On Sunday's episode of I Am Cait , titled "Family Interference," Caitlyn faced a pair of difficult conversations with Kim and Khloe Kardashian over her breakup with their mother, Kris. Most of the blowback came from Cait's comments in her Vanity Fair cover story, in which she referred to her family as "a distraction" from coming to terms with her identity as a transgender woman. She also cited Kris's lack of acceptance as another factor in her struggle to come out.
Enter Kim and Khloe to Kardashian-splain the coming out process to a trans person.
Kim called it "unfair" of Cait to bring up Kris's lack of acceptance, saying, "you are a woman now. She is not a lesbian. She does not want to be with a woman. That's not fair to ask."
When Cait tried to express that she felt hurt by Kris's rejection of her, too, Kim told her that she should be thankful for it "because it wasn't meant to be."
"But then don't come back and be so emotional about the breakup!" Cait shot back.
Kim, however, was determined to prioritize her mother's feelings over Caitlyn's:
"Towards the end, it never would have worked and that's fine. She's OK with that. You both agree that the end was bad. You guys were in a bad place, but if I was with someone for 25 years, I'd try to look for the positive things and just end it on a good note. You said, 'Oh, Kris mistreated me.' It sounded like she beat the sh*t out of you. You could have had a little bit more respect...You've got the fame, but you're losing your family."
Caitlyn restated her intentions to strengthen her family ties by coming out, but Kim continued to put the onus on her step-parent for, well, everything, accusing her of "bashing [the family] on [her] way up," telling her to "mend it so we can all move on," and tasking her alone with getting "the family unit going again."
Eventually, the two agreed that a tweet would be a good first step to repairing her relationship with Kris (because Kardashian logic), but Kim broke pretty much every rule of family therapy, here, from telling Caitlyn how to feel to placing every ounce of burden on her for other people's feelings about her transition.
Caitlyn's conversation with Khloe, which opened with a discussion of eyelash extension options and proper nomenclature for Versace freebies, didn't go much better. Caitlyn was the one who had to initiate, generously referring to Khloe's outburst as some "tough texts":
Khloe: We don't care what you're doing — meaning we don't care if you transition — we want to support you and be there for you. But we don't think that entails you speaking negatively about my mom. In our opinion, you don't even need to mention our mom. Let's focus on the actual cause here and let's not drag my mom through the mud. I would think you would come from a place of more compassion, especially when you have two young daughters who are greatly affected by it. And that was really my premise for the text messages and then when you try to tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about —
Caitlyn: Because you don't know. You don't know. If she would have been OK with me...
Khloe: OK with you transitioning and still being married to her?
Caitlyn: Not even so much transitioning, just living with it. If she had just said to me, 'OK.' Instead, I constantly had to hide myself. I wasn't able to talk about it. And then once I got out to Malibu, when we went our separate directions, I said, 'At my age, I have the same problems I had when I was 10-years old. What the hell am I going to do with this? Am I gonna continue to hide? I'm sick of that.'
In a cutaway interview, Khloe added, "Caitlyn is allowed to have her own feelings, but she's very one-sided and I don't think that's fair." But it was clear that she wanted the tension resolved for the sake of Kendall and Kylie. The conversation ended with her teaching Caitlyn how to group text so she could regularly be back in the loop with her family, which Caitlyn expressed a deep desire for.
Kim and Khloe are obviously feeling extremely protective of both their mom and their younger sisters in light of Caitlyn's divorce, but there are several aspects of her transition that have absolutely nothing to do with anyone but Caitlyn. And conflating her rightful control over her own transition narrative with hurt feelings over a magazine profile or a divorce is misplacing a lot of anger and blame.
Images: Getty (3)
