Julie Burchill: It would have been braver for Caitlyn Jenner to come out as gay
Feminist writer Julie Burchill has launched an attack on Caitlyn Jenner – claiming it would be braver if she were a gay man.
The newspaper columnist – who has previously described trans women as “shims”, “shemales”, and “big white blokes having their cocks cut off” – made the claims in an article for the Sunday Times.
It comes after fellow columnist Julie Bindel shared a message from a journalist at the same newspaper soliciting an anti-trans comment piece about Jenner, which she declined to write.
In her column, Burchill branded Caitlyn Jenner “selfish”, and refers to her as “self-pitying”, “unfortunate” and a “simpering vamp”.
She wrote: “Transitioning is nothing more than something people do in the pursuit of happiness via extreme selfishness.
“I have no moral objection to this — that’s how I’ve lived my life and it has made me very happy. It’s not ‘bad’ – but it’s certainly not brave.”
Ms Burchill also claimed that “transgendered people” who have criticized her in the past like to “play the bed-wetting victim”, branding them the “cry-bullies of identity politics”.
She added: “Another oddity is the knee-jerk claims of ‘bravery’ made by their monstrous regiments of cyberfans.
“While I do think that people who transition (awful word, reminiscent of the sci-fi dream of teleporting, but ‘sex change’ is unfashionably no-nonsense these days) have guts, I wouldn’t say they’re ‘brave’, as they’re doing it just for themselves, and bravery is about doing things for other people — being a fireman, being a soldier on the side of freedom, being someone who stands up to any sort of fascism. (And being someone who donates bits of their body to others while they’re still alive, rather than have them chucked in the surgical waste bin.)
She added: “It would have been far braver, in my opinion, to come out as homosexual in the macho circles in which Maloney and Jenner became wealthy and powerful.”
The Observer opted to remove a piece from Burchill in 2013 due to its attacks on the trans community, in which Burchill claimed trans women “don’t know the meaning of suffering”, describing them as “bed-wetters in bad wigs”.
