Caitlynn Jenner has hit back at critics who claim she hasn’t done “enough” to help the trans community since proudly becoming a member eight years ago.
She says she never claimed to be a saviour, but at the very least hoped she could “make a difference”.
Ex Olympian Caitlyn, 73, who formerly identified as Bruce, was married to Kris Jenner for 23 years. The couple had daughters Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner together. Through marriage, Bruce became stepfather to Kris’ children from her first marriage which are Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian and Rob Kardashian and they all starred on the reality TV series Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
For decades, Caitlyn says she suffered from gender dysphoria, which is described by the NHS as a sense of unease that a person might have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.
Following the end of her marriage to Kris, she finally made the brave decision to transition in 2015.
Soon after, she set up the now defunct Caitlyn Jenner Foundation from which she says she donated $2.5m with the aim of helping trans organisations.
Despite her best efforts to make a difference however, Caitlyn says she “got so much hate”, with some members of the community even choosing to “picket events” that she appeared at.
Speaking to the Standard to promote new Sky docu-series House of Kardashian, which will be available to stream from Sunday on Sky Documentaries and NOW TV, she explained that when she decided she was going to transition, her thinking was “maybe it’s time to take care of myself right now and maybe in doing that I can make a difference”.
“Yeah, I certainly did feel that when I first came out, I started a foundation, gave away millions, $2.5 million to trans organizations.And honestly, I got so much hate for that.
“I don’t wanna be a trans activist, that that’s not what I do. I wanna be a trans example.
“I wanna be an example of any person that’s suffering from gender dysphoria because gender dysphoria is real: it does happen, it’s very rare but it does happen.”
Elaborating further on what that means to her, she said: “I want to be an example that you can be, whoever you may be right now and you can go through with it and your life can be good and my life is good.
“The best part of my life today is I wake up in the morning and I just be myself all day long. I don’t have to lie to anybody. I don’t have to keep secrets. I felt that my whole life, I don’t have to sneak around nothing.
“This is me like it or not. If you don’t like it fine, I don’t need to, I got a lot of people, I’ve got a lot of friends.
“Everything’s good, you know, be an example to people that you can go through something like that and make some major changes in your life and life’s gonna be ok.”
