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| Olympic Champ, Bruce Jenner, 1975 |
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| Are you sure you don't need a MAN'S deodorant? |
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| Caitlyn Jenner newly born at age 65 |
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But without Vituperation.
If your aim is Vilification ––
Other forms of Denigration ––
Unfounded Accusation --
Determined Obfuscation ––
Alienation with Self-Justification ––
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IN ADDITION
Gratuitous Displays of Extraneous Knowledge Offered Not To Shed Light Or Enhance the Discussion, But For The Primary Purpose Of Giving An Impression Of Superiority are obnoxiously SELF-AGGRANDIZING, and therefore, Subject to Removal at the Discretion of the Censor-in-Residence.
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Jenner kept the wiener and clock weights.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult to completely let go I suppose.
Society? Has any society endured when it is pathologically fixated on a deviant .5%?
A deep desire to "have it all," and live in the best of all possible worlds, perhaps?
DeleteWe focus too much on "process" and nowhere near enough on "product" –– the result of a grossly materialistic approach to life and to problem solving.
We might want to ask ourselves (myself included) why it's so much easier to greet this phenomenon with flippant sarcasm, mock this former Olympic Champion, and eagerly attribute the worst possible motives to the radical decision he has made than to greet it with honest curiosity and compassion?
It's simple, Mr. FreeThinke. Jenner is mentally ill. Self-mutilation is a mental illness. Responsible societies used to help such people. Now, we give them $100 million dollar reality TV contracts. It's a sad affair, and nothing productive can be drawn from it.
DeleteI'm wondering when Jenner is going to have 5 tons of silicon shoved up his ass so he can have a bigger butt than his daughter Kim Karkrashian.
And that's the way it is.
Nothing is simple, Mr. Krankenhaus. The Golden Rule is the single exception that comes to mind, and the implications even of that most basic of all moral dicta are so vast they could only be described as flabbergasting.
DeleteI thought it was referred to as twig and berries.
DeleteHey! I resent that last remark!
DeleteREPENT AND BE SAVED!!!
ReplyDeleteHOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABOMINATION! IT STINKETH IN GOD'S NOSTRILS!!!
COME TO JESUS AND BE SAVED!!! REPENT YOU FUDGEPACKERS, AND BE SAVED.
RESIST THE DEVIL WHO WANTS YOU TO CUT OFF YOU MAN PARTS AND SURGICALLY ATTACH WOMAN PARTS, YOU POOR WRETCHED SINNERS. RESIST SATAN AND ALL HIS SEXUAL DEVIANCY, AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU!
GOD WILL BRING A PUNISHMENT UPON THIS NATION FOR THE EVIL WE HAVE SPAWNED. JENNER NEVER COULDA CHUCKED THAT JAVELIN THAT FAR IF HE WERE SPORTING THAT SET OF HOOTERS. IT AIN'T NATURAL!
WE HAVE INVITED SATAN IN, AND WE BRING DOWN GOD'S CONDEMNATION UPON OUR HEADS AS A RESULT.
BOW YOUR HEADS AND PRAY WITH ME. DEAR JESUS, SAVE THIS NATION, CLEANSE YOUR PEOPLE. HAVE MERCY ON US.
PLEASE! Spare us your crude, dishonest parodies.
DeleteWe are not amused.
WHAT'S DISHONEST ABOUT IT?
DeleteSODOMITES ARE AN ABOMINATION BEFORE GOD, AND OUR HOMOSEXUAL SOCIETY WORSHIPS THESE BAALS!
I've asked you please to stop. Yours is a very poor caricature of a supposedly "Christian" viewpoint that mocks and does great disservice to Our Lord.
DeleteFurther Comments Along These Lines Will Be Deleted on Contact.
Where's Farmer when we need him?
DeleteIs Medicare picking up the tab for Jenner's surgery?
ReplyDeleteFrom Obamacare, states and insurers make gender reassignment surgery more accessible (June 2, 2015):
The former Olympic champion known as Bruce Jenner, who appeared in the E! television series “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and will chronicle her own journey on that channel, has had facial and breast surgery, although it’s not clear whether she has had or will have full gender reassignment surgery. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a professional association dedicated to promoting respect, research and advocacy for transgender health, advises people undergoing a gender transition to live for a year as their new gender before choosing full reassignment surgery.
New federal laws have also helped create a more inclusive environment. In May 2014, the Obama administration lifted a 33-year-old ban on Medicare coverage for gender reassignment surgery. The 2010 Affordable Care Act does not explicitly require insurers to cover gender reassignment surgery but, according to this White House letter, insurers “can no longer turn someone away just because he or she is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.” This has not yet been tested in court, says Josh Block, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT Project in New York.
Full gender reassignment surgery can cost from $10,000 to $100,000, but most people don’t spend more than $30,000 or $40,000, says Jamison Green, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an international nonprofit.
I've decided that a lot of people right now are wondering if Jenner has had the, um, defining surgery. Now that many will actually admit to wondering any such thing.
Given the extreme rarity of such cases, AOW, the cost, even if it exceeds 100K, is statistically negligible.
DeleteAre you seriously concerned that this sort of thing might become a "fad," –– the latest "kick" for the vast army of lost souls whose lives have no meaning or sense of purpose?
I blame the popular culture aided and abetted at every turn by the softer side of academia and the enemedia for working ceaselessly to destroy optimism and replace faith with cynicism as they negate Christian values, deny the very existence of Spirit, and supplant all with the false belief that there is a PHYSICAL, MATERIAL, FIDUCIARY answer to every existential question and a MATERIAL solution to every problem.
UNFORTUNATELY, popular notions of Christianity focus almost entirely on negatives –– overt CONDEMNATION of myriad behaviors that frankly show Jesus, His Father and the Holy Spirit in a very poor, deeply unflattering, frankly defamatory light.
In essence Christian doctrine is intensely POSITIVE. It's all about properly identifying ourselves with the GREAT POSSIBILITIES for living a FULFILLED, REWARDING LIFE full of JOY and GLADNESS -- regardless of our material circumstances.
The sour, bitter, snarling, vituperative, condemnatory GARBAGE we get from contaminated, pseudo-Christian sources such as the admittedly extreme Westboro Baptist Church and thousands upon thousands of other blighted, miserable, hate-filled souls who DARE to call themselves "Christian" has done even MORE harm to our blessed Jesus than all the cynics and iconoclasts in media and academia combined.
FT,
DeleteAre you seriously concerned that this sort of thing might become a "fad," –– the latest "kick" for the vast army of lost souls whose lives have no meaning or sense of purpose?
I think that it's possible. Rebellion takes many forms.
FT,
DeleteThe sour, bitter, snarling, vituperative, condemnatory GARBAGE we get from contaminated, pseudo-Christian sources such as the admittedly extreme Westboro Baptist Church and thousands upon thousands of other blighted, miserable, hate-filled souls who DARE to call themselves "Christian" has done even MORE harm to our blessed Jesus than all the cynics and iconoclasts in media and academia combined.
Damage? Yes. But MORE harm than the others? I think not.
False, self-serving notions of Christianity have CERTAINLY done far more harm than all the rest of it, AOW. If Christians had properly understood the Gospels, trusted The Word, and acted accordingly, instead of creating hierarchical temporal power structures designed like their pagan predecessors to exercise DOMINION (Power and Control) over "the masses," the machinations of Utopian idealists, Marxists, militant secularists and anarchists, et al. would have had little or no appeal, and would never have taken hold.
Delete"See ye FIRST the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness," and everything else [you truly need] will be made available to you.
DeleteIt's very simple, but –– call it the Devil, the Author of Doubt, Confusion, Inanity, Cruelty and Despair, –– wants us always to look at things through the wrong end of the telescope, and to see essentially simple things as mysterious, threatening, unfathomable and unbearably complex.
Furthermore...
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I don't give a damn what Jenner does about his sexual identity. Nevertheless, the Vanity Fair cover was the "news" story of the day yesterday.
It's the Internet freak show -- reminiscent of the freak shows that traveled with carnivals and appeared and county and state fairs!
"Que sera sera. Whatever will be will be." ;-)
DeleteI don't think any amount of fretting and worrying over the state of the world will do anything to improve it.
FT,
ReplyDeleteWe might want to ask ourselves (myself included) why it's so much easier to greet this phenomenon with flippant sarcasm, mock this former Olympic Champion, and eagerly attribute the worst possible motives to the radical decision he has made than to greet it with honest curiosity and compassion?
I'd agree -- except for the pr angle which Jenner is determined to pursue. He's not shrinking from that pr, but rather reveling in it.
Personal crises of all types should be handled privately insofar as possible, IMO.
We're in a different age now, AOW. Quiet, heroic stoicism is out, and flamboyantly displaying your dirtiest laundry is in.
DeleteTo answer FT's questions, I think this is merely one more frivolous triviality upon a society festooned with them. Mazlow would marvel at how a society that rests upon the advancement of its forbears chooses to self-actualize.
What does it mean to me? Nothing. Like the rest of his dysfunctional family that is worshiped by millions of my fellow Americans, It doesn't affect me at all. If this is what it takes to make him/her happy, then like Papa Francesco, who am I to judge?
But why do you necessarily regard it as "dirty?" CURIOUS to be sure, –– downright BIZARRE even, –– but hardly "dirty."
DeleteI'm not exactly delighted by this transformation, myself, but the assumptive reactions to it so far, and the extreme eagerness to attribute the shallowest, vainest, most pejorative motives to Jenner's decision frankly concerns me more than what Jenner has done to himself.
Dirty Laundry: Private matters whose public exposure brings distress and embarrassment.
DeleteGranted, the phrase is outmoded by its own definition, since people today delight in publicly exposing personal affairs older generations considered private. And rather than bring distress and embarrassment, it seems to fill some void in those who expose themselves.
You could call all that the Moribund Roman Empire Syndrome, if you like, and you wouldn't be far wrong.
DeleteLook up eighteenth-century Scottish mathematician Alexander Tyler's famous Cycle of Civilization, and see exactly where we are on his theoretical "Wheel" today.
The ACLU has now weighed in:
ReplyDeleteIt is important that people do actually call her Caitlyn.
Words matter and erasing the identity of trans people by calling them by their birth names and birth-assigned sex is an act of hatred — one that is inextricable from the brutal violence that so many trans people, particularly trans women of color, encounter just for existing in the world.
How we talk about trans people sets the tone for the world in which trans people live.
And because young trans people are dying by suicide and trans women of color are being murdered at alarming rates, those of us forming public narratives about trans celebrities have an obligation to tell those stories with care.
When we write about Caitlyn Jenner, her name and narrative will give enough context. There is no need to mention what her name used to be or what sex she was assigned at birth. And as writer and activist Janet Mock brilliantly explained to Piers Morgan, neither Janet nor Caitlyn were “born boys.” They were born babies and they are women — brave and fabulous women.
SHIT!
Deleteლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ
Delete!!!!!!!!!!!!!ACLU make Loofah angry!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous, though I generally deplore the use of extreme vulgarity, I have to admit I share your disgust.
DeleteEvery once in a great while, only the basic Anglo Saxon terms convey exactly the right sentiment. This was one of those rare times, but please don't make a habit of using vulgarity here.
Thank you.
That this act of transitioning sexually from a man to a woman by a recognized athletic star and media celebrity would be front page news may be disgusting to most people of the country, it's a celebrated event in the media today. Jenner states that he was tired of "living the lie" about who and what he really was. He must have been concerned that he wasn't being perceived correctly and the only way to rectify this discrepancy was his act of betraying the most fundamental characteristic, that is the basis of his natural born human life form—being born a male.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it not surprising that the media would celebrate this ultimate corruption of a man? That's their business. The constant dumping a cesspool of sewage from all directions into the consciousness of the young minds of what could have been the best and brightest can't lead to a good outcome longer term.
If we cannot see the end game of this belligerent and overt attack on the culture and conscience on a broad scale and stand for what is right, true, good and honest, then I'm sure well get exactly what we deserve.
You damn right, Waylon.
DeleteI'm tired of livin' the lie of being a responsible family man with a dumpy hag of a wife and five money-sucking brats.
I am a millionaire bachelor trapped in the body of an overweight shift manager.
I demand society validate me by giving me a mansion, cool cars, and lots of money so I can come out of my shitty working-class cocoon and blossom into the beautiful stamen-pollinating butterfly I know I am. God Bless Georgia O'Keefe!
Well God Bless you, Georgia O'Keeffe, Bruce and Ducky, too.
DeleteThank you, Waylon, for spelling Georgia O'Keeffe's name properly, but I don't believe Ducky expressed an opinion in this thread. Could the "Bruce" you refer to possibly be the former Mr. Jenner?
DeleteGreat blog FT. You are headed toward Saint hood.
ReplyDeleteHelena Montagne said
DeleteIsn't that a suburb of Fort Hood?
ReplyDeleteIn the words of that great American thinker Andrew Dice Clay....
"You either suck cock........ or you don't suck cock"
Auntie Maim said
DeleteHow vivid!
Hold.
ReplyDeleteThe.
Phone.
I just saw this:
All This Caitlyn Jenner Is Basically A Promo For New Reality Series, “I Am Cait”.
Doesn't that just figure? Pfffft.
Trailer HERE.
DeleteNo surprise coming from the Karcrashian Media Empire...
DeleteAs someone said above, I wouldn't be surprised if Jenner shot 5 tons of silicon up his ass in an attempt to possess a bigger ass than internet porn star Kim kardashian.
Camellia Kadaver de Prune said
DeleteIt looks like Bruce believes that old saw "There's no such thing as bad publicity."
Still, how many 65-year-olds do you know who could manage to look that trim, fit and ageless? Most of us look like something he cat dragged in before we get to be fifty.
You have a point there, Camellia. I wonder how most would react if The New Jenner had been more subtly introduced –– without fanfare –– as just another fashion model slipped into an ad or two in some of the women's magazines?
DeleteDo you think anyone would have taken any special notice?
Publicity certainly taints and mars our perceptions –– just as it was alwaysfully intended to do. If you don't believe me, just look up "EDWARD BERNAYS," an evil genius credited with being the Father of the Advertising Industry, as we know it today.
Honey,
DeleteI'm a gal of a certain age, if you know what I mean, and I'm telling you, gallons of air brush and an artist's pallette of makeup went into that photo shoot. Also, those boobs are brand new. They haven't been hanging around fighting gravity's pull for half a century.
Rosa Tralee said
DeleteSorry, Fanny, but you sound frankly jealous.
I'll keep this clean for the prudish censor with his delighted finger on the delete button:
DeleteRosa honey,
If I got a new set of knockers, I'd go to town with the top down!
I find such commentary to be ignorant bordering on criminal. What SHE chooses to do with HER OWN life is HER OWN business.
ReplyDeleteWe are living in a time of collapsing white, male privilege, and the sooner those walls of bigotry and abuse fall, the better.
Just want you to know the wit expressed in your captions and general layout was not lost on me, sir. Neither is your kindness and great sense of compassion underneath it all.
ReplyDelete............ Lionel Gaylord Beatty-Terwilliger, III ..........
Medical science has progressed to the point where each of us can now be who we truly want to be.
ReplyDeleteI'll be seeing you on the other side...
Ambivalent is my response. Do no pretend to understand it, nor is there the need to. What is important is to accept this individuals decision as being right for her. It does not affect us nor does it threaten us or society in general.
ReplyDeleteGood post FreeThinke.
Thank you.
DeleteIt feels good to be appreciated. It's rare, believe me. ;-)
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
ReplyDelete~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Transgenderism is apparently quite complicated -- according to a bit of research that I did yesterday.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, the Enemedia are spouting nonsense such as this....
MSNBC Panel: Using Term “Women” in Abortion Language “Excludes Transgendered Men":
During “All In With Chris Hayes” on June 2, the host fostered a discussion among media representatives on the “reaction to Caitlyn Jenner” or “The Jenner Effect.” In the middle of the conversation, Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer for The Nation, suggested that using the word “women” in abortion language “excludes trans men.”
Has our entire nation -- our entire world -- become a clown car?
CHRIS HAYES? I had HIM pegged YEARS AGO:
Delete[NOTE: Chris Hayes of NBC News said on air that he was “uncomfortable” with calling our fallen war veterans “heroes.” Let the following serve as a well-deserved tribute to this immortal imbecile.]
HERE'S to CHRIS HAYES
Let us hope the days
Of the jerk Chris Hayes
Are low numbered,
And may he be annoyed
When he's soon unemployed
And by unpaid bills encumbered.
Vengeance belongs to God,
But wouldn’t it be odd,
If Hayes died at peace while he slumbered?
FreeThinke - 5/28/12
It might be instructive to read these two entries at Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete1. Transgenderism (social movement)
2. Martine Rothblatt
Rothblatt is part of the Terasem Movement. I don't see a place for Christianity therein.
About Rothblatt's book:
From Library Journal
Arguing that "the legal division of people into males and females is as wrong as the legal division of people into black and white race," Rothblatt, an attorney and transsexual, is a proponent of "transgenderism," which she characterizes as a grass-roots movement whose guiding principle is "that people should be free to change, either temporarily or permanently, the sex type to which they were assigned since infancy." Using a provocative reinterpretation of historical and legal issues, feminist thinking, and scientific research to defend her belief in continua of sex, gender, and sexual identity, Rothblatt sometimes seems unclear of her intended audience. The volume concludes with the International Bill of Gender Rights adopted in August 1993 by the Second International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy. For larger public and academic collections.
Let us assume for a moment that Jenner's motives are sympathetic ones. Even so, I submit that Jenner is being used for something nefarious -- that is, a social movement the goals of which will not strengthen the fabric of our society.
No matter what hormones you take or surgery you elect to have, despite the fact that we've developed the technology to change our appearance like we used to change our clothes, a simple genetic test will indeed confirm that Caitlyn Jenner is male.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but only if we define femininity in the narrowest biological terms. I imagine the most successful transsexuals would want to pass unheralded and unnoticed into "normal" society, and function well in their chosen identity without making a "holy show" of themselves.
DeleteIn truth we do not know how many individuals went through this transformative process in secret, reemerged quietly in a new community and lived out the rest of their lives either as married or single women with a modicum of contentment, which is all most get in a normal lifetime –– whatever that may be.
Like most I am highly suspicious of Jenner's motives in this context. At the same time, however, I think it's pretty callous and unduly cynical just assume the worst, and then act as if the assumptions were the whole truth and nothing but.
Very well stated Mr. FreeThinke.
DeleteJudge not, lest ye be judged.
In the trenches of World War I, Ernst Junger was already celebrating face-to-face combat as the authentic intersubjective encounter: authenticity resides in the act of violent transgression, from the Lacanian Real - the Thing Antigone confronts when she violates the order of the City - to the Bataillean excess. In the domain of sexuality itself, the icon of this 'passion for the real' is Oshima's "Empire of the Senses", a Japanese cult movie from the 1970s in which the couple's love relationship is radicalized into mutual torture until death. Is not the ultimate figure of the passion for the Real the option we get on hardcore websites to observe the inside of a vagina from the vantage point of a tiny camera at the top of the penetrating dildo? At this extreme point, a shift occurs: when we get too close to the desired object, erotic fascination turns into disgust at the Real of the bare flesh.
ReplyDelete- Slavoj Zizek, "Welcome to the Desert of the Real"
. Here, again, as in the domain of sexuality, perversion is no longer subversive: the shocking excesses of part of the system itself. The system feeds on them in order to reproduce itself. Perhaps this is one of the possible definitions of postmodern art as opposed to modern art. So what then is superego, what is this superego injunction which is replacing more and more the old symbolic law of prohibition? Superego is the reversal of the permissive "You May!" into the prescriptive "You Must!", the point in which permitted enjoyment turns into ordained enjoyment. We all know the formula of Kant s unconditional imperative: "Du canst, denn du sollst". You can do your duty, because you must do it. Superego turns this around into "You must, because you can." Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Viagra, the potency pill that promises to restore the capacity of male erection in a purely biochemical way, bypassing all problems of psychological inhibitions and so on. Now Viagra takes care of the erection, there is no excuse, you can enjoy sex so you should enjoy it, otherwise you are guilty. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the New Age wisdom of recovering the spontaneity of your true self seems to offer a way out of this superego predicament. However, what do we get effectively? Is this attitude not secretly sustained by the superego imperative? You must do your duty of achieving full self–realization and self–fulfillment because you can. This is the reason why we feel, at least I do, a kind of terrorist pressure beneath the compliant tolerance of New Age preachers. They seem to preach peace and letting go and so on but there is an implicit terrorist dimension in it.
ReplyDelete-Slavoj Zizek, "The Superego and the Act"
Caitlyn Jenner is having a close encounter with Bataillean excess...
ReplyDeleteA person successful in discovering, being in tune with, and capable of being true to his unique individuality would never let a factitious theorist of any description define him with new minted terminology purporting to illustrate fabrications masquerading as discoveries.
DeleteAnd yet the theory perfectly describes Jenner and the soon to be "millions" who will seek a surgical "cure" for a culturally-induced "symptom".
DeleteWhen "authority" dies, the "authentic" self-mutilate in a futile attempt to claim it for themselves. And to do so, the truly "authentic" must "kill/renounce/chop off" whatever the previous "authority" had decreed. In this case not the "imaginary or symbolic" objet petit 'a, but the REAL "phallus".
DeleteCaitlin Jenner is what happens to people when they measure their lives according to their wants and desires instead of their ideals and value to others.
DeleteThank God Thersites arrived. I was waiting for someone to get to the bottom of this and makes some sense of it.
ReplyDeleteBefore passing Final Judgment in this troubling subject, y'all ought to Google "CHRISTINE JORGENSEN, YouTube" and watch two or three short interviews she made on video at various stages of her career many years ago. She was brilliantly articulate, saw herself from a realistic perspective with wry good humor, and had a lot more class than Bruce Jenner. In case you've forgotten, or never knew, Christine was a young Army Veteran who began life as a boy named George who travelled to Denmark to have The Surgery c. 1950.
ReplyDelete