I watched the TV interview. I believe there are things in the brain / hormones that we don’t understand. I believe he found himself unable to ever be comfortable as himself because his brain, inside, felt female.
I have seen men on Lupron, removed from their male hormones. A man much like your burly macho freeper self, reduced to weeping at car commercials. A lot of what makes you such a manly guy is your hormones. Sometimes you see a heavyset older man on TV who has a “feminine” look to his face? Like that man who is on the left in the Triple Crown TV coverage (Costas on the right)? That is a man who is becoming estrogen dominant. Hormones do amazing things.
I have seen a wife, totally uninterested in sex, and a rather laissez faire wife, take testosterone replacement enough to meet a normal female level, suddenly not just be interested in and enjoy sex with her husband, but literally feel like she was in love with him again. Suddenly getting excited to see him after the work day. She was herself SHOCKED that hormones can bring back love and interest. She always loved him but the “thrill was gone.” Correcting her T levels brought back the thrill. Need I tell you how thrilled her husband was??!
With that said, my perspective is different from all the 103 posts I have read. I think he is a helpless victim of a brain dysfunction. He tried for 60 years to live the way YOU ALL insist he should. And as a male, he achieved more manly stuff than most. You cannot deny that; none of you have won Olympic decathalons. Yet deep inside, he was about as happy as you would be if you were trapped in a life not your own.
Right now in Western Civ 2015, the solution to this illness is to allow / encourage the person to try life as the gender of their brain. About half the people are then happy doing so. The other half sometimes end up feeling worse, or at least not that a problem was solved.
The culture today is to be half-mocking, half-patronizing to these people’s bravery. Sometimes the very same individual will mock these transition people amongst his closest friends, and in public be expansively supportive.
We may need a better solution to people whose brain gender doesn’t match their genitals. I have no idea what it is. But I will respect this new Caitlin as Bruce’s best attempt to fix his illness. I truly don’t have a better solution he hasn’t tried.
I’m sad that my beloved FR has ONLY full on mocks and put downs, with not one post of kindness toward someone, a conservative himself, with a brain problem that he couldn’t help.
The way I see it though, what does it matter what gender someone is born in? In the end it all comes down to having an orgasm. Gays go for the same sex because that is what gets them off. Straights go for the opposite sex because that’s what gets them off. So what does it matter what gender one is? Jenner was born a male and now that he is living as a woman he says he still prefers women, so what is the point of changing his gender? If anything I would think now his sex life is going to be a hell of a lot more difficult and frustrating. There just seems to be an obsession with these trannys with gender that makes no sense. I mean what does it matter, it’s seems like such a non-issue like obsessing over ones race. How come we never hear that? “I’m a white man trapped in a black mans body” or vice versa? Who would care, there are so much more important things to worry about than getting so ridiculously superficial to the point of mutilating ones body. I know a lesbian who looks so much like a man that if you didn’t hear her voice you would immediately assume it’s a guy, and she doesn’t dress like that on purpose, she told me it’s because she has no interest in female things and she doesn’t care if she is mistaken as a guy. But then you get women like Chaz Bono who go beyond that and get a mastectomy and do the hormones and all that yet he/she still likes women the same as before, so what is the point? I really think it’s a mental disorder probably in the same area as these guys and even women bodybuilders who are never satisfied with their bodies and do steroids and all that, they are never big enough in their minds, you even have guys who inject oil in their arms to make them bigger which is nuts. What we see is not what they see when they look in the mirror. Same with anorexics, they always seem themselves as fat no matter how skinny they are.
He is not in any way, shape or form a conservative.