Caitlyn Jenner’s had her share of tensions with the rest of the Kardashian clan.
A little of that was just the normal emotions in life that happens when a couple splits and a transgender parent transitions.
Unfortunately, this is more than that. Caitlyn’s controversial memoir is burning some bridges.
Caitlyn’s memoir, The Secrets of My Life, contains some passages that are very critical of the Kardashians in general.
And of Kris Jenner, Caitlyn’s ex-wife, in particular.
We’ve already seen Kendall Jenner react to Caitlyn’s book. She was not happy and agreed with Kris that Caitlyn’s words weren’t true.
We’ve also already seen Kim Kardashian angry at Caitlyn for dissing her mother and their entire family.
But this is different.
Kim gets very defensive of her entire family, but especially of Kris.
On Sunday’s Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kim didn’t mince words.
“Mom’s obviously upset about it,” Kim says to Caitlyn. “So … if those are your feelings those are your feelings, but mom feels a certain way about you and she has the right.”
She tells Caitlyn on no uncertain terms that there will be consequences if Kim feels that she’s done a smear job on her mother.
“I’m going to read it and tell you honestly … Talk bad about my mom, I come for you.”
Caitlyn tries to defend herself, saying that she had a story to tell and that was it. But Kim isn’t having it.
“If you turn on my mom and you continue to bash us, I can’t — even for the sake of my sisters — spend time with someone who doesn’t care about my mother.” Kim really sounds like she’s serious about cutting ties.
The Kardashians like to say that family loyalty is a quintessentially Kardashian quality, and maybe that’s so, but Kim’s “Like, enough already,” sounds pretty consummately Kardashian to us.
We think that the Kardashians, like most people, were expecting Caitlyn’s memoir to be, you know, way more about being a woman who was designated as a male at birth, who was perceived as a man and then became a famous athlete and reality star.
Surely being forced to live a lie by a wildly bigoted society is enough of a story to fill any book, right?
A few anecdotes about weird feelings or dysphoria — though not all trans people experience dysphoria — experienced during her marriages would have sufficed, right?
Not, like, a biting criticism of her family.
The Kardashians were, for the most part, very supportive of Caitlyn as she transitioned.
We’d accept nothing less than total support, of course, but you’d think that Caitlyn would be a little less vicious towards them.
Caitlyn’s no stranger to controversy.
A lifelong conservative, Caitlyn didn’t initially seem supportive of marriage equality — an odd stance for a world-famous member of the LGBT community.
And then there were her political comments during the 2016 election campaigns.
Mere months after people began to honor her for being a visible, vocal representation of trans folks, for provoking conversations and promoting awareness, the 2016 campaigns kicked into gear.
Honestly, Caitlyn’s timing in coming out was really unfortunate in ways that she couldn’t quite foresee.
It’s not super uncommong for LGBT folks from uber-conservative backgrounds to struggle with trying to fit in as much as possible with their family’s values.
There’s something powerful about feeling accepted by the people who’d otherwise reject you.
Maybe, if she’d come out in, like, 2013, she could have worked through all of that and not had such nice things to say about Ted Cruz and Donald Trump in 2016.
That alienated a lot of her supporters.
We do have to say, though, that it is strangely nice to see people blast Caitlyn for being shady without misgendering her.
Comments sections — which we all know to avoid but too often cannot resist browsing — on articles about her too often include people misgendering her, or using her deadname.
That’s never acceptable. Misgendering and other forms of transphobic language can never just be used against one person — they’re weapons against the trans community as a whole.
Just like slurs and other forms of bigotry.
The Kardashians, the people who have the most reason to be personally distressed by her, can hold conversations about her and outright threaten her without misgendering her.
Maybe, one day, commenters will rise to the level of decency set by the Kardashians.
Can we possibly set that bar any lower?
Maybe this was all a misjudged attempt at boosting book sales.
A tell-all book on the Kardashians sounds like it would normally do pretty well. It’s just not what people expected.
But, even with all of the publicity that the book’s getting as they keep mentioning it on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, this doesn’t sound worth the cost.
If any of this conflict is real, and it sounds like it, Caitlyn could be permanently alienating the entire family.
Even if they work through it, some things might never be the same.
