Trans Universe

By Monica F. Helms

The VA has a new directive on the treatment of Transgender Veterans, BUT they won’t release it. This is becoming a theme with the Obama Administration. Tell LGBT people that their issues are important then do nothing to make them a reality. Transgender veterans have decided not to be quiet about this issue any longer.

First, a little history. In January of 2003, the Transgender American Veterans Association was formed with the primary mission to work with the Department of Veteran Affairs to have their medical facilities treat transgender people with dignity and respect.

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This is my most ambitious video project yet. It’s called: “Transgender and Transgender-Like Veterans – Part 1.” Besides doing it in widescreen, I used several techniques I have only experimented with in the past.

This is a documentary of those individuals who crossed gender lines to serve their country, from the Revolutionary War to the Spanish American War. The video has stories of interesting people, like Deborah Sampson, Albert Cashier and Cathy Williams. It didn’t turn out too bad for what I had to work with.

I wanted to do a tribute to all of those transgender and transgender -like people who served this country proudly. It was amazing what I found when researching the information for this video. I hope you like it.

By Monica F. Helms

Seems that the subject of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has gotten hotter than a dark-colored car in a Phoenix summer. Straight media, straight bloggers, gay media and gay bloggers have all chimed in with their opinions, comments and condemnations of this very discriminatory law. It all started when President Obama said he wanted to repeal DADT during his State of the Union Speech.

The Palm Center in Santa Barbara, CA sent out a list of “recommendations” on what they can do to help the Pentagon Working Group on gays in the military work this issue out smoothly. They are:

• Consulting existing literature as a roadmap;
• Assessing the Impact on Unit Cohesion Properly;
• Consulting troops for relevant information rather than to ask their permission for reform;
• Sending study teams to Britain, Israel, Australia, and Canada; Using an appropriate standard for assessing the likely impact of change;
• Consulting research on the timing of implementation;
• Noting that leadership and consistency are more important than second-order effects; and
• Correcting for biases introduced by “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

This looks to be a very good plan of action, but notice something is missing.

Through all of this, a part of the LGB**T** community gets intentionally left out. Once again, the Trans American Veterans Association will raise their voices to not only say that trans people should be allowed to serve openly, but will insist upon it.

Of course, this has never been a popular stance with gay and lesbian people who want to claim that because DADT only covers “sexual orientation” and that trans people are not affected by the law. (Could someone please bring out that dead horse again?) Let me remind those whose reality is something akin to what Alice saw in Wonderland. We have records, as does SLDN, of straight and asexual trans people who have been harassed under DADT and kicked out. And, as was pointed out in previous articles, trans people can be gay, lesbian or bisexual. DADT AFFECTS TRANS PEOPLE, TOO.

As I have said countless times in the past, the military has no concept of the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. To them, a heterosexual crossdresser is gay. A person who wishes to live the rest of their lives different from their birth sex, no matter who they are attracted, is gay. They only care about exercising their right to the legalized bigotry that DADT gives them.

Now, I’m hearing other trans people spouting defeatist attitudes toward ever seeing trans people serving openly in the military. Guess what. Some already have. We have passed onto SLDN several people who were allowed to start their transition before getting out. They used this information to help other trans people who were being forced out under DADT. Some even legally changed their name before getting out, assuring their DD-214 would have their new name. Another individual was called back to active duty AFTER she completed her transition and reported to SAC Headquarters during the first Gulf War. They had no problem with her change.

We have also pointed out that trans and trans-like people have served in every war this country has fought, since the beginning. It has been estimated that there are between 200,000 and 300,000 living trans veterans in the US today.

Add to all of this, Canada, Great Britain, Israel and Thailand are known to allow all trans people to serve openly. Australia and Spain allow only their trans men to serve openly. As been pointed out in the past, Canada allowed trans people to serve BEFORE allowing gay, lesbian and bisexual people could serve. The wheel has long since been invented for this.

We are also hearing the “hermaphrodite scare” cycling through the hatemonger organizations. “We can’t have hermaphrodites serving in the military!” Ah . . . reality check time. They’re already there.

According to medical science and the figures collected by the Intersex Society of North America, one in 500 people on planet Earth have some form of intersex condition. With 1.47 million active duty troops and another 1.46 million in the reserves, there are nearly six-thousand people in uniform who are intersexed. Seems the Pentagon is not too worried about this, so why should the rest of us be?

If the military wanted to weed out all intersex individuals, they would have to perform expensive special tests and medical exams by experts in the field. One of the tests would be to check the sex chromosomes on all three million service members. In the civilian world, that can cost somewhere around $800 dollars each. That would come to a total addition to the Defense Budget of another $2.344 billion dollars. Of course, in a military world famous for $1500 toilet seats and $700 hammers, you think they will pay only $800 for each test? Seems to be a hefty amount of tax dollars to spend on placating the hate mongers’ “concerns.”

And, we also heard the “bigotry-for-profit” groups hollering, “If we let gays serve in the military, we’ll have soldiers wearing dresses!” This is obviously coming from people who have never served in the military and have no concept of military rules and regulations. You see, the military has these clothing things called “uniforms.” It’s been sort-of a tradition with militaries since . . . oh say . . . before the ancient Egyptians.

Militaries today get real testy if a person is even slightly “out of uniform.” They are not noted for having a sense of humor when it comes to this. The military goes so far as to regulate size and type of earrings women can wear. Men cannot wear any earrings. So, the people who think male soldiers will get to wear dresses on a whim are doing nothing but instilling fear in the uneducated masses so they can convince them to send money to fight this scourge. The “bigotry-for-profit” groups are sending their children to college off the hard-earned money of ordinary Americans. It’s a scam worthy of the snake-oil salesmen in the old West.

Interesting enough, since DADT doesn’t have “gender identity of expression” in the language, it means that it doesn’t prevent trans people from serving in the military. For the most part, there are just policies and rules keeping trans people out of the military. President Obama may not be able to overturn DADT with an Executive Order, but he may be able to use one to allow trans people a chance to serve openly.

However, I doubt that any of the mostly-gay organizations would lift a finger to lobby the White House for that if it was proven possible. The incremental mindset many of the people running those organizations would not allow trans people to get something before gays and lesbians do. At least not in the good ‘ol U-S of A.

But, as we can all guess, President Obama will not be willing to spend one thin dime of his political capital to issue such an Executive Order. It becomes a moot point.

Here’s what trans people will face if they serve in the military or try to join after DADT is repealed. There is a policy in place preventing trans people from enlisting, and all the reasons the military used to kick them out before DADT will come back into play. Some uneducated commanders will think that because DADT has been repealed, their trans troops will be allowed to serve. I’m sure there will be people there to set them straight.

I feel that the repeal of DADT will put the wheels in motion to a day when trans people will be allowed to serve openly. This will not be an easy process, but if people are willing to stop throwing their hands in the air and giving up, then these rules can be changed. The trans community needs to work together with allies and ignore the perennial naysayers and those with a defeatist attitude that populate our community.

The repeal of DADT will not send intersex people to their recruiters in droves to sign up. And, if they did, so what? They have already served in honor. The repeal will not force male soldiers to wear dresses, regardless of what the hate mongers say. The repeal will take a tiny bit of pressure off of the trans troops, but they will still have to hide.

Even if trans people got the chance to serve openly, most would never tell anyone about being trans. The stigma that society has put on trans people would not be erased in an accepting US military, anymore then it does with trans people working in an accepting company. There will be a lot of work ahead of us if trans people want to serve openly in the military. We will never know if we can fix it if we don’t try.

By Monica F. Helms

The impending repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell hangs over Bigot Americans like a specter of doom that will reach biblical proportions. In other words, they lack a strong grip on reality. They will do anything it takes to instill fear on the unknowing masses, stopping short of predicting the coming of The Rapture. Well, maybe they won’t stop short of that.

In this endless process of misinformation and out-and-out lies, the one part of the LGBT community that they like pointing to in order to generate the most fear are transgender people. They will always gravitate to the worn-out, standard line from the Bigot’s Handbook (Volume 17, 5^th Edition, page 963,) “Men in dresses.” If all else fails, they can always throw out “Men in dresses,” even if it has nothing to do with transgender people. To Bigot Americans, ALL gay men wear dresses. That’s BS to the max. Hell, I know several trans women and lesbians who wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress.

Let me show the important points in this latest round of lies that the BAs like to gloss over or don’t wish people to know about.

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For the first time since the Transgender American Veterans Association existed, a mainstream print media has dedicated an extensive amount of space to present the stories of transgender veterans and the problems they face. In a two-part series, journalist Carol Ann Alaimo spent over three weeks of interviews, research and education to come up with this two-article, 3500 word essay on our veterans.

Alaimo, the military journalist for Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star, told me that she got interested in transgender veterans when she discovered the TAVA web site and read the survey we did last year. From there, she found transgender veterans in Tucson and spoke with many of them.

I am absolutely impressed with all the work she put into the two articles. As Sunday came to a close, there were already over 150 comments on her first article. By the end of Monday, the second article had nearly 200 comments. Then we also found the articles appearing on Military.com, with equally number of comments.

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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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(Note: Also posted on PFLAG’s blog.)

For years, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been the official witch-hunt policy that gave the US military open-ended permission to ruin the careers of any person they suspect were “homosexuals.” It never had anything to do with whether the person actually acted upon their sexual orientation, or even if the person was really gay or not. It mostly stems from the Department of Defense’s archaic and narrow view of what they think should be gender-normative behavior for men and women, including sexual activities. Basically, you don’t have to be gay, or act gay, or be sexually active with a same-sex partner, as long as they think you’re gay. They hold all the cards.

It’s the famous oxymoron of “Military Intelligence” in play here. This is why transgender-identifying service members also find themselves snared in the DADT trolling nets that commanding officers like to throw out every so often. Maybe they have to “catch their limit” to get promoted. Who knows? But, we do know for sure that transgender service members need to be factored into the DADT mix when the discussion comes up.

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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.