Exclusive: Transgender Veterans Petition the V.A. to Lift Blanket Ban on SurgeryKaty Steinmetz, 5/10/16
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,209198.msg1853969/topicseen.html#msg1853969About two decades after Dee Fulcher left the Marine Corps, in which she served for nearly a dozen years, she came out as a transgender woman. "From the age of probably six I knew that I was different," says the 54-year-old from Louisiana, who once worked on helicopter hydraulics systems. "Part of the reason I joined the service was I wanted to be the macho man everybody wanted me to be."
But now Fulcher is on another path and believes that her healthcare provider, the Department of Veterans Affairs, is holding her back because of a blanket prohibition on providing surgical care to transgender veterans, which she can't afford out of pocket. Along with a Army veteran who identifies as a transgender man, she is one of two named individuals seeking to have that rule rewritten through a petition submitted to the Department on May 9.
