On the
Amtrak Acela from Washington to Boston, we just crossed the
Susquehanna River. Tomorrow the Concord Bus will take me the rest of
the way to Bangor as I repeat the route I took almost exactly one
year ago when I first arrived back in the US at the end of my
three-year life in Romania. For the first time in many months, I
begin to relax from what has been the most exhausting but at the same
time most productive and gratifying year of my life.
This has
been the year of my life in GLIFAA, our officially recognized lgbt+ organization for the Department of State and other foreign affairs agencies. I knew a year ago when I was
first asked if I would be willing to serve as GLIFAA president that this would be a
challenging year. It was so challenging that I gave up writing in
this web journal several months ago, recognizing as hopeless the
possibility of finding time to write here while engaged in two
full-time jobs.
The first
full-time job, my day job, was in arms control in an operations
center that works 24/7/365. We worked in shifts of
6-days-on/3-or-4-days-off, rotating between 7am-to-3pm, 3pm-to-11pm,
and 11pm-to-7am shifts. I worked on Christmas Day and New Years'
Day, and I will work on the 4th of July.
The second
full-time job was GLIFAA. In Department-of-State-speak, it was the desk officer job that challenged and required me to be always on
alert and always ready to manage, solve problems, and advance issues
through white papers and meetings with highly-placed officials. Suffice it to say that I got used to meeting with officials at the
Undersecretary and Deputy Secretary levels. In my day job I
never would have met with people at that level. I met with officials
at the White House and with peers in other LGBT groups representing
employees of federal agencies and departments.
One year
ago I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of lgbt+ and,
in particular, trans* activists whom I knew in the US; all of my
contacts were in Romania, Moldova, and in a handful of other European
countries. I may have been just a meteor rushing across the sky of
U.S. activism this year, a flash soon to be forgotten. Still, for the
few who witnessed the flash firsthand and who were affected by it, I
hope a memory will remain of the bright falling star that moved against the background of fixed stars, against the
background of those who have been carrying the weight of U.S. lgbt+
activism for decades.
This was
an lgbt+ year for GLIFAA. When I agreed to run for GLIFAA
president in the spring of 2013, I had worries of what it would be
like to be president of what historically has been a gay men's
organization. (See In Homage to Allyson Robinson.) I am only the
second woman to be GLIFAA president, the first to be so by virtue of
the transgender experience. In fact, I am only the second
transgender woman to be visibly involved with GLIFAA, following on
the bold example set by Dr. Chloe Schwenke in 2008.
My worries
were unfounded. Perhaps more than anything else, I consider the
biggest success of this year has been GLIFAA's continued internal
evolution. My Board of Directors (BoD) consisted of six men, and our
Governing Committee (GC) consisted of two men and two women. (Although
those numbers are still heavily weighted in one gender direction, I
hasten to say that one of the women on the GC was the powerhouse of
energy who got us through many an event with her energy,
organizational skills, and boundless enthusiasm.) It was a year for
the BoD and GC to learn from me what it is to be trans*, and it was
my year to learn more about what it is to be gay or lesbian.
In
September the BoD took up the discussion of GLIFAA's brand. Have you noticed that I have yet to spell out
what GLIFAA stands for? When it was founded in 1992, it stood for Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies. That spelling
out of GLIFAA did not on its
surface include me or those who are intersex, gender queer, gender
fluid or any of the other letters of the ever enlarging LGBT rainbow. The BoD decided the time had come to discuss the future of GLIFAA's
brand.
That
discussion went on from September through February. All sorts of new
names and tag
lines were proposed and
discarded while ever new ones were proposed. In the end we chose to
respect both our history and our future. Like Coca Cola,
GLIFAA is a name with deep and honorable roots. If it had not been
for those brave souls, mainly gay men, who founded GLIFAA at a time
when security was still routinely rooting out gays and lesbians, I
and many others would not be here today. A number of our founding
members paid with their careers for founding GLIFAA. The price that
they paid needs to be remembered and honored always.
But
what of the future? How were we to include our allies and other
parts of the LGBT rainbow? It was in February that that we came to a
collective decision that enthused us all. GLIFAA's name
henceforth would be, simply,
GLIFAA without any
spelling out. At the
same time, we approved a new tag line
for use in our literature, on our website, and in our correspondence:
lgbt+ pride in foreign affairs agencies. The + encompasses
all the other letters in the LGBT rainbow. Pride means
we are proud of GLIFAA, of who we are, and of the agencies and
departments in which we work. The BoD's decision is subject to a
month-long membership vote that is now underway, but I am confident
that the decision will be ratified.
GLIFAA Board Meets with the Five Out Gay Ambassadors |
What
else? We had our monthly membership meetings and happy hours,
not to mention our monthly newsletter. Our website is entirely new
as of February and, unlike the old, is easy to update and maintain. Our largest annual social event, The Pink Party, filled the
ballroom at The Chastleton and
showed a profit for the first time that anyone could remember. There
were also pride marches and festivals and more roundtables,
seminars, workshops, and meetings than I can remember let alone
enumerate.
The GLIFAA BoD and GC Celebrate at the Pink Party! |
In the Capital Pride March |
Our third big issue had to do with transgender health care for
federal employees. Without wanting to attract undue attention, I
will allude to a certain June decision from the Office of Personnel
Management regarding Federal Employee Health Benefits. GLIFAA,
working with a coalition of allies, worked hard in this area.
We also
worked closely with those involved in official State Department and
USAID foreign policy. I helped to write the first State Department
cable (i.e., instruction) to all diplomatic posts on carrying out
reporting on and outreach to transgender communities around the
world. In Washington, the Department of State had its first-ever
observance of Transgender Day of Remembrance. So did a number of
U.S. embassies and other diplomatic posts around the world.
Escorting Secretary John Kerry to Pride at State on June 19 |
Sharing the Stage with Secretary Kerry, Masha Gessen, and Janice Caramanica from the State Department's Office of Civil Rights |
So as I
sit in the Acela, now somewhere in New Jersey, I can say to myself, "You did it!" Although my term of office extends officially
through August, elections are now underway for our new board. We
will know the results in early July, but I'm reasonably confident of
the results even today. GLIFAA will continue forward in very good
hands. Once the election results are official, we'll begin a
transition period that will allow me to step back and regain more of
the personal time that I need for family and friends and for the
preparations I must make to move on to my next post in Central Asia
in September.
As I once
wrote Proudly from Tirana and Proudly from Bucharest, I
can now write Proudly from
Washington, Proudly from GLIFAA. This has been my year of
lgbt+ leadership, the year when I gave all for the causes I
believe in. I am proud of my GLIFAA board and all we accomplished. I'm proud that I had the honor to serve as GLIFAA president. To all
whom I have known and worked with this year, your GLIFAA mom
sends her warm thanks. I am proud and honored to have known and
worked with all of you.
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