Keeping up with Caitlyn ... What a week for transgender rights

Beauty houses are vying to sign up Caitlyn, the woman formerly known as Bruce Jenner, as the face of their make-up campaigns. Mac’s Viva Glam, which had associations with Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, is the likely winner . It’s been some week for transgender rights, says Suzanne Harrington

Mon, 08 Jun, 2015 - 01:00

FROM Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair to Kellie Maloney in a Channel 5 documentary, it’s been a groundbreaking few days for transgender people . Jenner, like her former stepdaughter, Kim Kardashian, ‘broke the internet’ when her Annie Liebovitz cover shoot was revealed — mainstream glossies are not in the habit of putting older ‘trans-women’ on their covers. Caitlyn Jenner broke the mould.

The 65-year-old former Olympic gold athlete and ex-step patriarch of the Kardashian family (as Bruce, ‘she’ was married to Kim’s mother for 14 years), launched her new persona with the coverline ‘Call Me Caitlyn’. The image — tumbling hair, 1950s-style corsetry, athletic limbs — was classic American beauty on the Cindy Crawford-Jessica Lange spectrum.

Formerly known as Bruce (pictured in his broadcasting days), Jenner is an Olympic athlete who came out publicly as transgender in a televised interview with Diane Sawyer.

The internet responded with an unprecedented surge of support and encouragement — from US president, Barack Obama, who tweeted “your story matters”, to Kim Kardashian, whose message, “How beautiful! Be happy, be proud, live life YOUR way!” has been retweeted 31,000 times so far.

Caitlyn Jenner for Vanity Fair 📷 Annie Leibovitz! How beautiful! Be happy, be proud, live life YOUR way! pic.twitter.com/39fryBwUqE
— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) June 1, 2015

READ NEXT: VIDEO: Caitlyn Jenner behind the scenes of the Vanity Fair shoot

Nearer home, in the UK, the transition of Frank Maloney, London-Irish ex-boxing promoter and Millwall supporter to Kellie Maloney, was shown grittily and graphically in the documentary, No Going Back. Kellie, said Maloney, was “62 years in the making”. “Now, for the first time in my life, I can truly accept who I am.” Again, public response was overwhelmingly positive, with Maloney being called “brave” and “inspirational”. Her family’s honesty about their father’s transition, and how it affected them, added to the documentary’s authenticity.

Bruce Jenner, with Kris, Kourtney Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, and Kim Kardashian

However, the news for Irish trans-people is very big indeed — the Tanaiste’s announcement that Ireland’s Gender Recognition Bill, currently before the Oireachtas, will allow self-determination. You will no longer require a doctor, psychiatrist, endocrinologist, or anyone else other than yourself, to determine your own gender. You no longer need state medical approval to officially identify yourself.

“This is huge. I’m so proud to be Irish right now,” says Gordon Grehan, of Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI). “It’s been a long, tough road to reach this point, but it is an amazing turnaround, that we now have some of the most progressive legislation in the world, based on self-determination. It’s incredible.” Ireland had long not recognised the self-determined identity of transgender people — and consider the social difficulties faced daily by trans-people in non-empathic environments — but now ranks third in the world, after Argentina and Malta, in terms of progressive transgender legislation. Yet just two years ago, a TENI report showed that 80% of Irish trans-people had contemplated suicide, and 40% had attempted it. Self-harming was also high within the community, at 44%. Now that Irish trans-people are no longer formally second-class citizens, but have the same rights as everyone else, perhaps these figures will change.

Change has been happening for some time in terms of wider trans acceptance and equality. America has come a long way since the 1993 rape and murder of Brandon Teena, the young Nebraska female-to-male who inspired the film, Boys Don’t Cry. In 2010, President Obama appointed Amanda Simpson to a high-ranking White House position, the first openly transgender woman to serve at this level.

Meanwhile, serving 35 years for the Wikileaks disclosures, former US army soldier, Bradley Manning, transitioned to Chelsea Manning. She told Cosmopolitan, through letters from jail that formed an interview, that her transition had been “a relief”. “I just try to be myself,” she wrote.

Trans-gender is not, however, a new phenomenon. Another former US soldier, Christine Jorgensen, was the first American trans-gender woman to go public, after surgery in Denmark in 1952. The model Caroline Cossey, known as Tula, appeared in the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, in 1981, and was outed by the News of the World — she responded with an autobiography, I Am A Woman. There was a trans-gender character in Coronation Street from 1998 to 2014, and the actress Laverne Cox, from Netflix prison drama, Orange Is The New Black, has become a vocal trans-rights spokesperson.

Laverne Cox

The thing is, however, that trans-people are, in the words of Lady Gaga, born this way. While the new Irish legislation is a significant leap forward, it applies only to people aged over 18.

Yet as Louis Theroux’s recently broadcast documentary, Transgender Kids, highlights, the feeling of being born into the wrong body begins in childhood, if not toddlerhood. Theroux’s film shows a small community of progressive medical professionals and families who are supporting children to transition sooner rather than later, thereby bypassing years of unnecessary difficulties.

The feeling of a child being stuck in the ‘wrong’ body is remembered by female-to-male trans, Dhillon Khosla, who wrote in his 2006 memoir, Both Sides Now, that when ‘he’ was a small child, “whenever my mother tried to put me in a dress, I cried and yelled and refused to wear it.”

Young trans-people deal with the everyday mundanities of the wrong school uniform, the wrong bathroom access, and the wrong name on the school register.

However, Gordon Grehan says that the new Irish legislation, while not yet helping trans-teenagers directly, will still help to validate them. “It sends a powerful message to young people,” he says. Indeed. A message of validation, inclusion, and optimism for the future.