This is the first excerpt of a two-part interview. Be sure to read the second part here.
- SPARTA Pride is a non-profit dedicated to providing assistance to and advocating for current and former transgender members of uniformed services. Could you discuss how health equity, particularly with regard to physical and mental health for sexual violence survivors, is part of your mission?
In our work, we are proud to include all of the uniformed services, which encompasses organizations like NASA and NOAA. We also provide advocacy and support for future warriors and spouses/significant others of uniformed service members.
Health equity is very important for us because, as servicemembers, we still fall under a uniformed service healthcare program for our medical care. Then, of course, our family members and dependents would receive that same uniformed service healthcare program insurance. The biggest challenge has been advocating with our uniformed service healthcare program to get them to provide equitable healthcare for us. Then we have the flip side, where we work with the Department of Defense (DOD) and through Congress advocating for legislation that ensures we can receive equitable healthcare. We don’t fight for a lot. We’re talking about being able to have convalescent leave (medical time-off that is not charged against our leave balance when we have to get medical procedures). We justify this advocacy by looking at inequities in existing healthcare policy. For example, a servicemember who gets pregnant, carries the child to term, and delivers is afforded levels of healthcare that are not provided to transgender service members. Individuals who get injured outside the line of duty are provided more time to recover than transgender individuals who have affirming surgeries that are medically necessary as dictated by their medical providers.
As uniformed servicemembers, we are often not authorized to access surgeries. We’re not allowed to go and get medical procedures outside the system. We can’t even utilize organizations like Planned Parenthood to receive affirming medical care, because then we are in violation of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Because of that, any time we want to get what is considered “elective” or medical care that we would like to receive that is not medically necessary for us to continue the mission, we have to have approval from our command. We must receive authorization from our first O-6 Commander, Colonel, or Captain to get that approval. In some situations, that level of command is not someone the servicemember sees on a daily basis, so they may have to communicate with this individual strictly via electronic means. Despite the recommendation of the medical provider, these procedures cannot be done without the approval of the command. So we’re trying to advocate that this should be brought back down to a lower command level. For smaller procedures like laser hair removal, hormone therapy, or anything that is not going to impact the mission-readiness of a service member, we’re trying to advocate for changes in the policy that would allow the servicemember to receive authorization at the lower command level instead of waiting months for approval. Currently, a service member waits for their O6-level command to send it to Legal and a counsel of colonels for approval, then it’s sent back to the servicemember, and after 3-6 months they are finally allowed to start something as simple as taking hormones. Most of the time, when we’re talking about hormones, these are the same hormones that are utilized by men and women as they’re getting older (women in menopause and men who are experiencing a decrease in their testosterone levels). These are the same exact hormones, but we are often considered unable to deploy or combat ineffective - yet anyone going through menopause or a reduction in testosterone can take the exact same estrogen or testosterone supplements and continue to do their job at full capacity. We’re really striving and advocating for equitable medical care that would create a balance so that we receive the same level of medical care and consideration as everyone else in the military service.
In regards to sexual assault, the DOD has what is called the SAPR (Sexual Assault Protection and Response) program. This is actually where the military does a fantastic job because the DOD and Congress wrote the regulations in the DOD instructions in such a way that they do not define a survivor by gender, gender identity, race, nationality, etc…none of that is in there. So when we talk about victims of sexual violence, we are talking about anyone because this happens to anyone. What is a greater concern is when we look at sexual violence against members of the LGBTQIA+ community, specifically when we look at the transgender community, there has been stigma and a lot of revictimization of LGBTQIA+ individuals. The area that we have to get past when we have a transgender individual who has experienced sexual violence is getting them to fully believe that they are going to be advocated for. The SAPR program teaches that we advocate for everyone. As an individual who has been serving as a victim advocate for the Army and now for the National Guard, I can say with full confidence that I was never taught anywhere to discriminate. In fact, much of our training includes advocating for marginalized people. So the discrimination that is experienced by transgender service members in the SAPR program is not institutional, it is personal (due to different institutional discriminations going back hundreds of years). Another problem comes from individuals who want to be advocates but are allowing their own deeply held personal values, ideals, and beliefs to impede their ability to provide equitable advocacy for survivors. Then you have individuals like myself.
From October 2021 to October 2023, I was stationed in Korea, and I was the brigade-level victim advocate for the 65th medical brigade. To my knowledge, I am the only, or one of very few, full-time victim advocates in the DOD who is openly transgender. As such, when I was in Korea, whenever a transgender service member was sexually assaulted, they immediately reached out to me. Fortunately, because I was in the medical brigade, I was very closely connected to the hospital and behavioral health staff. If the victim shared that their gender identity is transgender at the emergency room, with their primary care provider, or with their behavioral health counselor, the medical providers would most always refer the victims to me for advocacy services. By having an advocate who is transgender, who has been through the process of gender transition, and who understands what they have been through in personal experiences as well, absolutely changes the level of trust they have for me right at the beginning. Taking the time to teach, educate, and inspire other advocates so that they gain a greater understanding of what transgender service members go through and why they are so hesitant to report to anyone who is not openly queer, can make a huge difference.
Just being able to authentically show that you are an ally for the queer community can make all the difference. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this in my work. I’ve seen this ever since I came out and I started serving as a full-time victim advocate during my gender transition. All of a sudden, everyone was coming to me for advice because they saw me as a subject matter expert. I hope that I have inspired others to go forth and do what I’m doing and advocate for survivors of sexual violence because this is a community that is not well-supported within the military. The military historically does not advocate well for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, but they’re getting a lot better. That’s because the advocates themselves are getting training and education, and they’re becoming aware of the struggles, the trials…everything that individuals in the queer community deal with every day.
When it comes to advocating, it’s a huge job. At the national level, I’m still working on getting out there more and more. Within the Department of Defense, I just try to make sure that everyone knows what I’m doing and that I am here as a resource. That way, I will continue to have advocates who reach out to me all over the world, across the DOD, regularly asking me for advice. Over and over again, I just tell them, “The #1 best thing you can do is listen and learn.”
- What are the underlying societal, cultural, and institutional factors that cause transgender and gender non-conforming people, in and out of the military, to face higher risk for sexual abuse, assault, and harassment?
One of the big things is that so many states still have “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses (which are used to justify violence against gay and trans people). When a transgender individual decides to start dating, they are putting themselves at risk every single time. The dilemma comes in: “Am I completely honest about my status as a transgender individual, accepting the risk that people automatically look at me and assume that I’m a monster?” A lot of people will look at me and automatically assume that I’m that “man in a dress” in a girls’ bathroom. These kinds of situations, these kinds of narratives that do not exist in the real world…they’re completely made up and show a complete lack of understanding about the underlying factors of sexual assault as well as the actual reason why trans people want access to the bathroom of their choice: equity, dignity, and acceptance. Trans individuals are the ones getting assaulted. They’re the ones getting harassed and sexually harassed.
The history of violence and the history of stigmatization is so strong and so embedded in our country. LGBTQIA+ people are constantly fighting for our right to just exist as human beings and to be able to live our lives. Sexual violence is committed most often by people that you know. It’s the person that you thought you could trust, and later find out that you can’t trust them. So the transgender individual who is going out dating decides, “I’m going to keep myself safe. I can live in society as the gender I identify as, and as my heartfelt, authentic self, and I’m going to share my authentic self with the world.” Then they go out there, try dating, they meet someone, and that person says, “Wait! You didn’t say you were transgender!” Then all of a sudden, they’re a liar. They’re deceitful.
All we’re trying to do is protect our lives because thousands of transgender individuals, specifically transgender women of color, are being murdered every year worldwide just because they are transgender. People who hook up with transgender individuals, for various reasons, later decide that this person is untrustworthy and deceitful, and they can’t even accept that they were attracted to this person to begin with. It creates this dilemma of, “Can I even date? Can I even go out there and meet people if it’s not really safe? Where do I balance the safety?”
The other thing that we often see, both in and out of the uniformed services, is trans women who are at the very early stages of their transition, struggling to understand who they are. They may start trying to hook up with people who don’t see them as their authentic selves. “Sure, you tell me your pronouns are she/her, but you don’t look to me, in my mind, what a woman looks like. I view you as a gay guy.” Then they go out on these dates, and when an intimate act begins, where there was consent, but very quickly the act is no longer what one individual consented to, or one individual no longer wants to participate, the intimate act has become rape. There are many reasons why any person would change their mind, but the other individual not respecting their revocation of consent is now committing rape. I’ve taken care of quite a few survivors of sexual assault who are transgender, and just as with cisgender individuals, the reason for the sexual assault most always is someone just being a predator. The big difference is that people often look at others and assume that they know exactly what they’re going to look like when they take their clothes off. However, with a transgender individual, there is often more than meets the eye, and this causes panic. This causes some people to start to question their sexuality, and that leads to sexual assault, sexual violence, or even domestic violence because the relationship went on long enough that now it’s a domestic relationship. But the problem is these situations lead to using gay panic defenses in court.
- Are there differences in experiences between transgender male and transgender female survivors in the military that rape crisis centers should know about?
Transgender male and transgender female survivors have just as many varied experiences as cisgender male and cisgender female survivors. Sexual orientation can change the dynamics of a relationship. I think it doesn’t matter whether you’re cisgender, whether you’re transgender, whether you identify as gay, straight, lesbian, polyamorous, asexual, bisexual, whatever your identity consists of, it doesn’t matter because advocates have to show empathy, care, and compassion and have to just listen. Advocates needs to listen to their experience and ask, “How can I best advocate for you?” It doesn’t matter, the rest is inconsequential details. All survivors just deserve authentic advocacy, regardless of what happened and regardless of their background.
We have to look at special considerations when we start talking about forensic exams, and then again when talking about the healing process. A transgender person may have a slower path to healing because of the trauma they experienced as a transgender individual just trying to express their authenticity to the world through trying to date, and then they’re told they’re not who they say they are. They are not “good enough,” or they don’t “pass well enough.” So we need to absolutely look at, “How do we support them through behavioral health? How can we support them through the forensic exam?” Because we know that, even for cisgender individuals, the forensic exam is retraumatizing in so many ways. As an advocate, we have to be there with them to support them. We need to listen and learn from everything that they’re experiencing and let them proceed at their own pace. If they need to take breaks, they take breaks. If they need to step away from behavioral health a little bit and work on themselves, keep checking in on them. It’s no different, it just has different trauma added to it, and that’s where the complications arise. So we still have to maintain a trauma-informed care process.
Transgender individuals predominantly experience trauma from friends and family when they come out. Trauma in, “You lied. You’re deceitful. You’re not right.” I had my own mom tell me when I came out to her, “No, you’re not. I chose your gender before you were born.” I still struggle with that every day, knowing that my mom will never truly see me as my authentic self because she thinks that she was able to choose my gender before I was even born. That kind of trauma layers on. So, give them time and be patient.
This blog was published in The Resource 2025 online magazine special issue Sexual Violence and Sexual Health Outside the Gender Binary.
About the Author:
Freyja Eccles currently serves the military community as the Joint Force Headquarters Victim Advocate for the Washington National Guard Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) program. She recently started working in this role after retiring from 25 years of military service where she served as a Victim Advocate since 2015. She led the SHARP programs for two medical brigades during her last six years in the Army providing resource management and restoration of consent to victims of sexual assault. While serving as a victim advocate Freyja has volunteered her time to Sparta Pride supporting and advocating for transgender service members during hers and their gender transition processes. Freyja currently serves as the Deputy Director for Advocacy for Sparta Pride, working to ensure all uniformed service members have the right to serve as their authentic selves.