Transgender vets in Tucson still hidden population

By CAROL ANN ALAIMO (Published February 28, 2009)
TUCSON, Ariz. — In a city that prides itself on respect for military veterans, scorn is a fact of life for former Army captain Erin Russ.
Neighbors gawk when she takes out the trash. Even simple errands can be a source of angst for Russ, who was born a man but now lives as a woman.
Decades after former soldier Christine Jorgensen stunned 1950s America by undergoing a sex change, a small army of veterans in similar straits has quietly sprung up in Tucson and around the country.
Officially, the Pentagon bans transsexuals - those who believe they were born with the wrong male or female parts - from serving. Yet some research suggests there may be a higher prevalence in the military than in society at large. That's because some young men, conflicted over their feminine feelings, enlist to try to escape them, the research found. Advocates refer to these former troops as "invisible" veterans.
"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."
Mocked by strangers and often shortchanged by the veterans health care system, these ex-troops say they get little of the respect accorded to those they served alongside.
No one knows for sure how many veterans are affected by "gender identity disorder," which the American Medical Association calls "a serious medical condition ... which causes intense emotional pain and suffering."
The Southern Arizona VA Health Care System sees close to 50 former troops who are transsexual or are diagnosed with gender disorder, many of them in various states of transition from their birth sex. And there may be dozens more who aren't registered for care with the VA, local advocates say.
A national group, the Transgender American Veterans Association, estimates that somewhere around 300,000 transgender people have served, or now serve, in the U.S. military. That's roughly 1 percent of the country's nearly 27 million veterans and 2.2 million active-duty and reserve troops.
Transgender people aren't eligible to serve because they fall under a policy that excludes those with "learning, psychiatric and behavioral disorders," said Douglas Smith, a spokesman for U.S. Army recruiting command.
A study titled "Transsexuals in the Military: Flight Into Hypermasculinity" - a classic still cited in college texts on gender issues - was written in 1988 by Dr. George R. Brown, then an Air Force captain and psychiatrist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Brown found it curious that in a three-year period at the Midwestern base, he came across 11 men - eight current and former military, the rest civilians such as Defense Department staffers - all seeking treatment to become women. Each veteran told him nearly the same thing: He had enlisted hoping to "become a real man."
Brown's findings ring true for Dr. Jennifer Vanderleest, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - one of the few in the country where future doctors are trained on the medical needs of transgender patients.
Vanderleest has treated more than 100 transgender people in Tucson, including many veterans who "are very proud of their military service," she said. Many wait decades before seeking medical help, she said.
"How can you process what is going on with you internally when you are operating in a world where you can't be who you are?" she said.
Transgender people often sense their predicaments at a young age, Vanderleest said. That's how it was for Russ, the former Army captain who has been living full time as a female since 2001. Commissioned as an Army officer in 1979, Russ served a total of 11 years in the reserves and on active duty, and planned to stay on until retirement. But in 1990, Russ said, "my career came to a screeching halt."
While stationed at Fort Wainwright in Alaska, the captain, off-duty and dressed as a woman, was stopped by civilian police for a driving violation.
The traffic cop "wrote a page-long report on how I was dressed and gave a copy to the military," Russ said. "On Monday morning, I was called into the commander's office and told I was going to be court-martialed for conduct unbecoming an officer."
Russ was allowed to resign honorably and, after a painful divorce, came to Tucson a few years later.
"At that point, I was thinking, 'I can't go on like this.'"
So she grew her hair long and started going to the veterans hospital for hormone treatments, which softened her skin and swelled her breasts. "People usually don't change until the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of changing," Russ said. "For me, the pain of staying the same was overwhelming."
Mick Andoso of Tucson, now a bearded construction inspector, kept his secret for 20 years as a woman in the Air Force. Andoso, 51, retired in 1995 as a first sergeant. Back then, Andoso's name was Master Sgt. Brenda Weichelt - who in 1994 was named one of the service's top airmen for her work at the military's Defense Language Institute in California.
A few years ago, after legally changing his name and gender, he said he went to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to ask for a new photo ID card to access base services for retirees. He showed a clerk a copy of his court order. The D-M staffer said the Air Force doesn't allow gender changes, Andoso recalled.
"He was really rude. I got the impression he was disgusted by me."
Andoso's run-in is not surprising, said Monica Helms, a Vietnam-era Navy submariner and president of the Transgender American Veterans Association.
Transgender veterans often are disrespected at military bases, in the VA system and elsewhere in a society that professes to honor those who have served their nation, she said.
"Transgender people have fought in every war, shedding the same red American blood as every other person who has protected this nation," Helms said.