Saw the linked story in my news feed today, and was intrigued enough to read it. Everett, who is gay, thinks Caitlyn Jenner made a mistake by transitioning.  My first thought was WTF does he have any business deciding what Jenner should or shouldn’t do. And that I believe is a reasonable response. STFU Rupert. Mind your own business.

But if you read the whole story, in it is a point, which in my opinion is really a valuable one and deserves attention. Everett encourages youth to be comfortable with their gender fluidity and ambivalence and not race too fast into medical surgeries, etc to change their gender. He posits his own experience as a child.

I’ve known enough trans persons to know that their path towards self awareness and acceptance is a personal journey and may be different for every person. And because of that, every trans person deserves for the rest of us to accept their choices surrounding their identity and expression. If they expect us to use different pronouns for them, or a different name, or to support their decisions surrounding transition. At the same time, one of the great awarenesses that knowing trans persons has given me, is that gender doesn’t fit into tight and neat little boxes. Is there a rush to fit into a box called male or a box called female? That’s a reasonable question.

We see this same rush to decide when it comes to sexual orientation. So often youth feel pressured to decide if they are gay or straight. Hell, even adults can feel that.  Because we treat orientation as if it is supposed to be nice and neat little boxes. The more appropriate mindset is that sexual orientation falls across a spectrum and it is fine and dandy even if you experience the fluidity of it.

That said, as reasonable as the question may be, the real persons who can discuss it (as it related to gender) and make choices around it are trans persons, not the rest of us. What the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community can do is make clear that all trans persons are persons of worth just as they are and that the choices they make are theirs to make with our support.

http://www.inquisitr.com/3222251/rupert-everett-says-caitlyn-jenner-made-mistake-by-transitioning