TRANSGENDER VET LEXICOGRAPHY by Denny Meyer |
This brief instruction is intended to assist you in properly and respectfully writing about transgender veterans and service members, whose lives and identity matter as much as your own.
What is a Transgender Veteran
Transgender veterans are patriotic
volunteers who have served in America’s armed
forces, putting themselves in harm’s way because
of a committed belief that it is their
individual duty to defend freedom; who also
happen to experience and identify themselves as
a gender variant from which they were assigned
at birth.
Our Right, Our Duty, Our Honor:
Transgender Americans are twice as likely to
volunteer to serve in our American armed forces
as any other group of Americans (NCTE). There
are roughly 134,000 transgender veterans and
15,500 actively serving transgender military
members, according to the
Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law.
They do not make this life changing and challenging choice easily, giving up their freedom and risking sacrificing their lives. They do it, mainly, because they want to serve their country.
Serving in America’s armed forces has been a choice since 1972. It is not an obligation, as such; it is voluntary; but for many who volunteer, it is a personal moral obligation that they feel more strongly even than their gender, racial, religious, ethnic or other personal identity. It is our identity as a patriotic American, plain and simple.
TRANSGENDER IDENTIFYING TERMINOLOGY
Being transgender is Not a choice, any more than
being black or white or Chinese or anything else
is. One does not ‘choose’ to become a member of
the world’s most misunderstood and discriminated
against minority on Earth. It is simply who you
are.
A ‘Transgender Woman’ is Not a person who was “born a male, who chose to become a woman.” A Transgender Woman is a person who was born a female, in a male body with male genitalia. A recent TV dramatization of this concept portrayed an older transgender woman telling her female partner that she was now going to be female full time. The partner asked something like, “So, you’re going to dress as a woman full time now?” The transwoman responded in the following vein, “I’ve been dressing as a man all my life, now I’m going to dress as who I am.”
A Transgender Man, or 'Transman,' is a person who was born male, in a female body with female genitalia. Interestingly, transmen were accepted in the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) before transwomen were, perhaps due to the mistaken norms of a masculine military environment. Our own American armed forces seem determined to avoid such erroneous cultural assumptions, learning from other nations that previously paved the way towards equality.
Transgendered
There is no such word as Transgendered. A lot
of pseudo intellectuals use it; but it sounds
like an affliction rather than who you are. If
you were an ordinary cisgender person who was
abducted by maniacal space alien fiends in a
flying saucer who forcibly changed your gender
against your will, then you might have been
rendered ‘transgendered.’ Other than describing
that highly unlikely possibility, there’s no use
for such a word. One is born transgender and
when your body undergoes transition, your true
gender is affirmed.
Transgender Veterans
Transgender veterans, in nearly all cases,
served in our American armed forces in the
gender which they were assigned at birth.
During their service, in uniform, in training,
in combat, in all situations, they had to suffer
suppressing who they were, at the risk of
extreme discrimination, dishonorable discharge,
or potentially fatal violence against them for
who they are. Their courage, therefore,
has been
extraordinary in their determination to serve.
Following completion of their patriotic service,
many finally found their way to fulfilling who
they are by transitioning.
Respecting the identity of patriotic veterans
As individuals and as organizational activists,
we strive to be respectful of people’s identity
as minorities, and as veterans; doing the same for transgender
veterans should be no more difficult. Its quite
simple. If a transgender veteran identifies as
a woman, she is referred to as ‘she.’ If he
identifies as a man, he’s referred to as ‘he.’
They are Not “formerly members of the opposite
sex.” If you need to qualify and clarify
what you want to say, be sure to ask yourself if that is
relevant; be sure to avoid stereotyping and disrespectful misstatements. So,
if absolutely necessary to the clarity, you could say something like, “She served
in the armed forces in the gender assigned to
her at birth, but was able to transition to her
actual gender after her service.”
What is
important in talking about a transgender
veteran
It’s pretty easy to hack out a sensationalist
piece about a soldier who served as a male and
then changed gender, delving into private
details about medical procedures and
psychological stress, attracting reader
attention with gripping anxiety inducing gross
descriptions of sex reassignment surgery and
such. It is far more challenging and
interesting to craft a story about the heroic
decision to serve as a patriotic member of our
armed forces, listing combat experiences,
leadership roles, medals and awards, the
challenges faced, and that soldier’s success in
doing all that. What is important is ‘who this
person is and what they have accomplished,’
rather than what’s between their legs. What is
important is identifying the person with the
name they prefer, rather than a salacious
reference to the name they do not prefer. If
you are writing about a hero, why disparage who
he or she is? Respect for the individual and
for service to our nation is the guiding
principal in what you should include in your
story about a transgender veteran.
Civil War service
Patriotic transgender Americans have served this
nation throughout our history. During the Civil
War / War Between the States, there were many
women who cross dressed as men in order to be
able to serve, on both the Confederate and Union
sides. It is important to realize their
courage. Considering the primitive crude
conditions, lack of privacy, lack of sanitary
facilities, and lack of sanitary products,
imagine the daily struggle simply to continue
hiding their physical gender! After the war,
some of those who survived found it convenient
to continue living as men due to the difference
in privileges and freedom in the late 1800s.
Most of those Civil War veterans were not
‘transgender’ as the term is understood today;
and yet, gender identity did not then and does
not now have anything to do with sexual
orientation. Hence, those who fought as men and
later lived their lives as male veterans were in
fact actualizing an identity that felt right for
them. It was not a matter of choice any more
than it is today, it was who they were. The
word may not have existed, but these were among
America’s first and bravest transgender
veterans.
Identity Harassment
Just imagine your own innocent ordinary identity
being stereotyped and or misunderstood. If,
for example, you’re proudly Irish but all your
life you have had to listen to those who assume
you are English because you happen to have a UK
passport and a regional British accent because
you grew up in Manchester. Or worse, you had to
be polite to people who give you Corned Beef and
Cabbage anytime you visit, even though you can’t
stand the smell of boiled cabbage. Or maybe
you’ve had to cope with a lifetime of
folks
who assume you are “Eye-Talian” because your
last name ends in ‘itti,’ even though you
happen to be Jewish of Georgian ancestry.
Or maybe you are a perfectly ordinary American
Catholic but all your life you’ve had to listen
to those who
tell you, as if they know better, that ‘you ARE
really Jewish because your name ‘sounds’
Jewish. It’s enough, after a while, to make you
bug your eyes out and scream! Does any of this
have any relevance to anyone besides closet
bigots?
Not all terminology and not all issues
relating to transgender identity are discussed
here as this is not intended to be a thorough
discussion. Rather it is an introductory
overview intended to enhance understanding of
our heroic patriotic veterans who happen to be
transgender Americans. Essentially, its
all just a matter of common sense in the current
era of increased awareness and respect for who
we are. The President of our nation,
Barack Obama, has by example led the way towards
evolving our culture to recognize and respect
every American's proud identity without
judgment, stereotyping, or presumptions.
Resource:
Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA)
is the nation's first leading source of advocacy
and information regarding transgender service
members and veterans, providing research,
support, and active consultation with the
Pentagon and Veterans Administration to improve
the rights and benefits of our patriotic
warriors.
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