By Monica F. Helms

It has been exactly eleven and a half years since I started living this life as Monica and during that time, so many things have happened that I feel like I have lived three lifetimes. Friends came into my life and others have left, and some them even came back. I lost friends by the hands of others and some by their own hands. I have been praised by some for the work I have done and hated by others for exactly the same work. I have seen the best and the worst from my gay, lesbian and bisexual brothers and sisters, and truly seen the best and the worst of human nature in the transgender community, some of it happening the very day I type this.

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For years, I have been vilified by a tiny minority of individuals in the transgender community. It’s because I’m not homophobic or transphobic and I don’t follow their strict, narrow-minded guidelines of what they think a transsexual or a woman should be. They should follow their hearts and do what they think is best for them, but I had yet to see the same consideration from them. With their hearts filled with such bitterness and hate, I pray that God will one day show them the light.

In spite of the minor inconvenience these transgender women have given me, my life has been good. I have been working for the same company for the last 19 years and they treat me like a woman and have me listed as female in their system. The State of Georgia has me listed as female, as do my insurance companies. I have dated several lesbians over the years and they all saw me and treated me as another woman. I have been accepted in women’s spaces for over a decade in all aspects in my life and in many cases, they knew I was a transsexual. When I became a delegate for the Democratic National Convention in 2004, I was considered as a female by the DNC. It has never really been a problem in my life as it has for others. I’ve been blessed that way.

Being considered a woman in Western society has little to do with what is under your clothes and more to do with the feminine attitude you take through life. If you just are, then others can feel it. You must control life instead of letting life control you. For some, it is believing in a higher power and for others, it is believing in themselves. I believe in both. I don’t need to worry how others see me, because they do not change my life.

Sadly, some put stringent rules on how to be a woman or what you have to do to “qualify.” They spend valuable time defining and analyzing life and not living it. This is a meaningless existence. It is said we have only one life to live, but transsexuals get two. It’s a shame that some people couldn’t make the best of both of them while here.

One of the newest places I have been accepted as a woman is in a women’s pool player’s league. The American Poolplayers Association (APA) has many leagues across the country and in Georgia, but most of them are co-ed, except for this one. I cannot remember a time when I have had so much fun in a social setting on a regular basis. Most of what I have been involved with had been serious LGBT events or political events. Playing pool is just plain fun. Out of about 40 women who play on this league, only two of us identify as lesbian. The rest are all straight and I know they all know about my transsexual history.

These women are so good at pool that I have had to ratchet up my playing skills to a higher level and even doing that, I have only maintained a 50% win record. This group has had a humbling affect on me . . . when it comes to pool. (Grin) But, they have also given my heart a warm feeling whenever I’m with them. We laugh, we talk about pool, we talk about our children and we talk about life in general. None of them has ever asked me about being a transsexual, because it is a non-issue. To them, I am just another woman who can be their next challenger in a pool match. In a game, the only focus is the next shot and not that I may have started life as a boy.

Life has so much beauty that to close your eyes means you will miss it. It behooves people to spend less time criticizing others for not doing what THEY think they should do and turn their attention to what they need to do to make their lives happier. As much as some may think, my life and how I live it has zero affect on theirs. If people think my life affect theirs, then they have given me more power then I deserve, or want. All I really want to do is to make it to the next shot.

“Eight ball in the side pocket.”

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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Why would some trans people feel a loss of patriotism after starting their lives down the correct path?  Could it be all of the things this country has done and continues to do to show us how little they care about us?  “Can I get a Hallelujah and a big Duh here?”  Ya think?  Here are some of the things I have seen over the years that have made me even question my patriotism.

Violence:

Year by year, violence toward trans people continues to get worse and worse.  The Remember Our Dead list doesn’t stop growing, with more than half coming from the US each year.  Other forms of physical violence and rape are also disproportionately higher in our community then in other minorities.  Only young African American men seem to have as much or more violence then transgender people.  In the trans community, People of Color have faced a higher percentage of violence and the ROD list reflects this.  This feeling of constant danger can cause people to wish they lived someplace else, so it affects their patriotism.

Federal Hate Crimes Legislation:

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE,) eleven states have their own form of hate crimes legislation that covers gender expression and gender identity.  On the federal level, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA,) HR 1592, passed the House, but in the Senate, their version, bill S 1105, was attached to an arm forces appropriation bill to get it to the President’s desk.  However, this changed the appropriation bill, which meant it had to go back to the House for approval.  LLEHCPA was then removed from the appropriations bill, thus ending its journey.

The difference between the federal hate crimes bill and a state hate crimes law is that the federal law will NOT increase sentences.  LLEHCPA will add “gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability” to the existing protected class list, which already includes race, color, religion, and national origin.  This would allow federal money to go to local law enforcement agencies to help investigate a hate crime.  It would also mean that separate stats would be collected on crimes against LGBT people and would show the numbers of those crimes committed in the US.

The most important reason to pass a federal hate crimes law is to tell the American people that if you hate this group of people and commit crimes against them, it will no longer be tolerated.  Since Congress had been so cavalier in trying to pass LLEHCPA and then letting it die so easily, it sent a message that LGBT people are not important enough to add to the existing federal hate crimes legislation.  The United States of American is okay with its citizens hating LGBT people and harming them.  They could easily be saying, “We don’t think they are worthy enough to care what happens to them.”  One begins to question why they should be patriotic toward a county who feels that way about them.

Federal Employment Non-Discrimination:

Here is another area where transgender people have questioned their patriotism.  According to NCTE, thirteen states and the District of Columbia have passed nondiscrimination laws that protect people based on their gender identity and gender expression.  This leaves 63% of the American population not covered.  Many of those remaining states will never pass their own nondiscrimination law, so their citizens are depending on the federal government for this.  As we saw in 2007, Congress was more than willing to throw transgender and gender variant people under the bus when it came to this law.

I was well on my way to working toward becoming a delegate to the Democratic National Committee’s 2008 Convention in Denver when the vote for ENDA took place in October, 2007.  As soon as I got word that a majority of supposedly supportive Democrats voted for the non-inclusive law, I stopped supporting the Democratic Party.  I was not very happy that the party I gave money to and worked for to elect their candidates told me in no uncertain terms that I was not worthy to be considered equal to other Americans.  To a veteran, that is a huge slap in the face.  Veterans Day came up shortly after that and I refused to march in the Atlanta Veterans Day Parade or participate in any activities.  My patriotism suffered its biggest blow in my life.

I wasn’t the only one.  There was a rumor that if the non-inclusive ENDA passed, some transgender people planned on seeking asylum at the Dutch Embassy in DC because of the discriminatory actions of this country.  They wanted to embarrass the US, but nothing every came of it, or at least not yet.  Besides, the current administration would have cared less if a bunch of “tranny freaks” left the country.

Transgender Veterans Discrimination in the VA:

This is a subject I have written about several times recently, since the White Paper Report on the Transgender Veterans Survey was published.  I don’t need to go into detail once again on the amount and kinds of discrimination transgender veterans have faced in VA medical facilities.  When a person gives four, ten, twenty, or thirty years of their life to serve this country in the military, one would think that they have earned the right to be treated with respect and equally with other veterans.  It’s no wonder some transgender veterans question their patriotism when they held up their end of the contract, but the country doesn’t hold up theirs.

Over and over again, transgender people indirectly get the message that this country doesn’t want them as citizens.  Yet, they still take our tax money.  Sometimes the message comes from the very allies we hoped would be there for us no matter what.  Sometimes it comes from Congress in the form of being excluded from legislation.  We hear it from law enforcement agencies, employers, co-workers, family members, the medical profession, insurance companies and even the people on the streets.  We hear this so much that not a day goes by that some transgender person in this country questions why they still live here.  Some actually do leave.

As for me, I was born here, my family has been here since before the Revolutionary War, many family members in our history served in this country’s military and all my family lives here today.  The ENDA disaster was the closest time in my life where I questioned my patriotism.  I decided that my love for this country and the pride I have for what I did in the Navy cannot be dampened any longer by an uncaring Congress, an administration that has promoted hate and a population that refused to be educated.  I will continue working toward fixing the problems of this country, or die trying.

Marisa Richmond is President of the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Equality Project & Board of advisers of NCTE. She is a former Board Member of AEGIS, IFGE, NTAC, & Nashville’s Rainbow Community Center. She served as Co-Chair of Southern Comfort in 2001, chaired the host committee of the 2002 IFGE Convention in Nashville, & served on the Planning Committee for Nashville Black Pride in 2004. She won the Trinity Award in 2002 & the HRC Equality Award in 2007. This year, Merisa will be one of eight transgender delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She is the first African American trans person to be elected as a delegate to any national political party’s convention.

Yesterday, the Platform Committee of the Democratic National Committee met in Pittsburgh to review and amend the draft platform. In July, community meetings were held all across the country to gather input from people of all walks of life. Those of us in the 2nd Transgender Caucus stepped up in our own way to ensure that the concerns of the Transgender community were heard and included. Amanda Simpson of Arizona met with her Governor, Janet Napolitano, who was the Chair of the Drafting Committee. Several others, including me, met directly with Platform Committee members from our respective states. Tennessee has three members on Platform and I met or talked with all three. In our meetings, we expressed the desire to have language calling for Democrats to support only a fully inclusive, employment non-discrimination act. We also urged passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, access to health care for all Americans, and expressed concern over various ID laws at the federal and state levels. For Transgender Tennesseans, this includes the right to change gender on Birth Certificates, and opposition to the Real ID Act and new voter ID’s.

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The Transgender Caucus also has, for the first time ever, two members on the full Platform Committee: Kathy Padilla of Philadelphia and Diego Sanchez of Boston. Unfortunately, Kathy had to resign her seat for personal reasons, but Diego was in the meeting yesterday and represented us in Pittsburgh.

We are pleased that the Platform does call for passage of a “comprehensive” ENDA, but to be honest, most of us in the Transgender Caucus do not feel the term “comprehensive” is inclusive enough. We are, however, pleased with the calls for passage of the Hate Crimes Bill, along with the repeal of both “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act.

The fact that the Platform does use the term “Gender Identity”, and it passed without debate or dissent on that point, is a reflection of the hard work transgender activists have done over the years, not to mention the work of so many who worked through the United ENDA Coalition since it began operating last fall. And while the Drafting Committee did not have a transgender representative this year, it did include Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, a strong ally of the Transgender Community and United ENDA in the fight for a fully inclusive ENDA.

The full Democratic National Convention will vote on the Platform in Denver in 2 weeks. At this point, I do not know if we will have a minority report requesting stronger language on a fully inclusive ENDA, but we do feel that we have made some real progress in educating Democrats all across this country on the necessity of passing such legislation and to ensure that the ONLY version that moves forward covers all LGBT people.

I am getting ready to head to Denver and I look forward to continuing the work started by those Transgender people who rose up against discrimination when they started the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco in 1966 and the Stonewall Riot in New York in 1969.