Snoop, Timbaland and Drake Bell, I'm surprised by your insensitivity to Caitlyn Jenner. But Connor Cruise and Mike Huckabee, your ignorance about transgender people is majorly dismaying. Get educated before you say another cruel word.
Caitlyn Jenner's Haters -- Snoop Dogg, Mike Huckabee and Others... Stop!
Caitlyn Jenner is on a mission to help other transgender people by revealing her life-long struggle -- and she's no doubt not surprised by haters like presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Tom Cruise's son, Connor Cruise, Drake Bell, Snoop Dogg and Timabaland. Caitlyn had to realistically know that not everyone would be thrilled by the revelation that her true female self had been hidden inside the body of a man -- an Olympic hero, no less -- for 65 years.
That's largely why she waited so long living a lie, and feeling lonely and alone with her secret. But now, it's time for her dis-ers to get with Caitlyn's program, and to no longer live in ignorance about what it is to be a transgender person, like 700,000 people in the United States. None of them, like Caitlyn Jenner, asked to be born as a transgender person.
As Jenner explained in an ABC interview with Diane Sawyer, she always had "the soul of a female." Transgender people don't choose or want to have the soul of one sex and the body of another -- it makes for an extremely difficult life. And this has nothing to do with sex drive. "It's apples and oranges," Jenner explained to Diane Sawyer. "There's two different things here. Sexuality is who you personally are attracted to -- who turns you on. But gender identity has to do with who you are as a person and your soul and who you identify with inside."
Transgender Hatred Needs To Cease -- Now!
Now let's be clear here -- it's just rude to call Caitlyn a "science project" like Snoop Dogg did on Instagram on June 3. And it's extremely insensitive to tell Caitlyn and the other hundreds of thousands of transgender people that "there are so many more important things that should be talked about...and SO MANY MORE IMPORTANT PEOPLE that actually deserve an award," like Connor Cruise did in a cruel Twitter rant. Connor was referring to the ESPY Arthur Ashe Courage Award, which Caitlyn will receive on July 15. Connor has no idea of what it's like to be born into such a difficult life -- having the soul of one gender and body of another.
As we see with both Connor and Mike Huckabee, there are huge prejudices against transgender people and that's why it is so courageous to very publicly acknowledge being transgender, as Caitlyn has done. Sadly, 41 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide. Isn't that a clear indication of how tough their lives are? Just last January, 17-year-old transgender girl Leelah Alcorn killed herself after her conservatively religious parents refused to accept that she wanted to transition.
Leelah left a suicide note on her Tumblr saying:
"Please don't be sad, it's for the better. The life I would've lived isn't worth living in... because I'm transgender... I feel like a girl trapped in a boy's body".
Meanwhile, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee mocked transgender people in a speech last February, in which he laughingly said, "I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could take showers in P.E. I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, 'Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today!'"
He also slammed cities for allowing transgender people to use public bathrooms. "Your 7-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom...can't be offended if she's greeted by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man." Huckabee clearly refuses to educate himself so that he understands that transgender people are not motivated by wanting to snoop on the other sex. That's ridiculous!
Caitlyn Jenner's Dissers Need To Educate Themselves
Huckabee should take a moment and read the words penned by Leelah in her suicide note:
My mom reacted extremely negatively telling me that it would be a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes... if you are reading this parents, please don't tell this to your kids even if you are Christian or against transgender people...that won't do anything but make them hate themself.
Mike Huckabee, it's time to get off your pedestal and stop insulting transgender people. Drake Bell, Timbaland and Snoop: Stop making mean jokes, and Connor, get informed. Caitlyn is highly motivated to help improve the tortured lives and prevent the needless deaths of transgender people like Leelah. Misunderstanding transgender people and discrimination are real issuse, huge issues. It's time to offer love, not hate.
-- Bonnie Fuller