May 4, 2021

In 2015, Caitlyn Jenner Wanted Trans Athletes to Play as “Who They Really Are.” What Changed?

“Trans activist” has always been a murky title for Jenner.

Caitlyn Jenner speaks at the 4th Women's March last year in Los Angeles. DPA/ Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In July 2015, Caitlyn Jenner had just publicly come out as a trans woman. She took the stage at the ESPYs—a quasi-award show hosted by ABC to crown ESPN as much as attendees—and thanked a series of trailblazers: Renee Richards, Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox, Arthur Ashe. She finished by saying she wanted “to acknowledge all the young trans athletes who are out there—given the chance to play sports as who they really are.”

This week Jenner, the former Olympic gold medalist and Kardashian TV personality, who has now announced her hopes to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom in an expected recall election later this year, reversed herself.

In an interview with TMZ, when Jenner was asked her opinion on “biological boys” participating in school sports, she responded that it was it “is a question of fairness.” “That’s why I oppose biological boys who are trans from competing in girls sports in school,” she continued. “It just isn’t fair. We have to protect girl’s sports in our schools.”

The interviewer pressed her for more comment: “But if someone transitions and now identifies as a girl isn’t it delegitimizing their identity to prevent them?”

Jenner declined to responded. “Have a good day,” she said as she got into her car and closed the door.

This isn’t a surprise from Jenner. She voiced support for Donald Trump in 2016. She is a Republican candidate for office. Though some news outlets have called Jenner a “trans activist,” that designation has always been murky. She is a trans person; her coming out became symbolic of wider acceptance for trans people. But activism requires moving beyond oneself to the larger needs of those with you in a struggle. Jenner at times seems uninterested in this.

Her disavowal of trans girls in sports is damaging. And it fits with a history of comments that expose how much her wealth and whiteness have allowed her to ascend to a level of power that she can vocally oppose those in her own community. Not to mention that the news cycle would rather focus on one right-wing trans voice than the hundred of trans youth who are currently being written out of existence. Yesterday the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments for an appeal on the constitutionality of Idaho’s ban on trans athletes, which passed last year before a federal judge blocked it. Jenner’s words have the potential to translate to real violence against trans people. But she doesn’t care—she’s playing the game to gain points for herself and her gubernatorial run.

Charlotte Clymer, the former press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign told CNN that Jenner “basically gives legitimacy to Republican candidates, to the Republican Party. The very fact that she said that Donald Trump would be rational on trans issues—that did an enormous amount of damage to the trans rights movement.”

Though Jenner backtracked her support for Trump in 2018, her recent statement mirrors that of many Republican state legislators currently enacting bills that target trans kids from participating in sports and accessing gender affirming care. California, Jenner’s state of residence, has explicitly protected the rights of trans students to participate in sports since 2013.

This year has already seen a wave of anti-trans bills pass through Republican-controlled state legislatures. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia have all passed bills banning trans girls from playing on girl’s sports teams. Meanwhile, Arkansas became the first state in the country to outlaw doctors from providing hormone replacement therapy or puberty blockers to trans youth under the age of 18.

“If there’s one thing I do know about my life, it is the power of the spotlight,” Jenner said back in 2015. “I know I’m clear with my responsibility going forward, to tell my story the right way, for me, to keep learning, to reshape the landscape of how trans issues are viewed, how trans people are treated.”

But who is the spotlight for if not for Jenner alone? If her coming out in 2015 marked a trans tipping point, her words this week show that the only measurement of progress she cares about is her own fame. 

“It’s about what happens from here. It’s not just about one person. It’s about thousands of people,” she said at the ESPYs. “It’s not just about me.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate