Transgender veterans and navigating the VA system

[Shana A]

Transgender veterans and navigating the VA system
Filed by: Guest Blogger
February 26, 2009 1:00 PM

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/02/transgender_veterans_and_navigating_the.php

Editors' note: Monica Helms is the president of the Transgender American Veterans Association.

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 equal number of comments.