From 2007 to 2021, America’s favorite pastime — together with destabilizing the Middle East, bastardizing the metric system, and popularizing such dystopian words as “hypergrowth” — was tuning in to Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a reality television series that focused on the lives and drama of the Kardashian-Jenner family.
That show has since been retooled into the Hulu series The Kardashians, but let’s face it: the public doesn’t need a television show to get their Kardashian fix, because so long as one pair of Kardashian-Jenner lips are flapping, there will be many an anonymous ear to drink the words in. Today, those words are Brody Jenner‘s.
Appearing recently on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, Brody opened up about his relationship with his parent Caitlyn Jenner — a trans woman who famously came out in the year 2015 — and how her transition shed a lot of light on what was a strained relationship between them.
When I found out that Caitlyn, or Bruce, wanted to be Caitlyn, it was sort of a relief. I think that there were a lot of things that started to make sense, you know, just in my life, about my father, and maybe why he wasn’t there all those years. And I think when you have kids, you need to accept a little bit of responsibility that the things you do are also going to reflect on them as well. I think it really has shaped me to do everything different and to really be there and to be present to my little girl.
Putting aside the fact that it’s very strange to utilize someone’s family life as a point of interest, Brody’s words speak to a lot of important nuances that are worth talking about.
Because here’s the thing about gender dysphoria — the inherent psychological distress that trans people relieve by transitioning — that many people don’t understand (and, frankly, are lucky not to): not only does it blanket your life experience with a debilitating dissonance, but because the education surrounding queer and trans subjects is so limited (and actively being stripped away in many cases), it can take quite some time to simply acquire the language needed to understand or even recognize that distress, let alone figuring out how to relieve it.
For Caitlyn, that dissonance ostensibly manifested in an inability to show up for Brody. That’s no excuse, of course; having children is a major responsibility that should not be taken on unless a person is unwaveringly certain that they’re ready to step up. Caitlyn — even if, unbeknownst to her, her dysphoria rendered her incapable of certainty — was not, judging by Brody’s words.
But that’s all in the past, and it’s now in Brody and Caitlyn’s power to try and make the best possible amends with one another. Maybe they’ll never be close, maybe they will, but it’s really not our business either way. Indeed, that is a conversation that would benefit immaculately from a pair of closed, soundproof doors, which in turn would benefit the lives of those who would maladaptively tune in to such a thing.
Published: Jan 16, 2025 09:13 am