Transgender veteran irate over disriminatory treatment by police
Posted on April 29, 2010
Filed Under 365Gay, News
Autumn Sandeen, a 20-year veteran of the Navy, wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama on Monday decrying the intense discrimination she was subjected to as a transgender woman after being arrested at the White House last week.
Sandeen (top left in the photo) and five former and current members of the armed forces, including Lt. Dan Choi, chained themselves to the White House on Friday as part of a GetEQUAL protest of the military’s discriminatory stance on gay service.
[1]
Sandeen wrote on Pam’s House Blend [2], “When I handcuffed myself to the White House fence, I wasn’t an impersonator wearing a costume; I was proudly wearing an appropriate uniform for my gender identity.”
Yet Park Police treated her as less than human. Several people, she wrote, overheard one U.S. Marshal say, “Did you see it? The nerve of it to be wearing a Navy uniform. Did you see the shim in the Navy Uniform?”
Her outrage is understandable. And her message is clear: “President Obama,” she wrote, ”your U.S. Marshal calling me ‘it’ and ‘the shim’ is the equivalent to calling an African-American by the N-word, or calling a gay-American by the anti-gay F-word, it is absolutely unacceptable.”
[1] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-dadt-protest-sandeen-top.jpg
[2] http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/15940/president-obama-a-transgender-veteran-is-not-impersonator-it-or-shim
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