Trans Universe

By Monica F. Helms

Today is a special day, a day that transgender bloggers across the country put fingers to keyboard to urge their friends and readers that we need to support Senator Barack Obama for President. This has been a historical week, but one we should have never seen. We have had eight years of a failed administration, led by a man who has failed in every company he has run, and failed as the Governor of Texas. Seems easy to see that if he can’t handle a company, should he have been handling a country?

On a Monday when the Dow had its highest numerical drop in history, transgender people are rallying to show that our community cares about the future of this country. We don’t want four more years of this failed policy. We want four years of an administration that actually supports the needs of the transgender community. We want four years of a chance to recover and to prosper once again. We want four years where other countries in the world trusts us once again. We want Obama!

This is why we have set this day aside to break some goals in the number of those who donate to Obama’s campaign from the transgender community, our friends and family members. We are looking for 200 donations and as I type this, we have 172. We also set out to break $10,000, which we have. I think we can bring both numbers well past the goals we set for ourselves.

To donate in the name of the transgender community, go to the Obama’s Transgender ActBlue page set up specifically for the transgender community. You don’t have to be trans to donate on that page. Our friends and allies who believe in equal rights for all people need to visit this page and help Obama’s campaign and show how much you support your transgender friends and family members. Let’s move this country in the right direction. Let’s help Obama win the White House.

By Monica F. Helms

   On Wednesday, October 1, I will be on a plane heading west to Southern California.  A Beach Boys song keeps ringing in my ears, “I wish they all could be California Girls!”  Ah, yes.  California girls.  My mind does wonder at times.  I will be in the San Diego area, the place I lived when stationed on the USS Flasher (SSN 613.)  I have several trans friends who live there and I plan on seeing them.

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By Monica F. Helms

I’m sure blog readers have heard the phrase “Friends with Benefits” quite often, since they consist of some rather sophisticated people out there.  Whenever people hear “FWB,” it conjures up all kinds of lustful images in their minds, mostly about noncommittal sex with a good friend.  This phrase came in existence in about the late 80’s, early 90’s by the younger crowd, but it has worked its way to all generations.

This subject has come up on occasions with some of my friends and ex-girlfriends, discussing it at lengths, which made me feel the need to write about my feeling on this.  The Internet has plenty of pages on FWB, so I’m not breaking into new territory.  Of course, most of what you find on the Internet has been geared toward straight people, but the idea has become common in the LGBT community as well.

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By Monica F. Helms

I received a phone call from a good friend, Zan Thorton, telling me that Congressman Barney Frank had fifteen disabled people arrested in his office, Tuesday, September 16, 2008, at around 3 PM.  Zan informed me that around fifty LGBT and straight disabled people entered the Congressman’s office around 1:30 PM and asked to speak to him about the housing crisis for disabled people.  They were there representing the Center for Disability Rights.

According to the Congressman’s Chief of Staff, Peter Kovar, the group, several in wheelchairs, came into the office, went right into Congressman Frank’s office and “moved things around” to have a place to sit.  He informed them that they couldn’t be in there and that Frank was about to go to the House floor for a vote.

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I heard a recently discussion that some transgender people feel far less patriotic toward the Good ‘Ol US of A since beginning their journey down this new adventure in life.  I have heard it coming from transsexuals and others who live full-time in a cross-gender life, but not so much from crossdressers and others who cross the gender lines temporarily.  Why would transsexuals feel this way?

Dictionary.com’s definition of Patriotism is:

“noun: devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty.”

“Devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country?”  I have noticed that transsexuals who have served their country in the military don’t seem to have as much of an issue with their patriotism, and in many cases, are more patriotic than the average American.  I served eight years in the Navy and I am very proud of the service to my country, as I am with all the family members who also served.  I even have a memorial to my father with models of four jets he worked on when he was in the Air Force.  In a year, my mother will give me the flag that was on his coffin, and I will display it proudly.

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(Permission to repost this from Laura Calvo, Oregon’s Stonewall Democrats, one of the Transgender Delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Committe’s Convention.)

The year was 1993.  Clinton was President.  Gay, lesbian and bisexual people felt they finally had a friend in the White House.  And, even though transgender people officially started the gay movement at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, they only began finding their voices in the equal rights movement in the early 1990’s.  They had very little visibility and vertically no credibility.  We weren’t on anyone’s radar.

In that year, President Clinton wanted to fulfill a promise by making the US military safe for people, regardless of their sexual orientation, but it didn’t turn out the way people wanted.  The now infamous Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law came into affect and it did not protect people in the military based on their sexual orientation, if that orientation was something other than straight.  The law gave commanders a chance to hunt down gay, lesbian and bisexual service member in order to weed them out.  Transgender military people didn’t ask to be included, but included they were.

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I just received an “Action Alert” from the Servicesmembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) asking me and others to send a letter to our local newspapers and the national newspapers on stating the need to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) supports this repeal and has since Day One of our existence.  We knew back then that transgender people were being kicked out under DADT, but did not have the proof until this year with the survey we did.

I included the Action Alert SLDN sent me after my comments.  When you click onto their link, it takes you to a place where you fill out various pieces of information and it then sends you to a pre-written letter to send off to those newspapers.  You can change the words in the letter.  If you read down in the letter, you will see near the end it says, “gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.” When I saw that, I added the word “transgender” in that list and sent it out with that minor change.  Afterwards, I sent a response to Aubrey Sarvis at SLDN telling him what I did.

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Guest posting by Angela Brightfeather

Angela has been an activist for the transgender community is some form or another for the last 42 years. Some of our community’s activists weren’t even born then. She has been on the board of NTAC, It’s Time, North Carolina and the several other organizations too numberous to mention. Currently, she serves as the Vice President of the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) and is one of its Co-Founders. Also, Angela is one of my closest friends.

And, the big question for Senator Obama is . . . . ?

You know something? I am so tired of arguing with people about HRC and about their loyal transgender members and workers at the bottom of the food chain we call the “GLB community.” I am also getting tired of the absolute position of transgender leaders whom I know, about their insistence that we don’t need HRC and that they compare them to our worst enemies..

I actually agree with both sides of all this argument, which makes me stop and think a minute about why we need to argue in the first place?

Deep in the pit of my stomach, I have always sought the most acute area of pain in our community and focused the things I have done in that direction. As a professed and unashamed healer in our community, I really have no choice but to be drawn to ease the pain and that is how it has been for most of my life.

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The Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara has released the findings of a survey, conducted by Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA), that shows that transgender veterans are being turned away and being mistreated in high numbers by Veterans Administration medical facilities.  The survey, with 827 transgender veteran participants, was conducted from December 13, 2007 to May 1, 2008.  This represents a strong sampling from what is estimated to be approximately 300,000 veterans in the US who identify as being transgender.

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