Trans In Politics

Another trans person is running for office, this time it is Kristin Beck who is running for a seat in the House.

Kristin Beck: The transgender former Navy SEAL running for the US Congress
The Independent
Ben Terris
June 23, 2015

The first thing Lawrence Shaw noticed about the congressional candidate in his driveway were the medals — a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star with a “V” for valor, and a Joint Service Commendation decoration — clipped to her blazer.

“Are you retired military?” Shaw asked, taking a break from his lawn work to walk over to the broad-shouldered woman.

“Yeah, 20 years, Navy SEAL,” Kristin Beck said. She brushed back her long blond hair and showed him the silver pendant on her necklace, an eagle clutching a trident, anchor and pistol.

“Wow, I didn’t know there was a woman SEAL. That’s amazing,” said Shaw, a retired Army colonel.

“I’m the first one,” Beck said. What she didn’t say was that at the time of her service, she was Christopher Beck.

She didn’t think she needed to mention it. Two years ago, Beck publicly came out as a woman, but by her account she still “looks like a dude in a dress.” Even on a day when she was wearing jeans and a black jacket with white trim.

She will have a hard time defeating the second-most-powerful Democrat in the House of Representatives and making it even tougher she doesn’t have the backing of the party. But she is not shy of battles.

She didn’t have an easy time in the military; she didn’t earn those metals for nothing,

Years of wear and tear have destroyed the disks in her spine. Her knee aches from a hard parachute landing in Afghanistan. Her ribs still throb years after she fell off the roof of a hut, and her arm is still scarred from the time a rocket exploded beside her, a present from the Taliban on her 42nd birthday.
[…]
Her house is a museum exhibit of her life. Twenty-nine medals from her years of service hang in a glass encasement by the window — an acknowledgment of hundreds of clandestine missions and dozens of captures and kills. Her abstract paintings of wild seascapes scatter the shelves with quotes scrawled on the back: “Even Heroes Rust and Break.” There’s a photograph in her kitchen from her SEAL days of a bushy-bearded Christopher. To blend in with the mujahideen, Christopher wore a wool Pashtun cap and a baggy brown vest. A disguise upon a disguise.

When I met her late last month at a brunch, she was walking with a limp.

I think that her campaign is going to be rough,

Beck is a complicated personality. She makes a living giving speeches about her journey to self-acceptance but doesn’t want to be thought of as a “transgender candidate.” Sometimes, she’s okay with the term “trans”; other times, she asks to be referred to by the Native American term “two-spirited.” She suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, manifested by sleep problems and a tendency to repeat herself. She gripes that Hillary Rodham Clinton may have lifted the term “everyday Americans” from her campaign. On a number of occasions, she asks not to be called a hero, even when no one has done so.

I wish her the best of luck with her campaign for Congress.