Former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner recently revealed she can no longer travel internationally after the Trump administration's new passport policy required her to be marked as "male," and is receiving backlash for writing a letter to President Donald Trump asking him to get it changed.
Jenner, a transgender woman, has long aligned herself with the MAGA movement, which is diametrically opposed to LGBTQ+ equality and has led an attack against transgender rights that culminated in legislation banning or restricting gender-affirming care in GOP-led legislatures in more than half the country.
Now, she is on the wrong side of a sweeping executive order Trump signed shortly after starting his second term that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes, male and female, that are "not changeable."
In an interview with Fox News host Tomi Lahren, Jenner described her effort to get help after the gender marker on her passport was changed from female to male, but nonetheless claimed she doesn't "blame President Trump":
“Recently, I had my passport, I had to get it renewed. I sent it back, comes back gender marker ‘M.’ [That] screws everything up. So there's a form in there: if they made a mistake, you can correct it. I'm not calling anybody, I'm not calling the president, and I got his personal cell number. I'm seeing if I can fix this myself."
"It's not just about me, it's about all people in this situation. I even sent a hard copy... I did everything, they sent it back 'M.' They didn't change it at all. So now, I’m in a position, Tomi, that… What do I do? This is a safety factor. I can’t travel internationally anymore. I can’t use my passport.” ...
“I don’t blame President Trump. I love him, but for a lot of people, this is a huge issue, you know, and so that’s kind of where I’m at right now. I have not talked to the president. I wrote [to] him."
“I was in Mar-a-Lago two months ago, wrote a letter, explaining all of this to him, how it’s affecting me and a lot of other people. And unfortunately, he wasn’t there that weekend. The Secret Service guy said he could get it to him, put it on his desk."
“I haven’t heard from him. He’s kind of busy right now."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
Despite her identity as a trans woman, Jenner has allied herself with the anti-trans right and consistently advocated for anti-trans legislation and policies. She has asserted that trans women are not authentic women, endorsed anti-trans sports bans, and criticized what she perceives as "radical gender ideology" making its way into classrooms.
So it's funny to see her think she is special enough to be exempt from the worst of the Trump administration's anti-LGBTQ+ policies—and she was swiftly called out for her hypocrisy.
Jenner will flaunt her transgender identity whenever convenient—no matter how tone-deaf.
A couple of years ago, she was also criticized after she joined the chorus of right-wingers who at the time cried foul over the Transgender Day of Visibility falling on Easter.
In his presidential proclamation for that year, then-President Joe Biden celebrated the Transgender Day of Visibility as an occasion to recognize the remarkable "courage and contributions" of transgender individuals in the United States.
Jenner later lashed out at the Biden administration regardless, saying she was "absolutely disgusted" by Biden having "declared the most Holy of Holy days" to commemorate transgender rights. What Jenner—and MAGA broadly—failed to grasp, was that Transgender Day of Visibility is marked each year on March 31, while Easter changes dates each year.
Critics pointed out Jenner's hypocrisy, noting her attack was an about-face from her previous remarks about the commemorative day given that on March 31, 2017, she posted a photo of herself flanked by other transgender women that she captioned with a message about there being "no better visibility than with sisters by my side."
@IrnaEnglish/X
