This week came the big reveal. There he was, Bruce Jenner, gracing the cover of Vanity Fair with curves, breasts, smooth, wavy long hair and a new, feminine sounding name.
While many are celebrating Caitlin Jenner‘s newfound gender, not everyone is buying that he’s somehow now a woman or that he’s a “her” or a “she.” He may be changed all right, says blogger and motivational author Sophia Nelson. But he’s still a man. A changed man.
Speaking your mind on the topic isn’t advisable.
Nelson, author of The Woman Code, is finding that calling Caitlyn Jenner a man comes with consequences.
An outspoken figure on Twitter and a lifelong conservative Christian, Nelson typically tweets about spiritual matters and relationships. She had remained mum on her thoughts about Jenner. But on Thursday she broke her silence and posted a picture of soldiers, making her beliefs about Jenner known.
Within moments, she was vilified, her timeline soiled with enemies like “Gay Boy” — a.k.a. @ThatHighFaggot — calling her a “cunt” and telling her they wanted her to die.
Here’s a sampling:
- “Shut the entire fuck up.”
- “Don’t fave my tweets, bigot.”
- “You retweeting me as if proving how people are ‘mean’ to you. your transphobia is disgusting and vile.”
- “People like Sophia Nelson contribute to the climate that endangers the lives of trans women. Don’t let them lie to themselves.”
- “Wow. Whether or not it’s ‘violent,’ it certainly makes you an asshole. What do you have to gain by disrespecting her?”
- “You are absolute garbage.”
- “You’re a fucking idiot.”
- “You don’t get to use science to disprove anything you milquetoast piece of human garbage.”
- “ur disgusting. pls drown.”
- “Bottom line: you’re an asshole.”
- “You say it’s an insult to call a man a woman well it’s a bigger insult that the Lord made someone so narrow minded as you.”
“I look through the tweets and shake my head,” Nelson told The Mirror in a phone conversation Thursday evening. “I really feel sorry for these folks because of how they conduct themselves. They can’t take it. They go crazy. It’s the vile name calling. You stoop to the lowest level.”
Nelson isn’t buying the concept of Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn Jenner. “I’m struggling…with ‘I want to be a woman, but I’m keeping my male genitalia but I still want to be with women,'” she said.
Nelson has faced down critics before.
When she was promoting her book that gives women tools on how to be their best selves, a major Texas company she won’t name canceled a speaking engagement because of her views on same sex marriage. Someone in the company’s diversity department called to give her the news. “They told me point blank that I was not welcome because of my views on same sex marriage,” she recalled. She argued that she was coming there to help women. “They said ‘We don’t care. It would offend our gays and lesbians.'”
As you may have guessed, she’s opposed.
The problem was that in May of 2012, she appeared on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” with Michael Eric Dyson to discuss same sex marriage. Employees at that Texas company saw the video. She was dubbed a sexual redneck because she doesn’t support same sex marriage.
The company canceling on her still gets in her craw. “The essence was, ‘We think you’re great, and many people share your views, but we can’t say that,'” she said.
As for her new online enemies, “I let them go crazy because I want to show what’s happening. We are are in serious trouble that we are in a country where only certain groups can speak. That’s not America — that’s not who we are.”
She wasn’t finished. “I don’t have to agree with everything you do in life and celebrate,” she said. “Do I need to be called the c-word? Should I be dead? Should I be killed? They come up with these terms to shut me down. So now I’m transphobic?”
Let’s just get it all out there — why does Nelson believe that Caitlyn Jenner is still a man?
“A couple things: one, he was born male. To my knowledge he has an XY chromosome, he has male genitalia, which he is not going to get rid of, which I think is extra bizarre,” she said. “If tomorrow Caitlin Jenner went out and committed a murder, you do realize that DNA is going to male. If I identify as the Queen of England, you’re going to put me in a straitjacket. This is disturbing.”
On Twitter she was even more defiant. “I am supposed to join the PC team and shut my mouth and go yeah #CaitlynJenner,” she wrote. “Never gonna happen!”
Nelson doesn’t hide the fact that she doesn’t understand the world of transgenders.
“I don’t have a clue what someone who is gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender deals with,” she said. “I accept that premise. I agree all human beings should be treated with respect. What I am saying is you’re not going to shove it down my throat that I don’t agree that a man who still has a penis is not a man, or that now I’m violent to transgender women and I am putting their lives in danger.”
Nelson didn’t speak out in total innocence.
“It was predictable,” she said of the reaction she received. “I did it on purpose. I knew what I was doing. These people, the gay, lesbian transgender community, is the most intolerant, angry, mean community. They will attack you like vicious dogs.”
Nelson knows she may take a lot of heat, but she doesn’t care.
“Bottom line is, I don’t mind if you disagree,” she said. “What I mind is if you start calling me a cunt and telling me to die. That’s a problem. But I am not afraid of them.”
Nelson even warned detractors about the vile things they were spewing at her.
“Some of you cussing & spewing venom will be featured in some news stories, including the one I am going to write,” she wrote. “Be careful what you tweet! It lasts forever.”
Naturally, the threat of publicity didn’t deter them. As this story was published, some 10 hours after her original tweet, the hate continued to blow in Nelson’s direction.