Male or Female: Bruce Jenner’s Gender Dysphoria

Chalcey Polson

Denver School of Nursing

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Male or Female: Bruce Jenner’s Gender Dysphoria

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt uncomfortable and felt like you were not

yourself? Have you ever felt insecure in who you are? Well that is how transgenders feel

everyday. Bruce Jenner says that is how he has felt the majority of his life. In the Diane Sawyer

Bruce Jenner Special, Bruce Jenner officially came out as a transgender. In the special, Bruce

opened up about his struggle of figuring out who he is as a male and his interest in becoming a

female.

In the beginning of the interview, Bruce Jenner started off by saying, “I have been

confused with my gender identity since I was this big (indicating him as a child).” In another

way, he tells his struggle like this: ”God is looking down and making little Bruce. God looks

down and says ‘What are we going to do with this one?’ Make him a smart kid, very determined,

with many other good qualities. And at the end when he is just finishing, He says ‘Wait a second,

everyone has something that they have to deal with in their life, so what am I going to give this

one?’ God looks down and chuckles a little bit and says ‘Hey lets give him the soul of a female,

and let’s see how he deals with that.” (Jenner, 2015)

A transgender/transsexual, also known as gender identity disorder, is defined as a person

who strongly identifies with the opposite sex (Black, 2004). The individual may identify with the

opposite sex to the point of believing that he or she, is in fact, part of that opposite sex who is

trapped in the wrong body. Bruce said in the special interview “Here I am stuck... but I hate the

word, ‘girl stuck in a guys body’, because I am me. This is who I am as a person. My brain is

much more female than it is male” (Jenner, 2015).

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Bruce being a part of the public eye for so many years: being a track and field Olympic

Champion, and a father of one of the most fashionable and most watched families on television,

the Kardashians, has made it a more difficult and interesting journey for him as a transgender.

People have come to believe that this is all just a stunt to get more ratings for the show, Keeping

Up with the Kardashians. However, that is not it at all. Bruce is opening up about his gender

identity for other people who are going through the same things as well. “I believe we are going

to change the world” says Bruce to Diane. In today’s society, there are about 700,000 people in

the world that have trouble with gender identity in the United States (Paquette, 2015). With this

interview of him coming out as a transgender, he hopes he would open doors and create more

opportunities for other people who are going through the same thing that he is.

Many doors have been opening up for the LGBT community within the past few decades,

for example, in the Netflix show, Orange is the New Black, a transgender male turned female, is

one of the main characters of the show, Sophia Burset, played by Laverne Cox. Cher’s daughter

turned son, Chaz Bono, has been one of the most well-known transgenders of this day in age.

Alone, these transgenders have opened up career paths and have paved the road for others who

are following in their footprints. “Today, being transgender is considered to be somewhat normal,

and is not considered to be a psychiatric disorder anymore.” (Jenner, 2015) During the 1950’s

and 1960’s in the United States, transsexuals were viewed by society as people who were

mentally weird, immoral or just somewhat creepy. They were thrown out of many church

communities and some were even shunned by their own family and friends (Cook, 2014).

Nowadays, the view of transgenders are much more open and welcoming than they were in the

past.

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Growing up, Bruce Jenner knew something was different about him. By the time he was

around eight or nine years old, he would dance around his house when no one was home in his

sister’s dresses. From then on, Jenner began to feel that the “gender of his body, was different

than what he felt in his soul” (Jenner, 2015). He says that he has always felt this way. Experts

say that it is normal for children to walk across gender lines growing up. However, only a small

percentage of children who display gender dysphoria characteristics may continue to show

leading to adolescence or adulthood. Especially for adolescents, going into puberty can lead

them over a cliff if they do not seek help. “Untreated, undiagnosed, and unevaluated teenagers

and young adults, between the ages of 16 -25, forty-five percent of them will attempt

suicide” (Jenner, 2015).

In children, many symptoms include an expression of desire to be the opposite sex; some

children even insist that they are a part of the opposite sex and ask their families to call them by

another name (Grohol, 2011). As a child, Bruce Jenner was interested in the opposite sex attire,

by cross dressing in secret, but was interested in boyish activities such as sports. Growing up,

Bruce used sports as his way to cope with his gender identity feelings. “It was really hard for me,

because I always felt like a girl.” (Jenner, 2015) This feeling still continued throughout

adolescence and into adulthood.

As an adult, Bruce began to have a much more difficult time with his gender dysphoria.

Being married to three different woman and having ten gorgeous kids, Bruce was been seen as

the man of the household. Secretly, Bruce kept his conflict private for about 35 years from the

public. As for his family, it was much harder for him to open up about his disorder because, “I

could not bear to see my children hurt” (Jenner, 2015). Now, after so many years of keeping his

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secret private, he opened up to his family recently and his family has become very welcoming

and supportive of his new lifestyle.

To sum things up, gender identity disorder is a real and serious problem. Although, we

don’t know all of what may be the cause or causes of the feelings that may trigger them to feel

toward their assigned sex, we can however conclude that it is connected with a gender

irregularity that occurs within the first decade of childhood. We also know that when the

individual’s sense of gender is established, it is unchangeable, because that is who the person

believes they are meant to be.

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References

[Special issue]. (2004). Gender Identity Disorder: A Misunderstood Diagnosis.

[Special issue]. (2013). Suicide Protective Factors Among Trans Adults. http://dx.doi.org/

10.1007/s10508-013-0099-8

[Special issue]. (2015). A Comparison of Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Sexual Risk

Behaviors Between Rural and Non-Rural Transgender Persons. http://dx.doi.org/

10.1080/00918369.2014.872502

Jenner, B. (2015, April 24). [Personal interview by D. Sawyer].

Paquette, D. (n.d.). 8 critical facts about the state of transgender America. Retrieved from The

Washington Post website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/

2015/01/22/the-state-of-transgender-america-massive-discrimination-little-data/

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