IVAN COURONNE/AFP/Getty Images(CLEVELAND) — Caitlyn Jenner talked about the difficulties of being a trans woman in the Republican Party Wednesday, a day after Ben Carson referred to “this whole transgender thing” as “absurd.”
“It was easy to come out as trans, it was harder to come out as Republican,” the Olympic gold medalist said at an American Unity Fund brunch at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Wednesday morning, where the Republican National Convention is underway.
A day before, former presidential candidate Carson called the trans community “the height of absurdity,” and equated transitioning to changing your ethnicity.
“For thousands of years, mankind has known what a man is and what a woman is,” Carson told reporters at the Florida delegation breakfast in Cleveland. “Today you feel like a woman, even though everything about you genetically says that you’re a man, or vice versa. Wouldn’t that be the same as if you woke up tomorrow morning after seeing a movie about Afghanistan or reading some books and said, ‘You know what? I’m Afghanistan. And I know I don’t look that way. My ancestors came from Sweden, or something, I don’t know. But I really am. And if you say I’m not, you’re racist.'”
“This is how absurd we have become,” Carson added, receiving laughter and applause from the audience.
Jenner and Carson’s respective remarks highlight the fundamental divisions within the Republican Party as it attempts to present a unified front. The convention got off to a chaotic, divided start when Never-Trump protesters pushed for a roll call vote.
Earlier this year, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that Jenner could use whatever bathroom she wanted at his hotel at a time when some Republicans were pushing for so-called “bathroom bills” to, among other things, ban people from using restrooms that don’t match the biological sex indicated on their birth certificate.
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