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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In 2008, TAVA created a survey where 827 transgender veterans gave us information on all kinds of issues, especially their treatment at the VA. One third of those who took the survey had used a VA medical facility at one time of another. More than twenty percent of them had been mistreated by staff members, other patients, nurses and even doctors. The survey ended on May 1, 2008, and the raw data became public record. The Palm Center put out the White Papers in August.

TAVA was told by a VA insider that the raw data from the survey had reached the Veterans Health Administration, the medical department of the VA, and in June of 2008, they began drafting a directive to rectify the problem. In March of 2009 (after the Obama Administration took over,) the VHA sent a draft of their proposed directive to a few VA medical facilities for review by their transgender veterans. They didn’t contact TAVA or NCTE on this. The draft had misinformation, inaccuracies, incorrect descriptions and disrespectful definitions. It looked bad.

TAVA spent the next month communicating with some of the new people in the VA, some of whom had previous experience with transgender people and their medical issues. They agreed that the problem of mistreatment of transgender veterans needed to be fixed. TAVA felt hopeful that these new people now leading the VA would help us.

In May of 2009, the VHA sent a draft of their proposed directive, called “Providing Healthcare for Transgender and Intersex Veterans,” to NCTE to have them be the point organization in assuring the directive’s language looked correct in every way. With the help of trans lawyers and TAVA, NCTE put together a wonderful directive that would greatly improve how transgender veterans will be treated. The VA received our corrected version in July of 2009.

What the directive does cover is all the things that are available to other veterans, such as psychotherapy for PTSD, mammograms, prostate exams, pap smears and other important medical services, which had been denied to many transgender veterans in the past. This directive does indeed ensure that transgender veterans will be treated with dignity and respect.

I will not show the entire directive, because it may not be the final version. It has three pages total, with one page of definitions, a half page of references and the rest covering what the VA can and cannot do for transgender veterans. The language we will show you is from the draft of the directive we sent to the VHA and may have some tweaking before they release it. Sounds like we stepped into the ENDA territory.

Here are some of the important parts as they appeared in the revised draft:

– This directive does not apply to patients who receive benefits under the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA).
– A diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is not a pre-condition for receiving care consistent with the Veteran’s self-identified gender.
– All staff, including medical and administrative staff, are required to treat as confidential any information about a patient’s transgender status or any treatment related to a patient’s gender transition, unless the patient has given permission to share this information.
– Diversity awareness training, (which educates staff on providing unbiased, respectful care to ALL Veterans) is available to supervisors and employees.

The following has to be said in bold capital letters for the good of those who will try to spread lies about this new directive. “THE DIRECTIVE SAYS THAT THE VA WILL NOT, DOES NOT AND CANNOT COVER SEX REASSIGNMENT/GENDER RECONSTRUCTION SURGERY.” That particular restriction is written into the Public Law that the VA has to follow in order to provide health care for veterans. It cannot be overridden by a simple directive change. However, it might be affected by other recent federal rulings. We’ll have to see.

As I stated, the VHA received our changes in July. They told us we would see it come out in August . . . then October . . . then February . . . and here it is May, a year from when we started making the changes, and still no directive.

To those LGBT people fighting for the repeal of DADT and the passage of ENDA, does this sound familiar? The difference is that this is not something Congress has to vote on. It’s a directive that can be implemented in a heartbeat and not a law that takes time to pass the House and the Senate. What is with the Obama Administration’s VHA when they hold back a simple directive that will instantly help part of the veteran community? I’ll let the conspiracy theorists play with that one. All we ask is to stop sitting on this and put it out to the VA medical facilities. It that so hard?

Since July of last year, when the VA had this directive in their hands, several transgender veterans have contacted TAVA saying that they had been treated badly at the VA, so we know that it could have prevented this if it had been introduced. And, even if these issues happen after implementation of the directive, the veterans would finally have it in hand to give them more clout when talking to the VA Patient Advocate. What is holding up the process? Who in the Administration is preventing this from coming out?

TAVA hasn’t been sitting idle since July. We have faxed a letter to the current DVA Secretary, retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki and his secretary assured us he read it. Nothing happened. In early March, I personally presented the problem to the top administrator for Rep Joe Sestak, a retired Admiral and a champion for veterans’ rights, and Rep Sestak read the information. Sestak then sent me a letter saying he was “investigating and will respond soon.” Since then, he entered the final stages of a Senate race to replace Senator Arlen Specter and won. We hope to hear from him soon.

Other people have spoken to Representatives and Senators on our behalf, including NCTE, but still nothing happens. We wait for people to do the right thing, while transgender veterans have their basic health care denied. This issue will probably not cause a blip on the LGBT radar, and no one will be handcuffing themselves to the front doors of the DVA building. The transgender veterans will have to go it alone on this, as they have all along. The directive will eventually come out. We just hope it’ll be sooner than later.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote “Transgender Veterans articles and navigating the VA system,” about the two wonderful articles written by Carol Ann Alaimo of the Arizona Daily Star and my attempt to find a person in the VA to speak with about our issues. The article appeared on two blogs, The Bilerico Project, and Trans Universe. It seems our efforts to speak with someone of authority paid off. On Friday, March 6, Angela Brightfeather and I spoke with a female doctor in a high position in the VA. I will not reveal her name or title at this time, nor will I provide any specifics of what she said, because this is an ongoing process.

Angela and I prepared to ask certain question, but as many of you may know, it doesn’t always work as planned. When we connected with the doctor, she had brought in another doctor to speak with us. We quickly discovered that both women had extensive experiences with transgender people in their days working in the field for the VA. They actually volunteered to be the first ones in the VA to speak with us.

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One of the first issues we talked about had to do with the discrimination transgender veterans get when trying to receive basic services and the disrespect they get when they do receive services. Our request was to have the VA send out a directive/letter to the VA administrators, informing them that they cannot turn away qualified transgender veterans and that they should receive the same respect as other veterans.

The doctors pointed out that even with a letter being sent out, without the proper training, the disrespect could continue. We understood this, but pointed out that if a letter existed, then our people could take a copy of it to the Patient Advocate in the facility and use it to give their complaint more clout. The doctor saw that our idea could help and stated that she would have the appropriate department contact us on the content of the letter.

We briefly brought up that in some cases, the VA refused to change a transgender veteran’s documentation, even after a legal name and gender change. The doctor stated that this practice is not only wrong, but legally wrong. The same department who will be able to help us on the discrimination issue will also be able to address this one.

The doctor stated that she would be attending various Patient Advocate training sessions and she plans on training them on our issues. TAVA will be assisting them when possible. We informed her that she can also get help in training from the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE.) What it appears they will need is the basic Transgender 101 training, something we have all done many times. Both NCTE and IFGE now have wonderful knowledge on our veterans’ issues.

Then the conversation turned to the policies that for so long have hindered transgender veterans from receiving the medically necessary treatment for their situation. Angela and I discovered that even though these are policies and not laws, the ability to change them will be a long and tedious process that could take years. After hearing how the process will work, I came to the conclusion that passing a fully inclusive ENDA will be far easier then wading through the massive bureaucracy of the VA system.

TAVA may soon come away with a small win in this long struggle for equality for our transgender veterans if we get the letter we are looking for. The bigger win will be a process that only has few people willing to spend any time in resolving the problems, compared to millions who will be pushing for hate crimes and ENDA. Our organization has very little money to work on this and even less time to spend on it. No full-time lobbyist works for TAVA. No fundraising events or huge gala dinners loom in our future. All we have is the basics and grassroots activism. This maybe enough, but we could use some serious help in moving this process along, seeing how we are now inside the door. Sadly, there are too many deaf ears out there that this plea will fall on. We will keep everyone informed on our progress. It would be nice if this first step has given some of our veterans a glimmer of hope. It has me.

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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Some veterans seem to think that if we transitioned AFTER serving in the military that somehow gives the VA the right to deny us services. They brought up Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) as a way to justify this. The UCMJ and DADT only apply to those people who currently serve in the military and have nothing to with veterans or the VA. Talk about grasping at straws to justify discrimination and hate.

First Article: “Transgender vets a hidden population,” February 22, 2009.

In this article, Alaimo focused on the people she interviewed, one of them being a friend or mine, Erin Russ. She pointed out all of the problems Erin has encountered, problems we all have faced at one time or another. Here is a quote from Erin that made a strong point.

“This is something I think nobody wants to talk about,” said Russ, 52. “Transgender veterans basically make other people rethink their preconceived ideas of what a veteran is. We don’t just push the envelope — we crumple it up and throw it away.”

Alaimo follows with:

Mocked by strangers and often shortchanged by the veteran’s health-care system, these ex-troops say they get little of the respect accorded to those they served alongside.

She also sites a study titled “Transsexuals in the Military: Flight Into Hypermasculinity,” written in 1988 by Dr. George R. Brown, then an Air Force captain and psychiatrist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.  She also sites the Boston VA policy as being one of the most comprehensive documents from a VA facility in regards to transgender veterans.

One of the most compelling stories was that of Mick Andoso, a trans man who served 20 years and became a decorated Master Sgt. in the Air Force.  In 1994, Master Sgt. Brenda Weichelt was named one of the service’s top airmen for her work at the military’s Defense Language Institute in California.  Since then, Mick Andoso has had nothing but scorn and disrespect by many VA personnel.  Transgender veterans see this as typical treatment in our VA system.

Second Article: “VA reviewing policy against transsexual surgery,” February 23, 2009.

The second article had some interesting information from Alaimo, some of which has already been disseminated to our veterans, such as the Boston VA policy.  She interviewed Dr. Jillian Shipherd who actually created the policy in Boston.

Here is some of what Alaimo found in her research:

Officials at VA headquarters, given 10 business days to answer, said they couldn’t determine how many transgender patients are in the VA system nationwide.

 

Officials at the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System — Tucson’s veterans hospital — said 48 VA patients in Southern Arizona are transsexual or have been diagnosed at some point with “gender-identity disorder,” the medical term that covers such cases.

 

A national advocacy group (TAVA) estimates that about 300,000 active or retired military personnel are transgender, though experts say an accurate count is impossible because many live under the radar to escape social stigma. 

Alaimo then spoke with someone at the VA to ask them why the VA doesn’t follow the American Medical Association’s policy toward transsexual people.

“VA is in the process of rewriting its directive excluding gender-reassignment surgery and will be conducting a review of the evidence base on this issue,” VA spokesman Terry Jemison said. “The current policy may continue or may change, but our decision will be based on the available evidence, not on the AMA’s resolution.”

 

The American Medical Association said many surgeries that help transgender patients — such as removal of breasts, testicles or ovaries — are routinely covered for other patients for various medical reasons.

 

Denying such coverage to transgender people “represents discrimination based solely on a patient’s gender identity,” the doctors group said. 

What Jemison said hit us all like a rock.  The VA is actually reviewing the policy on gender reconstruction surgery?  This sounded like great news . . . until we realized that they have been reviewing the policy WITHOUT contacting any transgender person or organization.  Both TAVA and NCTE have not been made aware of this.

In order to find out who in the VA could be doing the review, I called the man whom Alaimo spoke with, Terry Jemison.  To find him, I had to call the main VA number in DC and they gave me his number.  I left him a voice message and the next day, Tuesday, 2/24/09, I got a call from him.  Jemison works in the Office of Public Affairs.

The first subject I brought up had to do with the statement he made to Alaimo when she pointed out to him that according to the TAVA survey of 2008, 10% of the transgender veterans who used the VA have at one time been turned away for being trans and 25 % have experienced disrespect by VA people.  Some of those stated that they had their medical records shown to people not involved in their case, a strict violation of The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, (HIPAA) Privacy Rule.  In the article, he stated:

Jemison, the national VA spokesman, said the VA “does not condone withholding delivery of routine medical care for transgender patients anywhere in our system.” 

At first, he said to me that those who have been turned away may not have been qualified for VA medical service.  I quickly pointed out the case of a 100% disabled trans man who got out on a Medical Discharge, went to the DC facility and was turned away, only to drive 60 miles north to the Baltimore VA and received treatment.  He couldn’t respond to that.  Then he gave me a toll-free number, 800-488-8244 for the Office of Patient Care Service, telling me that if anyone had a problem or were being disrespected, they needed to call that number.  As far as TAVA is concerned, the VA needs to address the issue overall rather than addressing it one person at a time.  It would make more sense to have a directive pertaining to our veterans.  But, our government never makes much sense.

Then I brought up the policy review and he said that the people doing the review would be in the same Office of Patient Care Services.  He stated that he would pass on my name and number to the people at that location and they will call me.  The Office of Public Affairs did not have the authority to change policy.

To see what I would get by dialing the toll-free number, I called to hear a series of options.  I could not determine what option our people had to use in order to file a complaint, but I could have missed it.

Not one to give up easily, I called Virginia Copland, the Secretary for the VA Secretary, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki.  She and I had spoken before on other issues, before Obama took office, so she gave me a couple of other phone numbers to try.  At one number the person worked in the VA Statistics Dept, which could not help me, but he gave me another number to try.  I then asked him if he would do a study on how many transgender people use the VA, but he didn’t seem interested.

I tried a number for the VA’s General Council and left my name and concerns with the receptionist there.  A few hours later, I received a call from Eric Raun, an attorney for the VA and we discussed the issues.  Raun had also spoken with Terry Jemison about this and stated that the people who would be revising the transgender veterans health policy work for the Veterans Health Administration and Jemison will have someone from there give me a call.  They happen to be the same people who can address the discrimination and disrespect problems facing transgender veterans.

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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Dr. Jeanne Scheper from The Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara coordinated the report and Dr. Bonnie Moradi, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida did the analyzing. Dr. Gary Gates, Senior Research Fellow at the Williams Institute, University of California acted as a consultant and provided guidance for survey. Professors Karl Bryant, PhD, of the State University of New York, New Paltz, NY and Kristen Schilt, PhD, of the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, wrote the White Paper report. Notice that four universities in various parts of the country contributed to the creation of this report.

The most troubling figure to come out of the survey was that 10% of transgender veterans, who currently use the VA, have at one time been turned away from receiving any service or medical help. I see this figure as being very disturbing. We served our country honorably and proudly and the VA medical benefits we earned should not be denied or diminished simply because of the direction our lives took after discharge from active duty.

Other figures and interesting information came from the report:

Job Discrimination:

“ . . . nearly one third of the survey participants reported having experienced some form of discrimination in the workplace, with approximately the same amount (31%) reporting that they believed they had not been hired for a job specifically because they were transgender. A full 15% reported that they had been fired from a job for being transgender (with 40% of those people having been fired more than once). Nearly 10% reported experiencing open, blatant discrimination from an employer or prospective employer; they were explicitly told that they were being fired (or not hired) because they were transgender.”

Violence:

“In addition to discrimination, this group reported a high percentage of experiences with interpersonal violence. 26% reported having been the victim of physical violence, and 16% reported having been raped.”

Transgender Service Members and the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy:

“A full 38% reported that when they were in the military, people suspected or directly asked if they were gay. In addition, 14% had been questioned by an officer about their sexual orientation. For younger respondents (aged 18-35), all of whom had served under DADT, this finding was even more pronounced: 61% reported that when they were in the military, people suspected or directly asked if they were gay; 20% had been questioned by an officer about their sexual orientation.”

What the survey also brought up was how disproportionate trans men are being targeted under DADT then their trans sisters.

“Such effects varied significantly by gender. Trans men were almost two times more likely to report they were suspected of being gay than trans women (72% vs. 37%). They were three times more likely than trans women to have been asked by an officer about their sexual orientation (33% vs. 11%).”

VA Medical Facility Experiences:

“. . . there were many reports of interpersonal discrimination, via lack of respect from VA doctors (22%), non-medical staff (21%), and nurses (13%). These cases of interpersonal discrimination ranged from what many veterans describe as “typical” – refusing to change to gender-appropriate pronouns, failure to use a new name consistently – to the extreme – refusing to look at transgender patients, referring to them in dismissive ways, refusing to treat them for general medical care. One FTM respondent noted, ‘I was told by a religious clerk that I should just go away because I was an insult to the brave real men who were there for treatment’. Another MTF respondent noted, ‘I am asked about my genitals and my plans for SRS regardless of whether or not it has relevance to my treatment’.”

And:

“ . . . one MTF respondent recounted the following experience: ‘A nurse pulled my partner out in the hall of the VA Hospital where I was an in-patient’ [and said], ‘You know that is really a man, don’t you’?”

There were several Implications and Recommendations that came out of this survey, involving all of the above areas of discussion. The one thing that appeared in that section was a section from the VA’s mission statement:

“We are dedicated to providing high quality, comprehensive health care to veterans in an environment that fosters trust, respect, commitment, compassion and excellence. We serve as a major resource for health services, education and research that benefit our patients, their families, the community, the network and the nation.”

As far as I’m concerned, the VA has a very long way to go to live up to that mission statement when it comes to this country’s transgender veterans.

Finally, the survey showed how transgender people are treated while they are serving this country. Many felt harassment and abuse by others and were investigated for being gay regardless of what sexual orientation was at the time. It shows that transgender service members can no longer be ignored in the discussion of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We are also a target under that failed policy and people pushing for its repeal need to realize that we have to be included.

In conclusion, I hope that this new document will help in our continuous struggles to become equally treated while serving in the military, equally treated while using the VA and considered equal citizens in the great country of ours. We served this country and we served proudly.

After three and a half months of dribbling out raw data for things such as job discrimination, violence and statistics associated with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Transgender Veterans Survey Report has now been published. You can read the entire report on the Transgender American Veterans Association web site. Some of the information I will present here has been seen before, while other statistics will be revealed for the first time.

The idea for the survey was presented to the TAVA Board in mid November of 2007 and after creating 117 questions, the Board approved the survey and we placed it on SurveyMonkey.com, a web site that has an excellent reputation with those who conduct surveys. The survey started on December 13, 2007 and ended on May 1, 2008. Between May and August, the Palm Center located a person to analyze the data and then located two people who could write the report. Even thought it took three and a half months for the Palm Center to finish the report, this is record time compared to how long this process normally takes.

Again, the full report can be read at Transgender American Veterans Association web site.

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.  

This article is not to go over the history and accomplishments of TAVA. This article is to show how the rest of the transgender community can benefit from its veteran members and to show that by fighting to help transgender veterans, we will help all of the transgender community.

There are hundreds of stories where transgender people have been treated badly when lobbying politicians, or by the staff members of politicians. But, many transgender veterans have seen a complete reversal of attitude when they announced that they were also veterans. This is something both Angela and I knew from the very beginning, when we first started working on this issue. They can give us all the grief they want for being a transgender person, but no politician wants to be known as disrespecting veterans, regardless of who they are. That’s a line none dare cross, because they don’t want that kind of bad PR.

Once in the politician’s office, playing the veteran card can get a lot accomplished, especially after the VA scandal of 2007. In regards to employment discrimination, I have said things like, “I spent eight years in the Navy, patrolling underwater in a submarine, protecting this country and the rights of the people in this country. I am now being told that I don’t get to have those same rights. Why?” I’ve put some politicians on the spot . . . at least those who have a heart. Yes, it’s rare, but some actually do have a heart.

There are a variety of issues facing transgender veterans in the VA medical facilities. An extensive survey is now underway by TAVA that is already revealing some startling facts. So far, we are seeing that nearly 6% of those who have taken the survey and have used the VA have been turned away from a VA facility for being transgender. The survey is also showing that 16% have been discriminated or disrespected by people at the VA, including doctors and nurses.

The VA has just two words in their policy that they used to justify their poor treatment of transgender veterans. They are, “Gender Alteration.” The VA will not treat anything they consider having to do with “Gender Alteration.” Since this is a rather vague term, then various facilities can interpret it to mean anything they want. This is why some transgender veterans get decent treatment, while others do not.

Those of us working for better treatment of transgender veterans in the VA see another benefit that can help the rest of the community. Getting the VA to officially adapt the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) policies and procedures could go a long way to help convince various companies to cover transgender health issues in their insurance. It makes it a lot easier to convince your company to cover transgender health issues if you can point to the VA and say, “See, the government feels this is important.” Part of the plan to convince the VA to drop the words “Gender Alteration” is to use companies who already cover transgender health well as examples.There are a few places in the country where the VA does a good job in helping the transgender veterans get the best coverage they can offer. These are examples that rest of the VA facilities should copy. We just hope that the VA doesn’t decide to use the worse facilities as models for treating transgender veterans. That’s a fear we have had since starting TAVA five years ago.The biggest issue we will have to face maybe one that the future TAVA board members will get to tackle. That is getting the VA to cover Sex/Gender Reassignment Surgery (SRS or GRS.) For Male-to-Females, that would entail genital surgery. For Female-to-Males, this could either be top surgery, a hysterectomy, or both. In this current political climate, it has been hard to get Congress to protect transgender people from employment discrimination or add them to hate crimes legislation. How hard do you think it would be to convince the government to pay for surgery?When it comes to having the VA cover SRS/GRS, there are differences of opinion within the transgender veteran community. Some want the VA to cover the cost of the surgery and want TAVA to advocate for that along with all of the other issues transgender veterans face. Others feel that we should work to resolve all the other issues first before taking on this one. This is a prime example where incrementalism is warranted. I have not seen very many transgender veterans who don’t want the VA to pay for surgery, but we tend to disagree on how to reach that goal.

Over the last few years, we have seen a major increase in how the transgender community honors its military veterans. We can be a useful tool in opening doors for the community, convince the need for health care coverage for transgender people and to show that we are a community who needs to be covered in all forms of federal and state legislation. After all, there have been transgender people in every war this country fought. It is about time this country finally recognizes us for our dedication in securing the freedoms we all hold so dearly. I hope I live to see that day.