The Caitlyn Jenner Syndrome
Caitlyn Jenner was a minor sports figure who played on that to become a reality TV star, other than that she had nothing of any significance to offer the world. Her credentials at college were that of a glorified gym teacher from an ultra-religious college associated with a break-off of the Mormon sect.
Jenner had largely disappeared from public view until marrying a Khardasian — one of the bizarre celebrity families — and then he announced he was transitioning and would be Caitlyn Jenner instead. Now the gym teacher wants to be governor of California.
In short order Jenner made it clear that being transgender would be of no significance and publicly joined the Republican hate campaign against trans kids by saying no trans girl should be allowed to participate in female sports, that in spite of Jenner herself joining a woman’s golf tournament. Do as she says, not as she does, is as Republican as you can get. Jenner joined herself at the hip to the Trump hate campaigns against immigrants and refugees and is making that a central plank of her “campaign.” She thinks police are the real victims and not the people they kill. She thinks I.C.E. is great and is basically another GOP authoritarian.
But Jenner has done us one public service — she once again proves that being a member of an oppressed minority doesn’t necessarily make one sympathetic to the equal rights of others. Yes, victims of bigotry can be bigots themselves. This shouldn’t even be controversial.
But I know some members of the lunatic Left have continually argued that victims of bigotry simply can’t be bigoted themselves.
The truth is victimization is a form of bullying, an adult version of what petulant and twisted children due to other kids. And sometimes victims of bullying will band together, but some victims identify with the bully and become bullies themselves.
In the news today is the death of con artist Earnest Angley, a fraudulent faith healer and televangelist who was extremely anti-gay in public, while being a walking stereotype for what he was attacking. But it wasn’t just his mannerisms that caused problems for him, he was charged with sexually assaulting male members of his own congregation and he was recorded on audiotape admitting he had sex with various men in his cult. The “church” just turned a blind eye and pretended it never happened as they showered their money on this man.
We see the same sort of denialism and bullying from grifter Milo Yiannopoulos, whose whole con was he was hateful gay man, whose grift fell apart when the Right-wing moneybags dropped him for defending sex with kids. Now he’s trying to raise funds by pretending to be “ex-gay” cured through prayer.
We’ve recently seen a spate of hate crimes against Asian-Americans and some of the video of these incidents showed black men assaulting Asians, the victims mostly women, and mostly elderly. Once again victims of prejudice responded with prejudice of their own or the victims of bullying became the bullies.
There have been bizarre and mind-boggling cases of this throughout history. I remember when the Nazis wanted to march in Skokie. Some Nazi group of losers wanted to march and sought all sorts of publicity over it, without ever doing it. The head Nazi was a clown named Frank Collins — he hated Jews, Blacks and gays. Then it came out his father was in a German concentration camp because he was Jewish and later Collins was caught having sex with underage black boys!
Of course, there are others where being victimized had the opposite effect. I think of the young Hans Scholl, who like most Germans his age was a member of Hitler Youth. It was early in the history of the regime and its true ugliness was yet to be fully revealed. Hans and his siblings were members but Hans had fallen in love with another young man.
Hans had gone to a Nazi rally and while there learned his love was a crime and went home changed. He started reconsidering everything he thought was true and started reading Schiller and others. He turned against the Nazis. One day he was arrested for violation Paragraph 175, which made homosexuality a crime and that was the final straw, not just for him, but for his siblings as well. Hans worked with some friends and secretly created a resistance group that became known as the White Rose. He gave his live fighting the hate of Hitler.
There is no shortage of victims of bigotry whose defense mechanism is to become bigots themselves. They are the Caitlyn Jenners of the world. And there are others who join the fight for equality of rights for all people — the Hans Scholls of the world.
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