Caitlyn Jenner was the butt of Ricky Gervais’s barbs on Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony when the host quipped: “I’ve changed”. Not as much as Bruce Jenner, obviously.
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Few panelists courted as much anticipation as Caitlyn Jenner did leading up to her Thursday audience with the Television Critics Association.
She had some strong words for the 54-year-old British comedian at the event held in the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, California.
Meeting young trans people through her show, however, has afforded Jenner a new perspective on transgender issues and how she can continue to increase awareness and representation in the community and in pop culture. Then he cracked a joke about a fatal vehicle crash Jenner was involved in, saying “she didn’t do a lot for women drivers”.
While Gervais’ comments got laughs, his jokes drew the consternation as well as the support of many on social media.
Asked how she has handled the spotlight since coming out publicly as a transgender woman in April, Jenner stressed that she had never consciously sought out fame, despite her career as an athlete, her ties to the Kardashian family, and her reality show I Am Cait. “I was more of a loner”, she said.
“I know his thing is to make fun of everything, but I think if more people understood the violence trans people face every day, it would be harder to make jokes about it”, Transparent creator Jill Soloway complained to Buzzfeed.
One reporter asked if season two would give Jenner more time to just enjoy being a woman. “I’d rather have a drink with him in his hotel tonight than with Bill Cosby”. “Sure, we all love good clothes and all that kind of stuff but I really wanted the people to get to know all of my girls [Moore, Cayne, Giselle and Finney Boylan]”.
“I thought it was great, because I’ve never listened to anything Republicans had to say”, Moore said of their political debates.
One Twitter user noted that calling a trans person by their pre-transition name was in itself offensive, tweeting: “Calling a trans person by their deadname or assigned gender as a “joke” is always transphobic, you ignorant pile of goat feces”.
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And when people claimed the joke was transphobic, Ricky hit back and insisted he would not say sorry.
