Day two of the Midwest LGBTQ Health Symposium, held at Advocate Illinois Medical Center in Lake View Oct. 7, began in dramatic fashion when keynote speaker and trans advocate U.S. Army Ret. SSG Shane Ortegatook the stage of the Olsen Auditorium and brought a packed and initially restless audience to stunned silence as he recounted his life and Transgender Health: Through the Military Lens.
Ortega completed three tours of duty—the first two in the gender of his birth, the third as his authentic self. He served in more than 400 combat missions and, today, continues to fight for the more than 700,000 transgender veterans who, owing to then Department of Defense policy on transgender service, were forced to choose between living as themselves or serving their country.
Ortega recounted his childhood days—ones of neglect and starvation received at the hands his mother's intimate partners.
"I was locked in a closet for days on end by one of my mother's lovers," he said. "This person was also a drug dealer and an addict and would often have me transport drugs."
During one of the transactions, a buyer beat Orgeta into unconsciousness. "I woke up in a closet," he said. "I have no idea how long I was actually there."
"At age 13, I tried hanging myself," he recalled. "The sheet that I used ripped. My life pretty much didn't change. As a teenager, I rotated in and out of the juvenile detention center over a six-month period."
"The story of my upbringing might seem enormous but it is in no way unusual and, to be quite honest, I am very grateful that it is not the amount of suffering I have [seen] in other friends who are transgender, especially trans people of color." Ortega added. "Survivability or recovery is extremely limited for people in my community."
A legally emancipated teenager, Ortega was taking care of himself. He finished high school and enlisted in the U.S, Army at the age of 17.
He volunteered for two tours in Iraq. The first was in Fallujah in 2005.
"My squad consisted of 13 people," he said. "Only six of us came back."
His second tour, again with a small squad, was in Basra to support marines trying to take the city back.
"In both these tours, I served as a female embedded with infantry units," he said. "In country, we didn't have separation of facilities, so everything I did was in the company of men. Because of these experiences, I later got to create space for women in the United States military."
Ortega was eventually recruited as a machine-gun instructor at the U.S. Marines School of Infantry, where he trained more than 1,200 Marines in primary marksmanship and machine gun tactics.
He became an explosive ordinances disposal technician for the U.S. Army and then a flight engineer for Special Ops working on Chinook helicopters—a role he achieved on the merits of his physical fitness and exceptional aptitude.
By 2008, Ortega was already working with the advocacy group OutServe—SLDN providing online support to LGBT military members then still working under the shadow of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ( DADT ).
"I realized very quickly that there were non-represented transgender service members," he said. "So I created a chatroom called OutServe Trans. By the end of 2009, I was getting substantial membership requests. By 2010, I had almost 500 people in that chatroom."
When he volunteered for a deployment in Afghanistan, Ortega had been on hormones for two years which he received, like a lot of service members, from the internet.
"It was highly apparent that I was taking testosterone," he said. "There were physical changes."
In 2013, Ortega participated in the 21-day selection course for Green Berets. "I was pulled aside and asked directly by a psychologist if I was transgender or a homosexual," he said. "The course has a 65-percent wash-out rate. Only 35 were selected. I was not one of them. Even though I was operating at an elite level, there were still biases that prevented transgender service members from ascending in their careers."
The same year, Ortega created the military LGBT support group SPARTA.
He noted that, at first, army physicians were supportive of his transition. But one day in August 2015, which he remembers as "the most terrible that I have ever experienced in my military career," he returned from a flight physical and was told that he was probably not only out of a job but facing jail time.
"I was informed that I had been flagged because of the testosterone in my system," he said.
A panel of three army officers in Alabama, with whom he never had communications, were to decide Ortega's fate. He was facing multiple administrative actions including dishonorable discharge.
He approached the ACLU and began to read up on military justice. "We wrote a petition in two weeks," Ortega said. "I began personally lobbying 22 different congressmen and senators. I wrote to President Obama"
He and ACLU attorney Joshua Block began writing to each of the service branches. One-by-one they responded with a statement that they were going to address the issue of open transgender service.
Meanwhile, the veteran of three tours of duty and Special Ops who was performing on a tier that would have made him eligible to serve in the elite Delta Force unit was relegated to a desk job and ordered to wear female uniforms in public spaces.
"Ultimately, I decided I didn't want to continue my military service," Ortega said. "Trans people suffer a lot and the only reason that we are such shining representations is that we are fundamentally built on the foundation of suffering."
Suffering was also addressed by Pride Action Tank ( PAT ) Executive Director Kim Hunt, in particular how it is felt by LGBTQ victims of violence.
Her workshop, "Chicago + Orlando: Thoughtfully Responding to Intersections, Violence & LGBTQ Communities" took an interactive look at the different kinds of violence faced by the LGBTQ community and the journey PAT and other Chicago LGBTQ organizations have taken since the June 12 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
"There's been violence against the LGBTQ community forever, but [Orlando] has been an inflection point in the LGBTQ movement," Hunt said.
That inflection was captured in a letter penned July 8 by Illinois Safe Schools Alliance Executive Director Owen Daniel-McCarter which Hunt shared with workshop attendees.
"How can we actively work to address systemic violence in and around our school communities?" Daniel McCarter wrote. "With a trauma-informed lens, how can we respond to violence without co-opting movements, without increasing police presence and without responding with more punitive measures?"
Other workshops included a statistical look at the near future of HIV Prevention and Treatment hosted by Northwestern University professors Richard D'Aquila, MD who focused upon the results achieved from Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis ( PrEp ) and future applications of the preventative treatment.
Director of the Institute for LGBTQ Health Equality Julia Applegate, MA, took an in-depth with "Providing Culturally Competent Care to the Lesbian Community."
