Was It Legal

If you know about veterans who are transgender and have fought for the rights of active, inactive and retired service members who are transgender then you likely know Autumn Sandeen, a retired Navy seaman (was a man during her service).

She has recently reported that she finally got the DOD to change the gender marker on her service record after over a year long fight with them for this change. Autumn has reported she has changed her birth certificate to reflect she is female after her "surgery."

Well, the problem is that her surgery, legal under California law now as irreversible sex change surgery, was only an orchiectomy, meaning just the removal of the testicles and not a vaginoplasty, does not comply with DOD regulations for the change of gender.

The DOD requires sex reassignment surgery (SRS) which is a vaginoplasty and what 46 states require to change the marker on birth certificates. Ohio and Tennessee don't allow changes on the birth certificates even after SRS and California and Illnois are the only states which uses the term "irreversible sex surgery" to allow changes.

This language is and will create more headaches for the state of California than they imagine when they made the change. Some transwomen have had lesser surgeries, not genital related, and had surgeon(s) call it gender surgery to get the birth certificate.

This creates what the laws were passed and are administered had not planned but opens the door to the issue of what defines being female under the law, namely, can a woman have a penis and still be legally defined as female?

But back to the issue at hand which is similar and the obvious question. Does this mean Autumn Sandeen deserve to have her gender marker changed when she hasn't completly complied with the DOD regulations defining the surgery for qualification?

The federal government agencies have different rules for gender markers. The State Department will issue a passport with the change if you submit affidavits from surgeons and physicians confirming completion irreversible and permanent sex change therapy.

They will also issue a one-year temporary passport for those in transiton if your surgery is within a year so you can travel without the gender conflict on documents. The Social Security Office requires the birth certificate to be changed first before their records.

The VA will change the marker to align with the patients on presentation of affidavits from medical professionals. But the DOD has, and with many tranwomen continues, to refuse to change the marker, until Autumn Sandeen got hers changed, but was it by hook or by crook?

Would the DOD reverse their ruling to change her record if they knew she didn't comply with the regulations for her surgery? I personally don't care because a former service record is really irrelevant in the normal lives of transwomen, it's more symbolic and not what the VA uses except to confirm service.

Is getting the DOD to change their policy on gender markers ok if the means used weren't exactly legal? Does it matter the person fighting for the change was more interested in their own issues than those of transwomen, wanted the attention to herself than anything using the transcommunity to get it?

When does the community recognize self-serving "leaders" of the transcommunity aren't for the community but for themselves and gains for the community are secondary. Their goals are self-promotion. So why does the transcommunity continue to support these people?