmus test on “good standing” in any community that has real gains to make toward achieving social acceptance and equality is flatly counterproductive.

Any marginalized group stands to gain from bipartisan support, and any social movement stands to benefit from ideological diversity within its ranks. Internal disagreement and debate make such movements stronger, not weaker. If they want to stand for the rights and equality of identity groups, social justice progressivism needs a better name for dissenting voices within those communities than “heretic.”

ALEC WARD is a College junior from Washington, D.C., studying history. His email address is alecward@sas.upenn.edu. Follow him on Twitter @TalkBackWard. “Fair Enough” appears every Wednesday.

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