You might expect the possible extinction of human life due to climate change, the toxic maldistribution of wealth and opportunity, the perils posed by Islamic fundamentalism, the impotence of government to address all of the above would lead the news most days.
But no. This week’s most inescapable news concerned Caitlyn Jenner’s emergence into the spotlight, transformed from an ugly male caterpillar into a beautiful female butterfly. Comment has run the gamut from praise and sympathy for Jenner’s embracing his her-ness to denunciation, of the abomination of God variety.
I’m fine with Jenner doing whatever feels right, through I’m not sure I need to know about it. I am sure I don’t need to know as much about it as the tabloid TV news media want to tell me.
As far as I know this sort of thing has been going on as far back as Christine Jorgensen in the 1950s, and Renee Richards and Jan Morris in the 1970s. Hell, Tiresias, the prophet of Apollo, was a woman for seven years, and Princess Ozma of Oz was a boy for awhile, though in those cases medical procedures weren’t involved. Just magic.
Apparently gender reassignment has now become almost commonplace. I suppose the Jenner case is deemed newsworthy due to his association with the Kardashians. Why they are newsworthy, however, is incomprehensible. As far as I can tell they have no talent other than attracting public notice.
I understand they behave badly on TV, though I’ve never actually watched them do so. Life is too short. Apparently they also have sex in public places or leak videos of themselves doing so in private. They pose naked frequently and even more frequently begin and end marriages, unsuccessful except for the division of spoils. They also appear to be serial users of plastic surgery to create the look of live, manufactured sex toys, rather like the robot in “Ex Machina,” but not as smart as her.
None of this seems to justify more than a moment of attention and all of it makes one wonder why Jenner would want to have himself remade, given his familiarity with such persons. The Kardashians have been giving both cosmetic reconstruction and the female gender a bad name for years. He must really have felt a deep need to change genders to do anything that would cause him to resemble a Kardashian. Or perhaps their lust for undeserved publicity is contagious.
I personally cannot imagine undergoing any surgery voluntarily. When I heard about the Caitlyn case I set out to read about the procedures involved. I stopped after a paragraph because I was feeling lightheaded. This is not because of any disapproval. Let’s face it, women –Kardashians aside — are clearly superior to men in most ways. They are kinder, calmer, wiser and live longer. I might go for it if the magical, rather than the medical, route was available.
No, I failed to learn more about gender altering surgery because of deep-seated squeamishness. The description of a tonsillectomy would probably make me swoon like a Victorian maiden with the vapors.
Obviously I am not a doctor. I know almost nothing about the medical aspects of such an alteration. The fact that it is possible seems just as much like magic to me as all those transformations in Ovid. I do understand there’s a lot of hormonal tinkering involved, but the only thing I know about such drugs is gleaned from the commercials that I am forced to watch during the evening news. Most seem to have a lot of scary side effects.
All those ads do make me wonder if Jenner’s decision isn’t in some sense moot. He’s sixty-five. According to the TV ads, men of his age are afflicted with ED and low-T and so forth. In other words, their hormones, like the rest of them, are in steady, inexorable decline. They are on their way to being only notionally male.
Post-menopausal women seem to be in the same boat. They are now getting their own ads, suggesting that, without being amped up by pharmaceutical additives, they are, like the men, pretty much closed for business, sexually. And as usual the ads for the additives come with a long list of fatal side effects.
Since this suggests we all eventually become not so much male or female but simply a single other thing — old — Jenner may have postponed his gender change until too late for him to make it to the dance. There are plenty of pastimes for the twilight years that don’t require major surgery or hormonal interventions. Some people play bridge. Many travel. I fool around with genealogy and write a silly blog. Of course these endeavors attract very little TV coverage.