Grab your tissues, because Patricia Arquette is about to make you tear up talking about the love she has for her sister.
And as if you needed another reason to love Patricia Arquette. She just laid a smackdown on the media for their disrespectful and unforgivable actions toward the reportedly transitioning Bruce Jenner and the damage they do to the entire transgender community.
During her interview on theMeredith Vieira Show, the host asked her to give her opinions about the transgender community, given that her sister is transgender, and it was like Vieira pitched a baseball to the Boyhood actress and she hit it out of the park.
Vieira said, “What do you want people to understand about the transgender community that they don’t?”
Arquette answered, “I feel like Alexis, my sister, has taught me so much about love and acceptance. It’s a very difficult thing to be transgender, especially 20 years ago when Alexis started.” Arquette explains how difficult it is to wrap your head around a loved one transitioning, but she describes a love for her sister that is so strong it literally brought me to tears.
She said, “I didn’t exactly understand it, but our father died. Our mother died. I’d lost two people I loved. We all come into this life in a different package, a baby package. We get older, we become an old person package. If you’re a male or female, at the end I didn’t care. I have people I loved that had died. I said, ‘I don’t care what package you’re comfortable in, [I] love and accept you. I am glad you are here on Earth. I want to be with you, spend time with you.'”
Dear God, if everyone who was going through a difficult time with either their sexuality or just any difficult time in general was able to hear those loving and accepting words, our world sure would be a lot different.
Then she really drives it home saying the media is being disrespectful and should be ashamed of themselves for the “unforgivable” way they are handling the news surrounding Bruce Jenner and his alleged transitioning. She rightfully lays the blame at their feet for transgenders’ diminished state in society and for the scorn they receive, blaming the media for stoking the fires of hate.
“These newspapers, these magazines, that are being so disrespectful — they should be ashamed because they are on the unforgivable side of history and what they are doing is pathetic and immature and repulsive.” She continues, saying, “It is so many young people [who] commit suicide, don’t have acceptance. They are diminished in society. They are not allowed to work at counters or stores. People make fun of them, snicker at them, attack them… You have to be so brave to live this truth of who you are.”
Read that one more time: You are so brave to live this truth of who you are.
She then throws her support behind Jenner, saying, “If Ms. Jenner is transitioning, I give all my support to her and love and appreciate everything she has given to America, and her bravery, because she is fighting a fight for a lot of kids that are being kicked out of their homes. Society turns their back on these kids. It’s really brutal.”
You can see it in the actress’s eyes that she is speaking from a place of understanding. That she has seen these terrible things firsthand growing up, lived this transition alongside her sister and saw the hatred often thrown at the transgender community, and it is so incredibly powerful.
Everyone could just take one second and think about someone going through a situation like this, or about someone who might be dealing with the reality of their own sexuality and what that might mean in their lives and to their loved ones. A closeted gay person who is fearful to tell his or her family: think about their gender as just a package, the outside is just the outside, and you love what is on the inside. Stop and think about that person not being there for a second and you might not care so much who they fall in love with. You might realize it is not quite that big a deal if this person wears dresses and makeup or ‘boy clothes,’ and you might just love them for being your brother or sister or friend.
What a wonderful place the world would be if we could just accept people for people instead of putting restrictions on our love having to fit into whatever we personally think love should be.
Watch the entire conversation here:
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