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Great Flip-Flops In History

Is Caitlyn Jenner going to de-trans herself?
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OK, OK, y’all can stop sending me the link to today’s story that Caitlyn Jenner is thinking about de-transitizing herself:

Ian Halperin, the author of “Kardashian Dynasty: The Controversial Rise of America’s Royal Family,” said that, while researching his book, multiple sources told him that the former Olympian had been miserable for months and has considered transitioning back to a man.

“One source confirmed to me Caitlyn has made whispers of ‘sex change regret,’ hinting she might go back to being Bruce Jenner,” Halperin said.

Halperin said that one long-time friend told him that, while Jenner was “thrilled” to champion transgender issues, the reality TV personality could de-transition “in the next couple years.”

“It hasn’t been easy for Caitlyn, it’s been very hard,” the friend said, according to Halperin. “She’s thrilled she has raised awareness about how transgender people have long been discriminated against but I think there’s a chance she’ll de-transition in the next couple years. I don’t think it would surprise anybody in her inner circle. It has been much harder than she anticipated. My heart goes out to her and I know her true friends will be there to support her on whatever path she chooses.”

Team Caitlyn has denied the report, as you knew they would. I bet it’s true, but we’ll see. Good thing he kept his junk. If it does pan out, it will be no time for gloating. Consider what happened to Mike Penner.  Whatever the case, Bruce Jenner is a deeply troubled man. The fact that he did all this in public, and has become a cultural icon, promoted heavily by ESPN, Vanity Fair, and everybody else in the cultural elite, has set him up for an extremely hard fall.

Say, let’s all force the trans treatment on children and adolescents who go wobbly on gender identity. What could it hurt?

UPDATE: One of my learned readers responds to this news with a passage from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”:

Below, find the Tiresias stanza to “The Fire Sermon” in all its glorious Eliotic pessimism about the inability of meaningless sex, gender-bending, and creepy old peeping Toms to solve any, let alone all, of the world’s problems:

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back 

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits 
Like a taxi throbbing waiting, 
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, 
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see 
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, 
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights 
Her stove, and lays out food in tins. 
Out of the window perilously spread 
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays, 
On the divan are piled (at night her bed) 
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. 
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs 
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— 
I too awaited the expected guest. 
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, 
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare, 
One of the low on whom assurance sits 
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. 
The time is now propitious, as he guesses, 
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, 
Endeavours to engage her in caresses 
Which still are unreproved, if undesired. 
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; 
Exploring hands encounter no defence; 
His vanity requires no response, 
And makes a welcome of indifference. 
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all 
Enacted on this same divan or bed; 
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 
And walked among the lowest of the dead.) 
Bestows one final patronising kiss, 
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

 

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