Caitlyn Jenner Found the Champion Within

By Jim Patterson

Early in her 1996 motivational book Finding the Champion Within, Olympic Gold Medalist Caitlyn Jenner expresses her devotion to “My lovely wife, Kris.”

“When we met on September 10, 1990, my life had lost direction,” Jenner writes. “But it’s amazing what one person can awaken in another.”

Finding the Champion Within: A Step-By-Step Plan for Reaching Your Full Potential allowed Jenner the opportunity to advise readers on the decathlon of life and how they, like the author, can achieve success.

The Olympic decathlon games consist of ten grueling track and field competitions over two days. Athletes compete in long jump, shot put, high jump, javelin throw, pole vault, discus, and other contests. Caitlyn Jenner (known as Bruce Jenner until 2015) won the Gold Medal for the United States at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.

Other famous American Gold Medalists in the decathlon include Jim Thorpe in 1912, Bob Mathias in 1948 and 1952, and Rafer Johnson in 1960. By Olympic tradition, decathlon winners are proclaimed the World’s Greatest Athletes.

Of the ten decathlon events, Jenner scored higher than 22 competitors, with an overall score of 8,634 points. Her nearest opponent, from the Federal Republic of Germany, the former East Germany, scored 8,411 points.

Jenner writes she moved from being a “dreamer” to someone obsessed with “doing” whatever it took to be a champion. Jenner discovered the minute she decided to be an Olympic champion, at 22, and made the commitment to do the work necessary to get there, “I was a different human being.”

The decathlon, Jenner writes, is “one of the toughest endurance tests in sports.” She was so dedicated to winning the Gold medal, “I devoted every hour of every day, 365 days a year, to training for the games, excluding everything else, until I had won each event a thousand times in my mind.”

Jenner never stopped running the decathlon races until “the evening of July 30, 1976, when … I stood atop the winner’s platform, receiving the Gold medal.” It was especially meaningful to her to win the Gold in America’s Bicentennial year. It was an accomplishment that earned Jenner a White House invitation from President Gerald R. Ford.

By 1990, Jenner writes she “was a relic from the era of Farrah (Fawcett Majors) and comedian Flip (Wilson), sports announcer Howard Cosell and footballer Joe Namath, lost in the world of Tom Cruise and Bob Costas.” She lived in the Los Angeles Hills in a one-bedroom bungalow “where dirty dishes filled the kitchen sink.”

Jenner had not only lost direction, she had two failed marriages and felt unattractive at 40. She “spent thousands of dollars ... for a nose job, only to have the surgeon botch it so badly he had to do it over again.”

Life for the Gold medalist got worse. “I had grown accustomed to a life without: without intimacy, without excitement, without adventure, without growth,” she writes. Her Olympic Gold medal she worked so hard for was hidden in her sock drawer. It was, to her, a symbol of “how much I’d lost.”

Jenner’s message to readers is, “wherever you are in your own life, no matter how low you’ve sunk, I can empathize. I’ve been there. I had given up. I had lost my will.”

Life and soul mate Kris came into Jenner’s life and turned Jenner around. She again experienced the power and dedication to be a champion. She would focus exclusively on her goal “until the prize was mine.”

Jenner penned ten motivational chapters based on each decathlon event. In the course, we learn she is dyslexic and a slow reader in school, which made her feel a failure. By fifth grade, Jenner demonstrated athletic abilities that set her apart from other kids.

Finding the Champion Within is filled with lists, quotations, motivational stories, and Jenner’s personal life, circa 1996 and before. The quotes and motivational stories appear in many other books and by the original speakers now on YouTube.

Still, Jenner writes with enthusiasm and held her reader’s interest; especially when she writes about feeling unattractive with no relationships, no money, and being the ridiculed subject of trash journalism from rag newspapers.

Given Jenner’s highly public life and reality TV show with her Kardashian family and the news of 2015 she has transitioned to female, Finding the Champion Within takes on new and important meaning. Her book is intended to motivate readers to achieve some form of personal success and to establish Jenner as a motivator/coach/teacher to help people find personal growth and change.

Caitlyn Jenner found the personal strength to become an Olympic Gold Medalist in 1976. Jenner found strength in her relationship with third wife Kris to pull herself back into a champion frame of mind to confront a lifelong personal challenge to live openly as a woman.

In 2015, Jenner is a fresh champion with a fresh message that gives new meaning to the oft-used motivational lists, quotations, and stories used in her book. Jenner uses these familiar devices to get to a far bigger point of accepting oneself, conquering barriers to growth and change, and living the life of a new champion for a new era.

Human Rights Advocate Jim Patterson is a writer, speaker, and lifelong diplomat for dignity for all people. In a remarkable life spanning the civil rights movement to today’s human rights struggles, he stands as a voice for the voiceless. A prolific writer, he documents hertory’s wrongs and the struggle for dignity to provide a roadmap to a more humane future. Learn more at www.HumanRightsIssues.com.

Op-Ed: Bruce Jenner – Reality Parent of the Year

By Jim Patterson

While watching Bruce Jenner being interviewed by Dianne Sawyer, several ideas crossed my mind.

First, in the TV situation comedy land of the 1950s and 1960s, audiences were assured "Father Knew Best.” That was the name of the show starring the amiable Robert Young, a Hollywood leading man in the 1930s and 1940s, who was married to 1930s leading lady Jane Wyatt. They were the Anderson family and “father” Anderson knew best when it came to rearing children and solving all domestic matters.

“The Donna Reed Show,” though Reed was an Academy Award winning actress, gave most of the TV sit-com spotlight to husband Dr. Alex Stone, played by the late Carl Betz. The show was a slightly more modern “Father Knows Best” with father being a medical doctor and solving domestic problems while curing illnesses. The Stones’ children were played by Shelly Fabares, now 71 and a liver transplant survivor, and Paul Peterson, now 69. Both Fabares and Petersen had singing careers from their TV show. Fabares was an Elvis Presley girl in the 1960s.

The TV situation comedy father who “knew best” better than them all was the somber Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver on the eternally beloved “Leave it to Beaver.” Beaumont had been an actor in B movies in the 1940s and 1950s, such as “The Mole People.” Beaumont took the role seriously and became the personification of gentle fatherly wisdom.

Beaumont will forever be known as Ward Cleaver. “Ward, I’m worried about the Beaver,” wife June, played by the late Barbara Billingsley, would say on every episode, or so it would seem. The Cleavers had their domestic hands full with two their two sons. The eldest was Wally, played by Tony Dow, now 70, and the youngest was Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, played by Jerry Mathers, now 66. Neighborhood teens Eddie Haskell, played by Ken Osmond, now 71, and Clarence “Lumpy” Rutherford, played by the late Frank Bank, added to the Cleavers’ problems.

In these three TV situation comedies, fathers always knew best. However when ABC’s Sawyer interviewed Jenner, father of seven children, the Olympic Gold Medalist openly admitted he had, for a long time, questions about his life and sexuality. He was just now being authentic with himself and his family by transitioning to a woman, he told an estimated TV audience of nearly 17 million.

Second, Jenner did not come across as a person confused by his gender. He said he has always been a woman. It is difficult to imagine the TV “fathers” of the 1950/60s sharing such a revelation with their TV children. Yes, the TV fathers of long ago helped educate their children in issues of honesty fairness. Today, Bruce Jenner is educating his children and millions of others in honesty and fairness for dealing with sexuality issues considered taboo in the fiction family TV land.

Third, the reality of 2015 is fathers and mothers come out as gay, lesbian, and transgender to themselves, each other, and their children. Their children do the same. According to my correspondence and files, this has been happening for many decades. But TV, now labeled as reality TV, has only just caught up with the frank talk and situations about sexuality that families have dealt with for generations.

TV situation comedies, like those above and scores of others, never seriously addressed the serious problems children and their parents face as they age and accept sexuality long hidden and seldom discussed. It was the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California, who gave us a view of a real American family in 1973 when son Lance painted his fingernails, applied cosmetics and fragrances, and became America’s Gay Son on camera as Mom and Dad separated and divorced due to Dad’s sexual infidelities. “An American Family,” the groundbreaking PBS series, was a rare dose of real family dynamics broadcast into American homes.

The Jenner and Loud families are Southern Californians who gradually learned to live open and happy lives. It is sad that eldest son Lance, a victim of AIDS, did not live to see the openness, happiness, and HIV longevity possible in 2015.

The multi-episode “An American Family” ended with the music of John Lennon’s “Imagine” as the reality TV camera froze on Lance and father Bill Loud. Father and gay son looked uncomfortable as Lennon sang “Imagine all the people living life in peace.”

While peace escaped the Louds, Bruce Jenner and his family appear to have obtained it and plan to share it with others. By transitioning, Jenner is expressing love for his family and for the many other families caught in the fake TV sit-com families of yesteryear. My vote for 2015 Parent of the Year is Bruce Jenner for sharing his innate wisdom with his family and our nation.
 

Human Rights Advocate Jim Patterson is a writer, speaker, and lifelong diplomat for dignity for all people. In a remarkable life spanning the civil rights movement to today’s human rights struggles, he stands as a voice for the voiceless. A prolific writer, he documents history’s wrongs and the struggle for dignity to provide a roadmap to a more humane future. Learn more at www.HumanRightsIssues.com.

Op-Ed: Waiting For Employment Equality LGBTQ workers still face employment discrimination 50 years after landmark series

By Jim Patterson

In 1963 a New York tabloid ran a six-part series on Sex and Laws. The series was motivated by many factors including sex scandals at the United Nations, increased public health problem of venereal disease, increased number of sex workers, workplace discrimination, and availability of pornography.

“Those Who Are Different” dealt rather frankly and honestly with the problems of New York City’s then estimated 400,000 homosexuals. Prime among those problems were employment concerns. Over 50 years later, employment concerns continue to hinder the careers of LGBTQ workers in many states.

In the 1963 article, a gay activist, using a false name for his job safety, described a “crucial case” involving employment in Washington, D.C. “It involves a middle-aged wage and hours expert who was recently denied a Civil Service post, after scoring highest on a competitive exam, on grounds he was a practicing homosexual,” according to the article.

Of course federal job disqualification for sexuality could not legally happen now with Civil Service and Foreign Service protections for LGBTQ government employees. Similarly, not even medical conditions or disabilities could legally prevent a qualified applicant from being appointed to a government position. Most corporations adopted non-discrimination policies long before government.

In 1963 in New York and across the country homosexuals were prosecuted for “crimes against nature,” aka sodomy. It took 40 years for the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas to find a Constitutional right for private sexual activity for the LGBTQ community. Lawrence invalidated sodomy laws in the few other states which upheld them.

The gay “source” for much of the 1963 article used a false name because “[h]e believes that if he were found out it would cost him his job.” Still, the 1963 activist believed if people from “the bus driver to the Broadway producer” were to “honestly present his case” [to his employer] “he can win public understanding and support.”

Was the 1963 activist successful in getting closeted gays to come out in hopes of “public understanding and support?” No. He told the newspaper, “Most homosexuals have settled for a minimum goal of non-harassment—or they function in areas like the arts where they are accepted.”

If that 1963 message sounds depressing, the activist concluded with, “It’s useless to try to change the ‘straight world,’” is the typical attitude of this group.”

The “straight world” has changed since 1963, just not enough. At that time, a “sustained gay relationship” was jokingly referred to as a “marriage.” Depending on what U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and his Associate Justices decide, same-sex marriage may be a national legal reality within days.

Marriage equality from coast to coast will be major progress. Yet, as our African American colleagues and fellow freedom fighters tell us, “With progress comes resistance.” The fight for equality won’t be over.

Workplace discrimination still happens to African Americans as we can see from frequent press accounts. It continues to happen unabated to millions of LGBTQ workers in states that refuse to grant employment protections. The Employment Non-discrimination Act, in Congressional limbo since the 1990s, is needed now more than ever to end the historic income inequality forced on the LGBTQ community by uncaring, bigoted employers.

More work is needed to “change the straight world” when it comes to expanding employment protections to workers based on their sexuality. It has proven a tough sell from the 1960s to today. Only 18 states offer such employment protections.

When will legalized discrimination against LGBTQ workers end in the remaining 32 states? When LGBT members of Congress and their straight allies get to work and impress upon their opposing members the fundamental importance of workplace fairness and the need for a national law to protect same-sex families.

Economic prosperity, workplace fairness and a chance at the American Dream are the best wedding gifts same-sex families could get from Congress. Congress should deliver them this year.
 
Human Rights Advocate Jim Patterson is a writer, speaker, and lifelong diplomat for dignity for all people. In a remarkable life spanning the civil rights movement to today’s human rights struggles, he stands as a voice for the voiceless. A prolific writer, he documents history’s wrongs and the struggle for dignity to provide a roadmap to a more humane future. Learn more at www.HumanRightsIssues.com