Caitlyn Jenner and the Importance of Open Dialogue

Caitlyn Jenner

Today I want to talk about a trend that’s been troubling me. We seem to be lacking nuance lately. An insufficient amount of nuance is leading to a lack of open dialogue. Instead of engaging, it’s often easier to simply remove from our lives those we disagree with. Whether we’re discussing police brutality, systematic racism, or Caitlyn Jenner, I think it’s important to foster a culture of open dialogue.

This need has become increasingly apparent to me as the division in our country continues to grow. Too often I see people being praised on Twitter for unceremoniously erasing real people from their lives.

One example that’s been stuck in my head came from this viral tweet I saw. The person said “I lost my aunt today…She’s not dead, just racist.”

This tweet garnered hundreds of thousands of retweets and 2.3 million likes. As far as writing goes, it’s a great tweet. It pulls on your sympathy chords then delivers a face slap of a twist at the end. Brilliant.

What troubles me about the tweet—besides wondering if the aunt really is racist or if she’s just not as woke as the tweeter—is wondering if this was the correct solution. It’s a conundrum a lot of us are in…

Should we delete people from our lives who have views we find reprehensible?

Say, for example, your uncle has some borderline white supremacist views. Maybe he still uses the F-word to describe a gay person. Should you cut him out of your life or engage with him? It would be completely understandable for you to take the viewpoint that you don’t need or want your uncle in your life.

The idea, however, that you must cut off all communication with him is problematic. The reason for this is you might be the best rational voice in your uncle’s life.

Engaging with him on his beliefs should in no way be seen as you condoning those beliefs. I think deep down, many of us are afraid that if we’re seen listening and engaging with someone with reprehensible beliefs then those around us will assume we hold those beliefs as well. So, as a defense mechanism, we peacock out. We loudly proclaim our disgust at our racist uncle. We stick our noses out at his ignorant ways and we certainly don’t listen to his rationale.

But by cutting him off completely his ideas won’t be challenged in any meaningful way.

As his niece or nephew, you serve as a potentially reasonable voice. A voice that may move him slightly down the path towards being a better human being. This is particularly true if your ideas are well thought out.

By contrast, if you scream at your uncle and call him a racist bigot and refuse to dialogue with him then you’re guaranteed to not change his mind. Most likely you’ll just cause him to dig in his heels further.

I’m certainly not saying that someone must carry the weight of changing every ignorant mind they come across. But, I don’t subscribe to the idea that the best course of action is to consider that person dead to you.

Caitlyn Jenner

Let’s take another hot button issue—deadnaming.

For those who don’t know, deadnaming is when you use the birth name of a transgender person without their consent. For example, if you were to call Caitlyn Jenner “Bruce”, that would be deadnaming. 

Pretend you’re in a group of people and the topic of Caitlyn Jenner comes up. One person refers to Caitlyn as a “he” and continually calls her “Bruce”. In today’s culture, the appropriate response is to delete that person from your life.

If it happens on social media we block or unfriend them. If it happens in the real world we verbally shut them down. Either way, we don’t bother explaining why we call her Caitlyn and we certainly don’t hear out their reasons for calling her “Bruce.”

One option when you come across this person is to verbally trash them. Shame them publicly and wipe your hands triumphantly for a job well done. Another option is to engage with them. Share with them your rationale and why you personally choose to call her Caitlyn and refer to Caitlyn as her.

Here’s what it looks like.

At this point, many people opt to delete this obviously bigoted person from their life.

The problem is, this person is not actually deleted. They still exist in the world and they still have their same backward way of thinking.

You might exit scene left feeling morally superior but they continue to exist, unaware or unmoved by the harm deadnaming causes.

A better way to handle it, in my opinion, is to keep an open dialogue. Address the issue head-on and explain why you believe the appropriate response is to call Caitlyn Jenner “Caitlyn” and use her preferred pronoun of her.

“Well, my overall life philosophy, and the way I form my political opinions, is to treat people how I want to be treated. If I really hated the name David and I wanted people to call me Dave then it would be hurtful if someone called me David just to be mean. David is a completely innocuous name but it would still be upsetting. When Caitlyn made the decision to identify as a woman and wanted to change her name to Caitlyn, well, I have a moral obligation to call her Caitlyn and refer to her as her because that’s how she wants to be treated and treating people how I want to be treated is part of my life code.”

Now, this might not change the person’s mind. In fact, it probably won’t. But, it will give them something to think about. This response will almost certainly have a better chance of moving them slightly further down the ladder to being a more thoughtful and caring human than they were before the conversation.

So maybe they were here.

And by engaging with them you probably won’t move them to here.

But you might move them to here.

What won’t move them further down the ladder to being a more thoughtful and caring human is immediately deleting them from your life or calling them a racist bigot shitty fuckface. In fact, that will just make them dig in their heels more.

So we have to ask ourselves whether we’re more interested in changing people’s hearts and minds or if we’re more interested in scoring points for our in-group.

Tweeting that you told your bigoted uncle that you never want to see him again might get you a lot of retweets and social praise on Twitter, but it won’t help bring your uncle around.

As we discussed in The Spectrum of Belief and the Circle of Influence we all have a group of people we’re able to actually influence.

People have to be relatively close to us—either relationally or in like-mindedness—for us to have a real shot at changing their way of thinking.

Using your platform to engage with your uncle very well might bring your uncle around. I could say the same thing to your uncle but because he’s not in my circle of influence it would fall on deaf ears. There’s at least an outside chance he’ll listen to you.

Obviously this approach won’t work with your average troll on Twitter. If people aren’t dialoguing in good faith then I don’t think it’s inappropriate to block them and move on. Life is too short to argue with people who simply want to argue.

“But…All lives matter!”

Take the Black lives matter/All lives matter situation. Almost all of us have a well-meaning relative who can’t help but respond with, “But, all lives matter.”

By taking the time to explain why you say “Black lives matter” instead of “All lives matter” you’re actually making a positive change in the world.

People only learn by being taught. During this latest round of protests, I’ve heard far fewer people responding with “but, all lives matter.” By constantly talking about how, yes, all houses matter, but we’re focusing on the house that’s currently on fire, it gives people a new perspective.

Caitlyn Jenner

If someone walks up to you with a broken arm it would be inappropriate to respond that all arms matter. When you engage with people and help walk them down the path to being a more thoughtful and caring human it raises us all up.

If someone yells “All lives matter” and you scream at them for being a racist then they probably won’t change their stance. If you give them a few metaphors to help them understand what it means to say “Black lives matter” and why you don’t say “All lives matter,” then maybe they get the distinction.

Caitlyn Jenner

Had we just deleted all those people who responded with “All lives matter” after the Trayvon Martin murder then there would still be a huge group of people who don’t understand the difference. Although there is still much work to do, most people seem to get the distinction.

If you don’t have the strength to engage with people who you disagree with, that’s fine. I get it. Many days I feel I don’t have the strength either. Just be thoughtful about when you pull the plug and delete a real person out of your life. Nobody is irredeemable. You might be the best shot they have at understanding the situation from a more nuanced view.

If you enjoyed this article please share it with your friends and enemies.

Here are a few more articles where I try to be more thoughtful and less silly.

The Spectrum of Belief and the Circle of Influence

How to Participate in the American Election Without Being a Complete Dick

Confirmation Bias- How to be Stupid and Proud of It

Author: MrBurritoBowl

Mr. Burrito Bowl is a 34-year-old man from Whitefish, Montana who likes to draw stick figures and say things that sometimes relate to finances, but not always.

2 thoughts on “Caitlyn Jenner and the Importance of Open Dialogue”

  1. The problem with eliminating people you disagree with is that if you are human you are not always right about your view of the world. And they aren’t perfect either. So where do you draw the line about what’s too much to tolerate. If you only accept your own version of perfection then you will be very lonely, in fact you will have to cancel yourself eventually when you fall short, which you will.

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