Monday, April 27, 2015

Bruce Jenner and the Transformation

   Sex reassignment surgery is something that I only recently began to understand. Generally speaking, and very generally speaking, the United States is a country very uncomfortable with the process of sexual reassignment, and transgender individuals in general. The Washington Post estimates that 700,000 Americans are transgender. And every year, less than 500 people go through with a sexual reassignment surgery, with a majority of the surgeries being males changing to females. While I'm not posing my own opinions on the subject, I am interested as to the reasoning behind America's obsession with Bruce Jenner's transformation. Below is a picture of Bruce from his Olympian days.
 
      This is where I get confused. Are people confused because of his past experience as a successful male athlete? Or are people obsessed with his transformation because it adds to the spice of life we call the Kardashian family? While the sexual reassignment surgery is uncommon in the United States, I can't decide for myself why it is receiving so much attention. While Bruce Jenner was as stud of an athlete, I think he is more notable because of his daughters and their own scandalous lives.

  What are your thoughts, readers?


5 comments:

  1. I had heard rumors for a while about this transformation, but I just never thought any of it had any truth to it. Personally I do not follow the Kardashians, but I would guess people are obsessed with this transformation because of their popularity in American Culture.

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  2. Honestly it's such an obsession because he was already famous, and the American public loves to exotify the Other. In this case the Other being a transgender woman, who already had the spotlight for other reasons. Eventually it will become a non-issue, but until then it'll get crazed over.

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  3. If he feels like he wants to be/is a woman, good for him, it literally has no effect on my life.

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  4. I read a book a few years ago called "Sexing the Body." It was pretty illuminating for me. I had never really given much thought to transgender individuals or intersex people. These people are born all the time, and instead just accepting that people born this way we try to shoehorn them into one of two categories that they just don't fit in. This is a problematic approach, but the sex and gender binary is so ingrained in us that its hard for get out of thinking that way. And by "we" I mean the grand societal "we". Personally, I think we should just learn to accept that people are born in all different combinations. Okay, end rant.

    As for Bruce Jenner, I honestly didn't know who he was until a few days ago . . .

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  5. I don't understand what the big deal is with all of this. I think there are some people out there who feel that they were born as the wrong sex. My cousin is one of those people so I take this issue to heart. Everyone should just let everyone else be and let them live the life they want without judgement.

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