During his show yesterday, Jon Stewart criticized the sexist tone of the media coverage on Bruce Jenner’s gender flip and his new name, Caitlyn.
“It’s really heartening to see that everyone is willing to not only accept Caitlyn Jenner as a woman, but to waste no time in treating her like a woman,” Stewart said yesterday on The Daily Show.
He followed the statement with a montage of clips of journalists and pundits commenting on how “hot” Jenner is, and comparing Jenner to other women.
“Caitlyn, when you were a man, we could talk about your athleticism, your business acumen. But now you’re a woman, and your looks are really the only thing we care about,” Stewart said.
Stewart’s observations of sexism in the trans movement, however, were isolated to media coverage of it. In a piece published by The Federalist earlier today, two of my colleagues point out that sexism is built into the very foundation of the trans movement.
In their article How The Hypersexual Trans Movement Hurts Feminism, Libby Emmons and David Marcus note that feminism and transgenderism are at complete odds with each other:
A central theme of modern, or third-wave feminism is that women should not be treated merely as sexual objects. A central theme of the trans movement is the presentation of trans women as hypersexual objects. Feminism is not big enough for both of these themes. Either being a woman is essentially defined as being alluring to men, or it isn’t. Either the playboy bunny defines the essence of womanhood, or it doesn’t. At the moment, the trans movement opposes more than a century of feminism on this point. Third-wave feminists, in their eagerness to be allies, have abandoned this basic tenet. It must be reclaimed.
You can watch the entirety of Jon Stewart’s criticism of the Jenner media coverage here:
