Trans Universe

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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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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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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I have been keeping track of where people are logging in from and I am very pleasantly surprised to see that I have been getting hits from over 40 different countries, from all over the world and on every continent. I just want to take this time to welcome my international readers. It is so wonderful that the world can stay in communication with each other at an instant. The internet has shrunk the world to a true global village.

I love all of you, not because you are reading my blog, but because you have a desire to stay informed on any issue that interests you. I hope that I can spread out my message to include the needs of my new international friends. If you have any interest that I might be able to fulfill, don’t ever hesitate to ask. If I don’t have the answer, I’ll find someone who does. I really hope that even without any questions, you will find the time to post a comment here just to say “hello.”

Also, I am taking this chance to put out a special request to my international friends. If any of you are transgender military veterans in your country, or know of transgender military veterans in your country, please have them contact me at president@tavausa.org. As the President of the Transgender American Veterans Association, we want to reach out to our fellow brothers and sisters who served in the military in their countries and form a coalition of transgender veterans throughout the world.

Again, thank you all for logging in. Have a great day.

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.

It was my great privilege to attend the recent hearings held in Washington, DC this week on Transgender Unemployment, as the representative from the Transgender American Veterans Association, TAVA. My thoughts are fresh from the hearing and my sense of having to be there to witness an historic moment in our community was more than justified.

I pleasure myself sometimes in thinking that I am a person of vision. Only those who have been active in the Transgender Community for a few years may understand it. In my fondest visions of the past concerning our community, I would have to be the Transgender reincarnation of Nostradamus to have been able to predict our community giving testimony at a Congressional Hearing about Trans Unemployment problems. We all know that this is at the heart of so many of our long list of problems.

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At the last minute, I didn’t know if I could attend the Atlanta HRC Dinner protest in front of the Hyatt Regency, May 3, 2008. Work had me signed up to do 2 hours of overtime right in the middle of when the protest was scheduled. Luckily, I was able to trade the hours to a co-worker.

On Saturday, I had to formulate a plan to talk with the most people I could at the dinner. But in order to do that, I needed to go inside the “Belly of the Beast.” Being a former submariner, I was familiar with submarine war tactics, which have helped me as an activist in the past. You sneak into an enemy’s port, lay a few torpedoes in the sides of their ships, then slip silently away. They never know what hit them.

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Many non-trans people will look at this article as just another whining trans person, complaining about ENDA.  All the reasons we should have been covered in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and all the lying and back stabbing has been covered by enough blogs and articles that if combined, it would make War and Peace look like a pamphlet.

I’m not here to complain or point out how evil HRC and Barney Frank are.  This article will tell you about a few people I know who have been affected by employment discrimination.  Think HRC or Frank will read this?  Someone should send it to them.

My friend Darlene lives in Indiana.  She’s a 20-year Army veteran and served in Vietnam.  A healthy trans woman, she cannot find a job and is currently living in one of those efficiency motels, paying by the week.  Her only source of income is her once-a-month retirement check that barely keeps her alive.  Sometimes, the money runs out before the end of the month and she’s forced to live in her car until the next check arrives.  Congress should be ashamed of themselves for treating Darlene this way. (more…)

In 2001, I joined a Yahoo Group by the name of TSVets, which still exists to this day. This is a group that is opened to all transsexuals who have served our country in the military. The list has a variety of veterans from all branches of the service, all the modern wars, different ranks, different income levels and different levels of surgical status. Some are completely healthy, while others are disabled or have PTSD. In short, they are no different than the rest of America’s veterans.

As time went on, I realized that even though transgender veterans did all the same things in the military as their non-trans veterans counterparts did, the Veterans Administration medical facilities did not treat them equally as they did all the other veterans. We know today that the VA has a dismal record when it comes to how they treat all veterans. Transgender veterans would just like to be treated equally as crappy as everyone else.

I did not like what I heard on the TSVets list about the treatment some transgender veterans received at the VA and I discussed it with my friend Angela Brightfeather, an Army veteran and activist from North Carolina. At the time, we both served on the Activism Committee of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC.) She saw this as an important issue to undertake, which later led to the creation of the VA Committee in NTAC. As we dug deeper into the issues, we realized that the problems were not something a committee could handle, so we formed the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) in January, 2003, a national 501 (c) 3 organization.   (more…)