 |
| Providing for the personal growth and fulfillment of those whose lives are affected by crossdressing |
|
June 2011
Newsletter |
September 2011
CONTENTS
Civil War Amazons - Abigail Grace (Just click on the title above to go directly to an article.) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
By Abigail This year marks the sesquicentennial of the start of the American Civil War. From April, 2011, until April, 2015, we shall see and hear much about the war. It has been called the War of Secession, the Brothers’ War, the War Between the States and the War of the Rebellion. Whatever one calls it, I believe that more than anything else, it is THE defining American experience. It changed the way Americans saw themselves and the way that Europeans saw us. It changed us from “the United States are” to “the United States is.” It was about the nature of the federal union, about states’ rights, about economic development, about the Constitution and, I strongly believe, more than anything else, about race and citizenship and civil rights. The Civil War cost the nation in many ways. The federal government and the Confederacy spent almost $7,000,000,000 combined (in 1860 U S dollars) to fight the war. This is more than $189,000,000,000 in today’s dollars. Additionally the United Sates paid millions of dollars in veterans benefits until well into the twentieth century. Confederate veterans were disqualified from such benefits. However, some Southern states paid disabled veterans what they could manage with the money at hand. Union forces suffered 140,414 deaths in combat; Confederate forces at least 72,524 combat deaths. Between the two sides, in excess of 300,000 soldiers and sailors died of disease, accidents and other causes. About 282,000 Union fighters suffered wounds in combat, the Confederacy, probably about 175,000 wounded. Some historians estimate that by December, 1865, 1 of every 4 white men in the Confederacy were dead or disabled. No one knows for certain how many civilians, particularly in the South, were killed. Total number of dead soldiers and sailors, by best estimates, amounted to 1.98% of the total 1860 population. Compare that with World War Two American dead which amounted to 0.3% of the total 1940 population. The Civil War battles occurred in more than 10,000 locations. However, almost 40% of these were fought in Virginia and Tennessee. In the midst of all of this, we find some interesting stories of cross-dressing. Women dressing as men–for purposes of battle. Consider the following: The tombstone, a plain silver-grey granite, has in front of it, an American flag & a little round ‘Grand Army of the Republic’ marker indicating the grave of a Civil war veteran. This veteran’s grave in the tiny town of Saunemin, Illinois tells in simple words, an amazing story: Albert D. J. Cashier
Cashier was the shortest soldier in the 95th Illinois. In one of the few existing photographs of Cashier taken during the war, a very careful observer can faintly detect the outline of breasts under the uniform. But an observer has to be looking for it. In 1862 the military was not. Hodgers was born in Clogher Head, Ireland around Christmas day, 1843, the child of Sallie and Patrick Hodgers. How and when the family moved to the United States is not clear. By 1862, Hodgers was living in Belvedere, Illinois. At 19, Jennie was eager to serve. Dressed in men’s clothing, the short, slim Hodgers stepped into the recruiting office and volunteered for military service. Reading and writing were not required of volunteers and so after marking an “X” on the enlistment papers and passing a cursory pre-induction physical examination, merely a quick look at the eyes and ears with no undressing or stripping to the waist, Jennie Hodgers transformed into Albert D. J. Cashier. Later, he said, “Lots of boys enlisted under the wrong name, so did I. The country needed men, and I wanted excitement.”
Rodney Davis, from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, knew all about the exceptional story of Albert Cashier. In a strange twist of fate he discovered that his own great-grandfather was the commanding non-commissioned officer to Albert Cashier. “C. W. Ives was Cashier’s first sergeant so they got to know each other rather well. Albert managed to survive the war without arousing undue suspicion as to his gender identity. Accounts by comrades indicate that the other soldiers just assumed he was small and somewhat shy. One wrote: ‘He was of very retiring disposition and did not take part in any of the games. He would sit around and watch, but would not take part. He had very small hands and feet. He was the smallest man in the company.’” Between September of 1862 and August of 1865, the 95th Illinois traveled over 9,000 miles, as part of the Army of the Tennessee under Ulysses S. Grant, later under William Tecumseh Sherman and yet later under O. O Howard. The regiment took part in the bloody siege at Vicksburg, the Red River Campaign, and the fierce combat at Guntown, Mississippi where they suffered heavy casualties. Cashier took part in more than 40 skirmishes and battles. While on a skirmishing expedition during the Vicksburg campaign, Albert Cashier was captured by rebels. He was fearless. He seized a gun from a guard, knocked the man down and made it back to the Union lines unharmed. Cashier served with the regiment through the war until August, 1865, when all the soldiers were mustered out. When the 95th Illinois were finally discharged, they were welcomed home as heroes and honored at a public reception. Each man then went his own way and Albert, a quiet bachelor, finally settled down in Saunemin in 1869. There he held a variety of jobs over the next 40 years: janitor of the church, farm hand, town lamplighter, handyman -- no one ever the wiser. He voted in the presidential elections before Illinois gave women the right to vote and before the 19th Amendment became a part of the U. S. Constitution in 1920, five years after his death. In November 1910, Cashier was hit by a car and broke his leg. A physician discovered his secret in the hospital, but agreed to remain quiet. On May 5, 1911, Cashier was moved to the Soldier and Sailors home in Quincy, Illinois. He lived there until his mind deteriorated and he became confused and noisy. He was deemed insane and moved to the Watertown State Hospital in March 1913. Attendants there discovered his sex when they attempted to give him a bath. He was placed in the women’s ward and forced to wear skirts. It was so devastating to him that he would pin the skirt together between the legs to make them look like pants. When he did that, the outfit was awkward and he fell. An injury from the fall resulted in an infection. That was the cause of the death. When the asylum discovered a woman’s body in those trousers, the U.S. Pension Bureau launched a fraud investigation. It seemed impossible that a frail little woman drawing a veteran’s pension could actually have fought throughout the Civil War. Fortunately, several former comrades successfully rallied to Cashier’s defense and he retained his benefits. Professor Davis says his great-grandfather was one of several former comrades who successfully rallied to Cashier’s defense later in life. The status as a Union Army veteran, to them, trumped gender identity. Cashier demonstrated that he was as good as they were, as brave as they were, as effective a soldier. A woman’s body in those clothes was obviously worthy of remark, but not anything that made them turn away. Cashier had been in service from the beginning to the end. He stuck it out. Cashier died on October 10, 1915. In the end, Cashier did get rid of that dreaded skirt. Cashier’s comrades made sure that he was buried in the soldier’s uniform which he had neatly kept for years, and that he received a proper military funeral, honor guard, rifle salute and taps. His tombstone was inscribed “Albert D. J. Cashier, Co. G, 95 Ill. Infantry” It took W. J. Singleton, executor of Cashier's estate, nine years to track Cashier's identity back to Jennie Hodgers. None of the would-be heirs proved convincing, and the estate of $418.46 [worth over $8600 today] was deposited in the Adams County, Illinois, treasury. In the 1970s, a second tombstone, inscribed with both of his names, was placed beside his first. Ms. Deanne Blanton, co-author of They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War, observed that a private in the Union Army made $13 a month, easily double what a woman would make as a laundress, a seamstress or a house maid. At that time, women could not vote. Most depended on men to survive. In return, women were to devote their time and talents entirely to husbands, children and their extended families. Once women were cross-dressed and in the military, earning more money and spending their money as they saw fit, they greatly enjoyed the freedom that came with being perceived as a man. The women who went to war, who disguised themselves as men and carried a gun, were overwhelmingly working-class women, immigrant women, poor women, both urban women and farm workers. Hodgers was part of this group, an immigrant from Ireland, who couldn’t read or write. The women soldiers easily concealed their gender in order to fulfill their desire to fight. Two Union soldiers under General Philip Sheridan’s command, one a teamster and the other a private in a cavalry regiment, became drunk and fell into a river during a scuffle. The soldiers who rescued the pair discovered, in the process of resuscitating them, that both were women. Sheridan personally interviewed the two and later described the woman teamster as coarse and the “she-dragoon” as rather attractive, even with her unfeminine suntan. He did not state their real names, aliases, or regiments. For the most part, women were recognized after they had received serious wounds or died. Mary Galloway was wounded in the chest during the Battle of Antietam. Clara Barton, attending to the wound, discovered the gender of the soft-faced “boy” and coaxed her into revealing her true identity and going home after recuperation. One anonymous woman wearing the uniform of a Confederate private was found dead on the Gettysburg battlefield. It is likely she died participating in Pickett's fateful charge on July 3rd.. In 1934, a grave sight found on the outskirts of Shiloh National Military Park revealed the bones of nine Union soldiers. One of the skeletons, with a minie-ball in the bony remains, was female. The identities of these two dead women are lost to posterity. Another whom we do know about was Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841?--September 5, 1898), a Canadian-born woman who lived to be about 56 or 57 and is known for serving with the Union Army. She was born in New Brunswick, Canada, and left home after her abusive father attempted to force her to marry a man she did not love. She worked for a time in New Brunswick selling Bibles but still afraid of being found by her father, she fled to the United States in 1856 where she settled in Flint, Michigan.
During the Civil War, she enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Infantry, disguised as a man named Franklin (“Frank”) Thompson. He first served as a male nurse, participating in several campaigns, including the First Battle of Bull Run. As Frank Thompson, he also served as a spy, occasionally disguising himself as an African American or a woman, or sometimes both. At one point, she disguised herself as an Irish peddler named Bridget O'Shea. The military career of Frank Thompson came to an end when he contracted malaria. Unable to go to the military hospital because he would be revealed as a woman, Frank “left” the army and checked into a private hospital, intending to return to military life once recuperated. (He didn’t think of his leaving as desertion).When she was better, however, she saw posters listing Frank Thompson as a deserter. Rather than return to the army as a man, she decided to serve as a female nurse at a Washington, D.C. hospital for wounded soldiers run by the Sanitary Commission. After the war under the pen name “S. E. Edmonds” she wrote Nurse and Spy in the Union Army. It was a huge success, selling in excess of 175,000 copies. In 1867, she married a Mr L. H. Seelye, a Canadian carpenter with whom she had three children; one of them she named Fredrich Seelye. In 1886 she received a U S government pension of $12 a month, rewarding her military service. Edmonds died on September 5, 1898.
A friend of mine, a brilliant historian and herself a Civil War re-enactor, tells me that over 700 women served, at least 250 wearing Confederate grey and at least 450 wearing Union blue. Those Amazons make me feel proud to have such “brothers.”
Submitted By Mary Lee http://www.va.gov/vhapublications/ViewPublication.asp?pub_ID=2416 Department of Veterans Affairs VHA DIRECTIVE 2011-024 June 9, 2011 PROVIDING HEALTH CARE FOR TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX VETERANS 1. PURPOSE: This Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Directive establishes policy regarding the respectful delivery of health care to transgender and intersex Veterans who are enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system or are otherwise eligible for VA care. 2. BACKGROUND: In accordance with the medical benefits package (title 38 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Section 17.38), VA provides care and treatment to Veterans that is compatible with generally accepted standards of medical practice and determined by appropriate health care professionals to promote, preserve, or restore the health of the individual.
(2) Gender. Gender refers to the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits that a society associates with male and female sex. (3) Transgender. Transgender is a term used to describe people whose gender identity (sense of themselves as male or female) or gender expression differs from that usually associated with their sex assigned at birth. (4) Sex Reassignment Surgery. Sex reassignment surgery includes any of a variety of surgical procedures (including vaginoplasty and breast augmentation in MTF transsexuals and mastectomy and phalloplasty in FTM transsexuals) done simultaneously or sequentially with the explicit goal of transitioning from one gender to another. This term includes surgical revision of a previous sex reassignment surgery for cosmetic purposes. NOTE: This term does not apply to non-surgical therapy (e.g., hormone therapy, mental health care, etc.) or Intersex Veterans in need of surgery to correct inborn conditions related to reproductive or sexual anatomy or to correct a functional defect. (5) Gender Identity Disorder (GID). GID is a conflict between a person’s physical sex and the gender with which the person identifies. (6) Intersex. Intersex individuals are born with reproductive or sexual anatomy and/or chromosome pattern that doesn’t seem to fit typical definitions of male or female. People with intersex conditions are often assigned male or female gender by others at birth (e.g., parents), although the individual may or may not later identify with the assigned gender. 3. POLICY: It is VHA policy that medically necessary care is provided to enrolled or otherwise eligible intersex and transgender Veterans, including hormonal therapy, mental health care, preoperative evaluation, and medically necessary post-operative and long-term care following sex reassignment surgery. Sex reassignment surgery cannot be performed or funded by VHA or VA. 4. ACTION (1) Transgender patients and intersex individuals are provided all care included in VA’s medical benefits package, including, but not limited to: hormonal therapy, mental health care, preoperative evaluation, and medically necessary post-operative and long-term care following sex reassignment surgery to the extent that the appropriate health care professional determines that the care is needed to promote, preserve, or restore the health of the individual and is in accord with generally-accepted standards of medical practice: (2) All other health services are provided to transgender Veterans without discrimination in a manner consistent with care and management of all Veteran patients. (3) All staff, including medical and administrative staff, are required to treat as confidential any information about a patient’s transgender status or any treatment related to a patient’s gender transition, unless the patient has given permission to share this information. (4) Mandated diversity awareness is maintained and a zero-tolerance standard for harassment of any kind. 5. REFERENCES 7. RESCISSIONS. None. This VHA Directive expires November 30, 2012. Robert A. Petzel, M.D. DISTRIBUTION:
By Michelle P I am what I am, I’m not sure why. I have discovered a part of myself that I have always known existed. I am a cross-dresser. This has been a complex issue for me. It is difficult to explain. I have always felt that something was different about me. My gender dysphoria was formed when I became aware that I did not act or match behaviors that other people expected of me. As I grew up, I thought of myself as not being a “total boy”. I liked girl’s things. I liked girl’s clothes. I saw that pretty girls were always complimented on their pretty clothes. Why couldn’t I be pretty as well? I found myself to be jealous of the pretty girls. I wished I could be one of them. It was the 70’s so I could grow my hair long. I enjoyed fashion and clothes. I still harbored the desire to be more feminine. I would dress and apply make up, then stare in the mirror. I dressed with a strong subconscious urge that I did not understand. It was surreal. I was always glad that I dressed. It felt great. It felt like something had popped right out of my soul, a rush of revelation. It was good to “get it out”. Though I thought, “Please don’t let me get caught”. I realize that cross-dressing is a matter of perceptions. Self perception is very important. The perceptions of others are crucial as well. Cross dressing is a public experience. I think that the perceptions of others are necessary for a cross-dresser’s experience of happiness and self fulfillment. Many cross-dressers have asked themselves, “Am I really transgendered or do I just want to be pretty?” Cross-dressers need to express both sides of their personality and gender identity. I think that the male cross-dresser eventually MUST meet the world as a female or risk depression and psychological problems. Alpha-Omega Society is designed to facilitate and encourage “the first step out of the closet”. It is an organization for cross-dressers and their wives and families. When I came out to my wife, she was confused and concerned for our future as a married couple. She wants me to be her husband, to be the man she married. I also need to be Michelle. AO is a place where I can be Michelle with my wife. A room full of supportive cross-dressers and wives is very uplifting. The support and under-standing of other people is crucial for a cross-dresser and his significant other. At AO monthly meetings, I can be both of me. All of my life, I was coerced and forced to live in a gender box where I was only allowed to wear boy’s clothes and do boy things; to be a man and only that. I was forced by our culture to put a lid on my femininity. At AO I have a chance to be Michelle. It feels good to be at meetings. It is an opportunity to open up and express my feminine side. A meeting is exhilarating and an immense relief. Join Alpha Omega! I am a cross dresser. My friends at Alpha Omega help me feel good about it.
By Ginger On Saturday August 27th Suzanne Burke and I volunteered for the 18th Annual Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Gala Dinner, a fund raising event for the organization. The HRC is a diverse, hard-working volunteer group of individuals from throughout the community responsible for fundraising and growing the membership for the Human Rights Campaign in Greater Cleveland, Northern Ohio and at the national level. They are an active part of the advances the LGBT community is making, including issues such as same-sex marriage, Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, workplace equality and more. A little background noise that I have been hearing lately is that the HRC is making amends to the transgender community for a misstep in 2007 that had the HRC supporting an Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that was not trans-inclusive. At the time, the HRC believed that this “one time exception” would advance inclusive legislation and they would come back to get the transfolks that were left at the curb at a later date. This is just one example of differences in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. Each of these segments of the community has differences and certainly the difficulties of the homosexual are different than that of the transgendered. It can also be said that the transgender community itself has its differences. Personally, I try not to get caught up in the drama of it all. Suzanne and I worked along side Gay and Lesbian people in support of this event and I intend to help out again. It becomes a little tougher (although not impossible) for people to ignore you if you’re working together, along side of each other. I’ve said before that I like to get out and put a face to crossdressing. Were we noticed? Yes, we were, but there was no drama. I was happy to see that Suzanne and I were scheduled to work the reception table. Suzanne was front and center as 600 guests walked through the door at Cleveland State’s Wolstein Center. We could have easily been assigned to a behind-the-scenes job. When Senator Sherrod Brown came in he made a point to ask everyone’s name at the reception table and shake hands (“press the flesh” as it were). We continued our evening assisting in the silent auction area and helping auction winners check out. Chrissie Hynde was the keynote speaker at the event. It was really an exciting day. I had only feelings of inclusiveness at this event. A representative of the HRC is planning to be at our November AO meeting and I hope that they can elaborate a little on the past, offer us a vision for the future and talk about how we might be part of that future for being inclusive of HUMAN rights issues.
Submitted by Diane Frank who indicates that "PayPal knows its target demographics".
[To Top]
Group Information |
[