Let’s have a Reality Personality Round Up. I don’t watch any reality shows because none of them can live up to the thrill of Orphan Black, or the entertainment value of Marvel’s Agents of Shield, or my newly acquired interest in Silicon Valley, or the inappropriate, cerebral humor of what Thor calls, “That British version of Jon Stewart.” I don’t have TV watching time left over for anything else after you add in Game of Thrones, Veep, Anthony Bourdain, and Doctor Who. Now I’m trying to squeeze in Jonathan Strange and…ugh. No time!
But, with as much time as I spend on my computer, I have accidental and peripheral knowledge of most top tier reality celebrities. Just the other day, I realized that without ever having watched an episode of their work, without ever having read a full article about any of them other than the Kim one (who fascinates me), I have somehow acquired the ability to tell apart even the Jenner ones of the Kardashian family, and I know all the girl names.
And let’s start there:
1. Kim Kardashian is expecting her second baby. Mazel Tov! Babies are lovely, and she seems to have been trying hard to accomplish a pregnancy, so I wish her all the best.
2. Caitlyn Jenner has subsumed Bruce Jenner in a way that leaves me longing for longer legs and better bosoms. My biggest shock? She didn’t choose to spell her name with a K. Do you think that was a concern?
Maybe she wanted to be Kate, but it was too in line with Kim, K–shoot, I thought I knew the middle one, and Khloe? What is the middle one? Kris is the mother one. Whatever. This is why I should look things up before I start typing.
My views on transgender people has changed a lot in the past twenty years. Back when I was an acolyte of James Dobson, I thought there was something wrong with them, that they deserved my pity, love, and prayers. Then, I had the good fortune of making friends with a man, who was transitioning into a woman, and that person was extremely kind and patient with all my (probably–likely) rude questions.
I came away from that relationship with an understanding of transgender people as HUMAN BEINGS, not sad, broken THINGS. While I still didn’t understand it, I was very clear that transgender people weren’t confused men/women who deserved pity. They were men and women. Period. My understanding was irrelevant. How I felt about them was irrelevant.
Years after that, I have a better formed, if still hazy understanding of the science behind transgender. You know what? My understanding still doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I am treating the people around me with respect and giving them their dignity. There is nothing wrong with transgender people, and even if there were–and there is not!–it wouldn’t change how I am set to treat them. They are just like me–human souls inside a human suit. They get to decorate their costumes the same way I do.
Transgender people, like gay people, straight people, androgynous people aren’t criminals because of their body choices. Their choices about what to do with their own bodies are not scary, criminal choices. Criminal choices happen when you start making decisions to do things to other people’s bodies–people who have not, or who cannot consent to your actions. Which brings me to…
3. Those Fucking Duggars. I feel okay calling them that because my understanding is that their whole empire is built on the fact that they rut like bunnies and have as many babies. Yes? But bunnies are cute. These parents are not cute. These parents, while asking their daughters to present as paragons of Victorian virtue, allowed their eldest son to play hide-the-finger with his younger sisters, who were either unable to give consent because they were a) not conscious at the time their brother was touching their genitals, b) were not old enough to understand what was being done to them at five years of age, and/or c) were so cowed by their family’s commandments that they did not feel safe in protesting.
C becomes a big deal when you find out that police reports state these girls were reporting having been molested for more than a year before the parents became involved.
I’m not going to talk about the boy who was doing the molesting. I’m going to straight up condemn the parents who KNEW their daughters were being bad-touched in a way that would make them less desirable as media-friendly faces for Quiverfull, and who deliberately, with intent allowed those children to be molested in order to protect their marketing package and religious movement. And, more importantly, whose actions meant that children who desperately needed help were denied it.
I condemn them. I judge them. And I hope they lose their ability to profit from their fucking, unless they do it in the same straightforward, honest way Jenna Jameson does hers. Bad hair and all.
The Outside Lane 