After my surgery and later issuance of a new birth certificate last November, I wanted to apply to the Department of the Navy (DON) to change my recorded gender. The Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) keeps track of servicemembers and retirees genders, so I wanted, for gender affirmation and DOD acknowledgement, my gender reflected [...]

Today is the one-year anniversary of lesbian, gay, and bisexual servicemembers being able to serve openly. With that in mind, I’m reposting this essay from December 19, 2010 — an essay (entitled Dan Choi: I Am Somebody! Autumn Sandeen: I Am Still Not Recognized As Somebody.) where I highlighted how with repeal of Don’t Ask, [...]

Being a someone of trans history, I wasn’t born with the name Autumn. I was born Northridge, California in the late 1950′s, and my parents gave me the name of Stephen Mark Sandeen. These days I have a complicated relationship with that name: I like the name as a name, but the name just doesn’t [...]

This is the third of three parts on referring to what California calls my legal change of gender. This is an exercise in cathartic writing for me explaining not only why my change of gender, but also explaining why I haven’t been as prolific in my writing since last summer, nor as active in civil [...]

Today is Father’s Day. It’s also the tenth anniversary of my Dad’s passing on June 17, 2002. In 2002, Father’s Day fell on my brother’s and my birthday of June 16th — I being born on my brother’s fifth birthday. My Dad had been living with a particularly virulent form of prostrate cancer for about [...]

Quoting Jos at Feministing from her post entitled Netroots ’12: watch Blogging for Transgender Equality: I’m on a panel at Netroots Nation this morning about blogging on transgender issues, and you can watch the panel right here – it’s streaming live at 10:30am. The panelists are a badass group I’m proud to be a part [...]

“Carmen Sense” is a writer on the blog Gender Reality — a blog that has the subheader of It’s not about the clothes. She’s the one who wrote the post Stop both engines… that I responded to in the Pam’s House Blend post “Swift Boating” My Wear Of A Women’s US Navy Dress Blue Uniform [...]

Two of the things I’m proudest of in my activist life is participating in the GetEqual 6 and Get Equal 13 direct actions towards repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). I was very prepared to go protest in uniform as I owned a Navy Dress Blue US Navy uniform. I bought that women’s dress [...]

This is the second part of three parts on referring to what California calls my legal change of gender. This is an exercise in cathartic writing for me explaining not only why my change of gender, but also explaining why I haven’t been as prolific in my writing since last summer, nor as active in [...]

“I respect trans women as women, but I do not believe they are female.” “Females have a right to set a boundary and have it be respected.” “…Females have a right to be free of Males if they so choose. Trans women are male.” ~Cathy Brennan Today on May 22, 2012, I woke up here [...]