Caitlyn Jenner spoke out about being transgender in 2016… I, Paul Sladkus was co-captain of the track team with him and we wanted to support his decision to live the life he and anyone desires.

admin — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 14:40:57 +0000

Caitlyn Jenner spoke out about being transgender in 2016 when given the Arthur Ashe
Courage Award at the ESPY Awards

I have had the pleasure to know Caitlyn Jenner since junior high school.
Caitlyn, Bruce to me at the time was co-captain with me of the track team.
Bruce was a great pole vaulter and I didn’t do so bad with the shot put. He
was a good guy and many thought highly of him. I and the Good News
community support him, as we do all. In fact, as a Spiritual and Interfaith
Ordained Minister am open to be there for anyone, as I am part of everyone
and everyone is part of me, brother, sister…

We believe in humanity, peace and love for all. Caitlyn has courage and
deserves the award, as the recognition will potentially help others to be
free to beJ

Reverend Paul Sladkus and Good News Team

Caitlyn Jenner (born October 28, 1949), known before 2015 as Bruce Jenner,
is an American athlete best known for winning the
men’s decathlon at the
1976 Summer Olympics.
In recent years, she has been noted for appearing on reality television,
namely the E! programs
Keeping Up
with the Kardashians and I Am
Cait. She has been described by multiple publications as the most famous
openly transgender person in
the world since coming out in
2015. [2] [3] [4]

A former college football
player for the
Graceland Yellowjackets before a knee injury occurred requiring surgery,
Jenner was encouraged to try the
decathlon. Encouraged by early success, Jenner undertook an intense training
regimen which culminated with international attention by winning the gold
medal in the decathlon at the
1976 Summer Olympicsin
Montreal. Jenner became “an
American hero” by winning an event back from
Soviet Union athletes during
the Cold War.

[5] [6] [7] Using the
fame from the Olympics, a career as a celebrity in television, film, auto
racing, and business followed.

Jenner has six children from her marriages to Chrystie Crownover,
Linda Thompson, and
Kris Kardashian, all of
which have ended in divorce. After separating from Kardashian, Jenner came
out as transgender in a televised interview with
Diane Sawyer. She completed her
transition and
announced her new name several weeks later.

Early life

Caitlyn Jenner was born William Bruce Jenner on October 28, 1949, in
Mount Kisco, New York,
[8] to
Esther R. (néeMcGuire) and William Hugh Jenner, an
arborist.
[9] [10] Jenner has
two sisters, Lisa and Pam.

[11] Their younger brother, Burt, was killed in a car accident in
Canton, Connecticut, in
1976, shortly after Jenner’s success at the Olympics.
[12] [13]

As a young child, Jenner was diagnosed with
dyslexia.
[14] Jenner
attended Sleepy
Hollow High School in Sleepy Hollow, New York, during freshman and sophomore
years [15] [16] and
Newtown
High School in Newtown, Connecticut, during junior and senior years,
graduating in 1968.
[17] Jenner
earned a football
scholarship and attended Graceland College (now
Graceland University)
in Lamoni, Iowa, but was
forced to stop playing football and switch to the
decathlonbecause of a
knee injury.

[18] Graceland’s track coach and Jenner’s mentor,
L. D. Weldon, was the first to
recognize Jenner’s potential and encouraged the youngster to pursue the
decathlon. [19] Jenner debuted in the decathlon at the
Drake Relays in
Des Moines in 1970, placing
fifth. [20] Jenner graduated from Graceland College in 1973 with a degree in
physical education.
[21]

Olympic career

At the 1972 decathlon
U.S. Olympic trials in
Eugene, Oregon, Jenner was in fifth place behind Steve Gough and Andrew
Pettes. Needing to make up a 19-second gap on Gough in the
1500 meters, Jenner ran a fast
last lap, separating from the other runners by 22 seconds to make the
Olympic team. The
Eugene Register-Guard asked “Who’s Jenner?”
[22] [23] Jenner
went on to finish in 10th place at the
1972 Summer Olympics
held in Munich,
Germany.
[24] After
graduating from Graceland, Jenner sold insurance at night (earning $9,000 a
year [25])
while training during the day.
[26] During that period, Jenner trained at the
San Jose City College
track.
[27] In the era
before professionalism was allowed in athletics, this kind of training was
unheard of. Centered around
Bert Bonanno, the coach at SJCC,
San Jose was at the
time a hotbed for training which was called the “Track Capital of the World”
[26] by
aspiring Olympic athletes including Jenner,
Millard Hampton,
Andre Phillips,
John Powell,
Mac Wilkins,
Al Feuerbach, and others.
[27] [28] Jenner’s
best events were the skill events of the second day,
[29] [30] where
the intense training showed.

Jenner was the American champion in the men’s decathlon event in 1974, and
was featured on the cover of
Track & Field News’s
August 1974 issue.
[31] [32] While on tour in 1975, Jenner also won the French national championship.
[33] Jenner
first set the
world
record of 8,524 points at a meet in
Eugene, Oregon August 9-10,
1975.

At the 1976
Olympic Trials again in Eugene, Jenner scored 8,538 points, slightly
improving the world record.
[23] At the
Olympic Games in
Montréal, Canada, Jenner won the gold medal in the decathlon,
[34] scoring
8,616 points, thereby beating the world record set at the Olympic Trials.
[23] Jenner
hit a “home run” by achieving personal bests on the first day, turning the
notorious second day into a gold medal coronation.
[30] After
the event, Jenner took an American flag from a spectator and carried it
during the victory lap, starting a tradition that is now common among
athletes. [35] [36]

“It hurts every day when you practice hard. Plus, when this decathlon is
over, I got the rest of my life to recuperate. Who cares how bad it hurts?”
[30]

As a result of winning the Olympic decathlon, Jenner became a national hero,
receiving the James
E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States and being
named the Associated Press
Male Athlete of the Year (both in 1976).

[18] Jenner was inducted into the United States

National Track and Field Hall of Famein 1980, the Olympic Hall of Fame in
1986, the Bay
Area Sports Hall of Fame and the Connecticut Sports Hall of Fame in 1994,
and the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.
[37]

Jenner’s 1976
world
record was broken by just 4 points by
Daley Thompson in 1980. In
1985, the IAAF decathlon scoring table
was changed; Jenner’s winning score was reevaluated against that table and
reported as 8,634 for comparative purposes. The converted mark stood as the
American record until 1991, when it was surpassed by eventual gold medalist
and world record holder Dan
O’Brien. [38] As
of 2011, Jenner is No. 25 on the world all-time list and the No. 9 American.
[39]

San Jose City College hosted the “Bruce Jenner Invitational” (frequently
shortened to “Jenner Invitational”) as a televised annual stop on the United
States Track and Field Circuit (a meet equivalent in stature to the
Prefontaine Classic).
Records were set at the meet, with Jenner frequently hosting the telecasts.
[40]

Post-Olympic career

Taking advantage of Olympic fame

In the 1970s, Olympic athletes were considered amateur and were not allowed
to seek or accept payment for their positions as sports celebrities. In
1972, during the Cold War, three
major Olympic titles that had a long history of American success-

basketball,
100 meters, and
decathlon-were won by
Soviet athletes. Winning back
the decathlon title made Jenner an American hero.
Tony Kornheiser of
The New York Times wrote,
“Jenner is twirling the nation like a baton. He and wife, Chrystie, are so
high up on the pedestal of American heroism, it would take a crane to get
them down.”
[30]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Bruce_Jenner_greet
s_Gerald_Ford_and_William_Tolbert_in_1976.jpg/220px-Bruce_Jenner_greets_Gera
ld_Ford_and_William_Tolbert_in_1976.jpg

Jenner (right) greets Liberian president
William Tolbert at the
White House on September 21,
1976, as U.S. president Gerald
Ford looks on.

After Olympic success, Jenner decided to cash in on celebrity status, which
required forgoing any future Olympic competition. Jenner’s agent George
Wallach felt at the time that the holder of the title “World’s Greatest
Athlete” had a four-year window to capitalize upon. Wallach reported that
Jenner was being considered for the role of
Superman, which
ultimately went to
Christopher Reeve. “I really don’t know how many offers we have,” Jenner was
reported to have claimed. “There are still unopened telegrams back at the
hotel and you just can’t believe the offers that poured in during the first
two days.”
[41] Soon after the Games, Jenner appeared on the front of
Wheaties brand
breakfast cereal as a
“Wheaties champion”, being the second of role model athletes who were
featured as spokespersons for the brand.
[42] On
September 21, 1976, Jenner was an invited guest at a
White House dinner with U.S.
president Gerald Ford and
Liberian president William
Tolbert among others.
[43]

On November 22, 1977, Jenner went to San Francisco to refute charges filed
by the

San Francisco district attorney that
General Mills, the makers of
Wheaties, had been engaged in false advertising. Jenner contended that she
likes the cereal and eats the breakfast cereal two to three times per week.
Two days later, District Attorney Joseph Freitas withdrew the false
advertising suit against General Mills for its advertising campaign
featuring Jenner, saying that it was “a case of overzealousness” on the part
of his staff.
[44] That same year, the
Kansas City Kings selected Jenner with the 140th pick of the
NBA draft. Jenner had not played
basketball since high school.
[45]

Television and film career

Jenner starred in the disco-era
Village People comedy,
Can’t Stop the Music
(1980). The movie was a
flop. Jenner’s performance was nominated for the 1980

Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor, and the film won the

Award for Worst Picture. It was Jenner’s only theatrical release until 2011.
Jenner had some success in a television career, starring in the made-for-TV
movies The Golden Moment: An Olympic Love Story (1980) and
Grambling’s White
Tiger (1981). During the 1981-1982 season, Jenner became a semi-regular cast
member on the police series CHiPs,
guest-starring as Officer Steve McLeish (substituting for star
Erik Estrada, who was lodged in
a contract dispute with NBC and
MGM), for six episodes.

[5] Jenner also appeared on an episode of the sitcom
Silver Spoons called “Trouble
with Words”, wherein Jenner’s personal issues with dyslexia were revealed in
a storyline about a teenaged recurring character with the same problem.
Jenner appeared on the series
Learn To Read and in the video games
Olympic Decathlon (1981)
and
Bruce Jenner’s World Class Decathlon (1996). The iconic “hero shot”, the
finish of the final event of 1976 Olympic decathlon, and Wheaties cover were
parodied by John Belushi on
Saturday Night Live,
endorsing “Little Chocolate Donuts”.
[46]

Jenner has appeared on a variety of game shows and
reality television
programs, including staring with
Grits Gresham in an episode of
ABC’s
The American
Sportsman. [47] The program featured Gresham hunting, fishing, or shooting in exotic spots
with celebrities. In the early 1990s, Jenner was the host of an
infomercialfor a stair-climbing
exercise machine called the Stair Climber Plus.
[48]

In January 2002, Jenner participated in an episode of the American series
The Weakest
Link, featuring Olympic athletes. In February and March 2003, Jenner was
part of the cast of the American series
I’m
a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!. Jenner made a cameo appearance in a
season-three episode of
The
Apprentice, which aired in May 2005. Jenner partnered with
Tai Babilonia for
Skating with
Celebrities in an series that aired January-March 2006 (they were eliminated
during the fifth of seven episodes), served as a guest judge on
Pet Star on
Animal Planet, and appeared on
NBC’s game show
Identity as well as (with the Kardashian family)
Celebrity Family Feud.
In November 2010, a photograph of Jenner played the role of a janitorial
resume in an episode of
It’s
Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Other television and talk show appearances by Jenner include
Nickelodeon’s
made-for-TV film
Gym Teacher: The
Movie as well as episodes of
Murder, She Wrote,
Family Guy, Pet Star on Animal
Planet, Identity,
Lingo Olympic Winners episode and Celebrity Family Feud as well as such talk
shows as Hannity
[49] and
The Bonnie Hunt Show.[
episode needed]

Since late 2007, Jenner has starred in the
E! reality series
Keeping Up
with the Kardashians along with wife
Kris Jenner, stepchildren
Kourtney,
Kim,
Khloé, and
Rob(from Kris’s marriage to
attorney Robert
Kardashian), and daughters
Kylie and Kendall.
[50] Season 2
attracted an average of 1.6 million viewers, an increase over the previous
season. [51] Jenner has also made cameo appearances on the show’s spinoff series.

In 2011, Jenner appeared in the
Adam Sandler comedy
Jack and Jill in a
scene with Al Pacino as an actor
in a play. Like Can’t Stop The Music the film won the Golden Raspberry Award
for Worst Picture.

Auto racing career

Jenner was a successful race car driver in the
IMSA Camel GT series (

International Motor Sports Association) in the 1980s. Jenner’s first victory
came in the
1986
12 hours of Sebring in
the IMSA GTO class driving the
7-Eleven Roush Racing
Ford Mustang with co-driver
Scott Pruett, not only winning
their class but finishing 4th overall in the 12-hour endurance race. 1986
was also the most successful year of Jenner’s career, finishing second in
the championship to Pruett.
[52] [53] Jenner
commented, “I was a lot more badass runner than I was a driver.”
[54]

Business

Jenner’s company, Bruce Jenner Aviation, sells aircraft supplies to
executives and corporations.
[25] Jenner was the business development vice president for a staffing industry
software application known as JennerNet, which was based on Lotus Domino
technology. [55]

Jenner had licensed her previous name for Bruce Jenner’s Westwood Centers
for Nautilus & Aerobics in the early 1980s, though she had no ownership in
the centers,
[25] which
were owned by David Cirotto.
[56]

Personal life

Jenner is a Christian, leans
politically conservative, and is a
Republican.
[57] [58] Prior to her public gender transition, she had been married three times. Her
first marriage was to Chrystie Scott (née Crownover) from 1972 to 1981. They
have two children, son Burton and daughter Cassandra, known as Burt and
Casey. [59] [60]Jenner and
Scott’s divorce was finalized the first week of January 1981.
[61] The same
week, on January 5, 1981, Jenner married actress
Linda Thompson, in
Hawaii. [62] By
February 1986, Jenner and Thompson had separated, and they subsequently
divorced. [63] They have two sons together,
Brandon and
Sam Brody, known as Brody.
[64] The two
sons starred on the reality show
The Princes of Malibu
and Brody Jenner was also on the reality show
The Hills.

Jenner’s third marriage, to
Kris Kardashian (née Houghton), occurred on April 21, 1991, after five
months of dating.
[65] They have
two daughters, Kendall and Kylie. While married, Jenner was also the
step-parent to Kris’s four children from her previous marriage to the late
lawyer Robert Kardashian: Kourtney, Kim, Khloé and Rob. The couple announced
their separation in October 2013,
[66] though they
had actually separated a year earlier.
[67] Kris filed
for divorce in September 2014, citing
irreconcilable
differences.
[68] Their divorce terms were finalized in December 2014 and went into
effect on March 23, 2015, because of a six-month state legal requirement.
[69]

In February 2015, Jenner was involved in a
multiple-vehicle
collision on the
Pacific Coast Highway in
Malibu, California. The accident caused one death and eight injuries, but
Jenner was able to walk away from the accident.
[70] [71] [72] The
stepchildren of the deceased filed a
wrongful death lawsuit
against Jenner in relation to the incident.
[73] [74] In July
2015, Los Angeles investigators determined that while Jenner was
inattentive, “she was not intoxicated or texting” before the crash, and
would not face felony charges.
[75]

Gender transition

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/VanityFairJuly2015.jpg

The Washington Post commented that Jenner’s debut
Vanity Fair cover,
shot by Annie Leibovitz,
had special significance for its subject: “After all the magazine covers
that featured the former athlete, once lauded as the ‘world’s greatest
athlete,’ the Leibovitz photograph will be the most meaningful. Looking
directly at the camera, Jenner is finally herself for the first time
publicly.” [76]

In an April 2015,
20/20 interview with Diane
Sawyer, Jenner came out as a
trans woman, saying she had
dealt with gender
dysphoria since her youth, and that, “for all intents and purposes, I’m a
woman.” Jenner cross dressed
for many years and did

hormone replacement therapy but stopped after the romance with Kris
Kardashian in the early 1990s became more serious.

[77] [78] [79] Jenner recounts having permission to explore her gender identity on her own
travels but not when they were coupled, and that not knowing the best way to
talk about the many issues contributed to the deterioration of the
23-year-long marriage, which formally ended in 2015.
[79]

In June 2015, Jenner debuted her new name and image, and marked using
feminine pronoun self-descriptors.
[80] Her
transition is the subject of an eight-part TV documentary series,
I Am Cait, which will premiere on
E! on July 26, 2015. It will consist of
hour-long episodes detailing Jenner’s gender transition and her life after
publicly coming out as Caitlyn.
[81] [82] While she
has undergone some cosmetic surgery, she has not undergone

sex reassignment surgery or ruled it out; she stated that, for her, life as
a woman is primarily a matter of mental state and lifestyle.
[83] She said
she has never been attracted to men and had exclusively been attracted to
women before her transition and now identifies as
asexual.
[84] [85]

Jenner’s announcement came at an unprecedented time for trans visibility,
including
legislative initiatives.
[86] [87] The
20/20interview had 20.7 million viewers, making it television’s
“highest-ever rated newsmagazine telecast among adults 18-49 and adults
25-54”. [88] The Daily Beast noted that
Jenner’s “honesty, […] vulnerability, or […] fame” may have caused
“cheap jokes” about trans people, like those which aired during the show as
part of the interview’s educating the public on
transphobia, to “seem mean to a
mainstream audience on an unprecedented scale”.
[89] Using
examples of how comedians had changed in their talking about Jenner’s
transition, The Daily Beast saw the change as the same evolution that took
place in acceptance of LGBT people as
a whole when “comedians finally cross the critical threshold from mockery to
creativity in their joke-telling”.
[89]

Prior to Jenner’s 20/20 interview, a two-part special titled Keeping Up with
the Kardashians: About Bruce was filmed with the family to answer questions
and prepare their children for personal and public aspects of the
transition.

[90] The episodes aired in May 2015; they emphasized a point made in the
20/20 prelude: that there is no one right way to transition. Jenner made it
a priority to ensure that all her children were independent first before
focusing inward.

[90] Premiering the new “her”-as Jenner referred to her emerging gender
identity-was done with a photo spread, interview, and
Vanity Fair cover
shot by Annie Leibovitz,
which was released by Jenner via
Twitter. [91] Jenner is the first openly transgender woman featured on the cover of Vanity
Fair. [92] The
Vanity Fair cover shot included the caption, “Call me Caitlyn,” and
accompanied her new Twitter handle, @Caitlyn_Jenner, and the message, “I’m
so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to
the world Caitlyn. Can’t wait for you to get to know her/me.” She amassed
over one million Twitter followers in just over four hours, setting a new
Guinness World Record
and surpassing United States President
Barack Obama, who, a month
before, accomplished the same feat in four and a half hours.

[93] Four days later Jenner was up to 2.37 million followers, with another
1.5 million followers on
Instagram. [94]

With her profile raised by her national coming out as a trans woman in April
2015, Jenner became one of the most recognized LGBT people in the world and
arguably the most famous
LGBT athlete.
[95] Jenner acknowledged in her 20/20 interview that part of her reason for
being so visible was to bring attention to gender dysphoria, violence
against trans women, and other

transgender issues.
[96] She also sought to promote more informed discussion of LGBT issues at a time
when the trans community has unprecedented visibility.
[96] She signed with
Creative Artists Agency’s speakers department and will collaborate with the
CAA Foundation on a philanthropic strategy focusing on LGBT issues.
[97] She made a
private appearance at the
Los Angeles LGBT
Center on June 9, 2015, where she spoke with at-risk trans youth.
[98]

Jenner received the
Arthur Ashe
Courage Award during the
2015 ESPY Awards on July 15,
2015. According to ESPN executive producer Maura Mandt, Jenner was given the
award because “she has shown the courage to embrace a truth that had been
hidden for years, and to embark on a journey that may not only give comfort
to those facing similar circumstances, but can also help to educate people
on the challenges that the transgender community faces.”
[99] She is the
third consecutive openly LGBT person to receive the award following
footballer Michael Sam (2014),
and anchorwoman
Robin Roberts (2013).
[100]

The post Caitlyn Jenner spoke out about being transgender in 2016… I, Paul Sladkus was co-captain of the track team with him and we wanted to support his decision to live the life he and anyone desires. appeared first on Good News!.

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Caitlyn Jenner spoke out about being transgender in 2016… I, Paul Sladkus was co-captain of the track team with him and we wanted to support his decision to live the life he and anyone desires.