No Gender November №7: Support
The Air Force vet fighting to re-win equal rights for US transgender troops.
Note: This is part of the November 2018 “No Gender November” portrait series on my 6yo’s lunch notes. Follow along and learn non-binary with me!
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Meet my friend Nicole. She’s an Iraq war vet with a hell of a lot of fight in her. In her civilian life she’s a youth advocate, board member of Transforming Families MN and an outspoken leader in equal rights activism. She got here by challenging the identity she was assigned and fighting to find herself through introspection and exploration.
In her own words “I grew up being what everyone wanted me to be. I didn’t have my own identity. I built my identity based off of how people told me I should behave. I didn’t get it. I thought what does it mean to be a man and why don’t I get it? This whole gender thing is so simple to everybody and I just don’t get it. It’s so natural to everybody, why don’t I get it?”
Coming from a large, Evangelical family, gender and sexuality were black and white. She never had a language to understand who she was, it was just an unnamable femininity that felt completely out of place. That feeling followed and even pushed her to the Air Force where, ironically, she specialized in Arabic linguistics. As she put it “Part of my motivation to join the military was to be the strongest man I could be because I’m supposed to be a man. It would be an escape from the lingering thought of femininity. I was driven to be a man’s man. I thought I could get a hold of and embrace that masculine culture in the military.”
She did amazing work in Iraq that she’s very proud of. None of that work wound up cementing an identity as a man. She fought for our country, she fought terrorism and she continued fighting against her identity. As representation, awareness and ultimately acceptance of Transgender identity seeped deeper into US culture, she found the language she needed to name this part of herself and community that enabled her to be who she has always been. Though she’s no longer fighting herself, that fire still burns.
Nicole’s red headed fury is aimed at improving the lives of transgender youth, at raising a generation of kids who know themselves, know their friends and don’t care about established notions of gender. And, this veteran’s day she fights to uphold the support for transgender troops who give up everything to fight for this country.
