Some friends were discussing the fracturing of the Women’s March and the tendency for the Left to cannibalize itself. I was reminded of a recent episode of Vanderpump Rules, which left me feeling uneasy and divided between two “progressive” standpoints.
I’d like to think I’m not transphobic—I have several transgender friends.
Is that like saying “I have Black friends” in a misguided effort to prove you’re not racist?
You tell me and we can discuss later. This one isn’t about race. Everyone on Vanderpump Rules is white. So…
I was watching Vanderpump Rules—a guilty pleasure, no doubt. It’s a standardly vapid reality show about the staff at SUR, a Beverly Hills restaurant run by Real Housewife of Beverly Hills, Lisa Vanderpump. I could write a whole essay on my profound interest in reality television (the same essay could be written about my interest in baseball) but that’s not what this is about.
There’s this skittish Brit named James Kennedy who DJs at SUR every Tuesday night (his weekly residency is called See You Next Tuesday, which is slang for C-U-N-T). Putting that completely aside, James does not do well under the influence of alcohol and has a history of turning into an unhinged, misogynistic asshole when he drinks. Naturally, there are women who want to “take James Kennedy down.” On Pride Day, one of these said women tells James’s girlfriend that James has been cheating on her and when James is confronted by his girlfriend, he starts lashing out at everyone—not just the girls who are trying to sabotage him but anyone and everyone who tries to wrangle him in. He calls Kristin a slut. He calls LaLa a whore. And he calls Katie fat. He goes on to tell Katie she shouldn’t be wearing shorts and ought to lost some weight, which is fucked up on its own, but it’s especially fucked up because Katie was hospitalized after falling through a roof and she gained a significant amount of weight since then but is on the tail end of a journey to self-love.
So later, Katie tells Lisa Vanderpump about the James incident and she ends up giving Lisa an ultimatum. She says she doesn’t want to work at a place that turns a blind eye to James’s disgusting language and behavior. She says she shouldn’t have to worry about getting fat-shamed at work. She’s all like: It’s me or James. You choose.
Lisa, who I fucking love and tolerates zero bullshit and zero disrespect, decides to fire James. James is shattered. He swears he’ll never drink again. He apologizes. But it’s to no avail. At least not for now.
Then the co-owners of the restaurant are like, Lisa, James made Tuesday night our busiest night (a hard thing to do), you can’t fire him, we’re losing money! And then Lisa calls a staff meeting where James’s firing becomes a topic of heated discussion. Some of the waitresses and bartenders are like, finally, the kid got what was coming for him, James got himself fired. And then some are like honestly, if you don’t like James, just don’t work on Tuesday nights. He brings in a ton of money. At the end of the meeting, nothing changes. James is still fired, but sides seem to become more polarized.
Billie Lee, one of the hostesses at SUR, comes to James’s defense. Then in the preview for next week’s episode, it seems that Billie Lee has a private meeting with Lisa Vanderpump where she says “if Katie pulls the fat card, I will pull my trans card,” then going on to say, if Katie doesn’t want to be fat, “she can put down the food.”
And at first I didn’t really know what she meant by this, I was just shocked because I kind of assumed that, as someone who is not transphobic, I would agree with Billie Lee on all social issues, but perhaps it’s actually transphobic of me to assume that, you know? It’s like just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you are a Democrat (I have met a handful of “log cabin Republicans”).
Well I thought about it some more and I think the gist of what Billie Lee is saying is: it’s way harder to be trans than it is to be fat and because fat-shaming is nothing compared to transphobia, Katie’s just using the “I don’t feel comfortable working here” card as a way of getting rid of someone she simply doesn’t like.
Still, this screamed misogyny to me. But screaming misogyny at a trans-woman also screamed transphobic to me, as if calling a trans-woman misogynistic is the same thing as calling her a man. A trans-woman is and has always been a woman, regardless of her physical body/transition. And I see Billie Lee’s point: trans people’s lives are at far greater risk due to transphobia than fat people’s lives are at risk due to fat-shaming. Nonetheless, belittling the perpetuated struggle for cis-women to feel valuable at any weight is misogyny. Just how belittling a trans-woman’s struggle to both feel valuable and be healthy is transphobic (and misogynistic, too). Point is: the cis-woman’s experience of misogyny does not disqualify the trans-woman’s experience of misogyny, or vice versa. Thanks to our white-hetero-male-dominated society, all women (both cis and trans) get to suffer the emotional, psychological, and physical consequences of body image dysmorphia. Let’s not also do men’s bidding.
Anyway, I was distraught about this because I felt like I was being torn in two directions. The way Billie Lee phrased it (or at least the way the editor’s aired it) made it seem like I had to choose between being a trans ally and condemning fat-shaming. Fat-shaming, heck, body-shaming, is detrimental to both individuals and to our community. And as a trans-ally, you should listen to and amplify voices of the trans-community. I feared that disagreeing with Billie Lee somehow meant I was failing to be an ally (and if you’re a feminist but you’re not in alliance with trans-women then you’re essentially a TERF, which I do not identify as, nor want to). If I’m guilty of any offense, it is thinking I can’t disagree with a transgendered person without invalidating their gender-identity, and well, I guess that is a bit transphobic.
