Jenny McCarthy 'feels like a man in a Playboy bunny suit' - good grief - give me patience !!

Via PrideSource, Daily Mail etc & Refinery29.com [copyrights obviously acknowledged!)

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Jenny McCarthy ( ?from the Daily Mail – October 2014)

Jenny McCarthy recently revealed that she has always felt a little transgender on the inside (in an interview with PrideSource). And now, we’ll spend the next 300 or so words trying to figure out exactly what that means.

Jenny McCarthy is no stranger to controversy, nor does she fear it. If anything, she welcomes it with open arms, and a kiss on both cheeks. Jenny speaks her mind, and when her mind has checked out, she speaks anyway.

It was no surprise to hear an interview in which Jenny stated that she has always felt a little transgender on the inside. According to Jenny, she relates to the guys. She’s always felt comfortable around the guys. She always felt like she’s just one of the guys.

With such logic, we can conclude that every guy who has an interest in fashion… must also be a little transgender. Clearly, that’s something that only comes in female DNA.

How anything Jenny suggested makes someone “transgender,” we’ll never know, because it’s just dumb. Applying comfort level, hobbies and activities to sexual identity offers one bout of flawed logic after the next. How is it even possible to make sense of such? And applying identity, or essence to a gender in the first place?

Oh, Jenny. Fortunately, in the same interview, she was asked more questions about sexual identity, and she offered more faux enlightenment and Jenny McCarthy philosophy to the point of being quite entertaining.

My comment – perhaps, with some willingness to be generous and flexible to her startling statements – what she meant was the more reasonable view that every male has the potential for a touch of femininity and every female has the potential for some masculinity. To move this onward and equate this in gender terms to ‘transgender’ or in sexual terms to ‘bisexuality’ shows a comprehensive lack of understanding of either sex or gender.

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The e-mag REFINERY 29.com gave their view in much the same terms of startlement. -

Jenny McCarthy told Page Six on Tuesday that playing a transgender character on television (back in 2000) has resonated with her in a very personal way. In doing so, she perpetuated an ignorant trope about what it means to be transgender.

Speaking about her role as Brandi (formerly Burt) on Just Shoot Me, she shared how she identified with this character. "I always felt like one of the guys wearing, like, a Playboy bunny outfit," she said to Page Six. "I was David Spade's buddy to begin with, so I was a natural fit, and I always felt like his brother. To play kind of the dude was almost too scary natural."

When asked how she would react if husband Donnie Wahlberg ever came out as gay, she replied, "I would be so excited. We can shop! Do my hair!" It goes on. "I really do feel like, with sexuality being more open and people coming out, there might be a little bi in everybody; it's just a matter of who acts on it," she told the tabloid.

At first blush, these quotes are out of touch — even insulting. Since when does being gay mean you only like to shop and do your straight wife's hair? And, since when does feeling comfortable in a group of men make you adopt the trans tag?

As a straight, cisgendered person, McCarthy doesn't have firsthand experiences to inform her opinions about what it means to be LGBTQ, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't have an empathetic understanding about the sort of oppression that that community experiences. And, comments like these run the risk of overshadowing the meaningful work of people like Laverne Cox.

McCarthy probably thought she was being super tolerant; after all she's talking about how much she loved playing a trans* character. The trouble is, repeating the idea that being trans* is kind of a like a woman who likes hanging out with guys, is perpetuating a deep misunderstanding of what trans* is. McCarthy's attempt at open-minded comments are rooted in the widespread misinformation about what being transgender means and the appropriate vocabulary surrounding it. Her statements perpetuate a larger misunderstanding about what it means to be transgender — or gay, for that matter. Perhaps it's her lack of education that clouds her otherwise (perhaps) innocuous intentions of being free and accepting of all identities and sexualities.

If you'd like to get better acquainted with what it means to be trans - there's a lot of better examples.