‘I’m gonna help you any way I can.’ Myrtle Beach area trans veterans find support, community at VA
Brandi Willis thought she’d be “seen as weird” to her military doctor when she came out as a transgender woman at the Myrtle Beach VA Clinic.
That day in late 2020, Willis sat down and told him, “Hey, look, we have got to have a conversation.”
The doctor, however, didn’t miss a beat. He immediately began typing on his keyboard to find a psychiatrist so Willis could be evaluated so she could get on estrogen.
”You’d like to be on estrogen, wouldn’t you?” Willis remembers the doctor asking.
She hadn’t even thought that far yet — Willis had only went that day to tell the doctor she was trans. But he was ready to get her the support she needed.
”And he goes, ‘Look, I’m gonna help you in any way I can.’ And so he did,” Willis said.
Willis is one of the roughly 150 transgender veterans who access medical and mental health services through the Ralph H. Johnson Medical Center in Charleston, according to VA statistics. This VA operates clinics all over South Carolina, including in Myrtle Beach’s Market Common.
Despite the specter of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” some Myrtle Beach-area veterans say the VA has gone above and beyond to provide gender affirming mental health and medical care.
The VA offers formal LGBTQ-focused care through their LGBT Veteran Care Coordinator. Although the position was established less than a decade ago, Dr. Kristy Watters, who holds the position at the Charleston VA, said, “Sexual and gender minority veterans have always been served at the VA, regardless of what the status has been in the military, whether they can or cannot serve openly.”
The organization offers medical services — such as hormone replacement therapy, gender-affirming prosthetics and fertility services — and mental health care, including individual counseling and a LGBTQ veterans support group, started in 2019.
Another trans veteran, Ashley Nance, described these intersecting identities at her dining room table in Longs. Nance served in the Air Force and the Army National Guard for over 15 years.
“You have veterans who people automatically look at and go, ‘Oh, thank you for your service, you sacrifice so much, blah, blah, blah, you’re great.’” Nance said, making a bowing motion. “And then you have trans folks, you know, and it’s the complete opposite. It’s like, ‘Oh my God,’” she said, pushing her hands away.
“So when people find out that you’re a transgender veteran, it’s just like, I think sometimes they don’t know how to deal with that.”
Combat while in the closet
Willis enlisted in the Air Force and the Army at the same time at age 19, in a “a special services kind of thing.” She served for about 10 years, including back-to-back tours in Desert Storm.
Willis said she joined because “I have this weird innate need to earn my freedom.” When she was young, Willis remembered, “I used to look at (my grandfather’s) bronze star and think, ‘Man, I gotta figure out how to get one of those.’”
Growing up assigned male at birth, Brandi also knew from when she was 7 years old that she was different.
“I guess I learned how to keep secrets at a very young age, which came in handy in my military days,” she said.
Brandi felt the hyper-masculinity of the military would help disguise it. When she joined, Willis said, “I started asking once I got in for every tough guy job that there was … I was trying to be the ultimate male.”
After she came back, she talked about her service a lot, partially as a way to deal with her PTSD and also to hide her true identity.
“I wanted people to know that I had gone to war, because in my mind, that was such a masculine thing to be. And that way, nobody would ever dream that I might be a transgender woman,” she said.
Nance was raised in a family with a long history of military service and she enlisted in 1993.
“So I joined at 17, my parents had to sign,” Nance said.
Serving under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which made LGBTQ issues hyper-visible, Nance remembers hearing jokes like “‘Oh, great, they’re gonna let all of them in’ and ‘What’s next? Camouflage skirts? And whole time I’m thinking ‘Yeah, that’d be cute.’”
Family atmosphere
Both Willis and Nance learned about the VA’s LGBTQ services through other VA providers. The two met each other through the support group, which meets every week virtually. “It’s always been virtual,” said Watters, to include as many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender veterans as possible, including those in rural areas and those unable to drive.
Willis said in the group, she appreciates the “family atmosphere that’s created. Everybody’s welcome and everybody’s valid.”
“It far exceeds anything that I would have ever expected in my mind from a VA group. Because I’m used to the military kind of, ‘Next!’ you know, here’s your shot. Next!’ And you’re a number,” Willis said.
“But that’s not the way this group is run. It’s not like that at all. Everybody knows everybody. And sometimes they would call me just to check on me.”
Nance said when she joined the group, “It really that was the first time I was like, Oh my God, there’s other transgender veterans in Myrtle Beach.”
Having accessed medical care at the VA before and during her transition, Nance noticed a difference in how she was treated.
“When I was a cisgendered, white male, I had a lot of trouble accessing care (at) the VA. It was horrible. And then once I transitioned, I felt like it was like, they were just trying to right the wrong a little too hard.”
Nance worries that the perceived special treatment by the VA could put a target on the backs of trans veterans.
“You know, on the surface, that seems like great, they’re taking care of the trans community, but they’re not taking care of the veterans, and that’s what they’re there for.”
Hopes for the future
Willis is studying to become a medical diagnostic sonographer and Nance is about to take her exam to become a therapist. She hopes to work with LGBTQ and veteran communities, and hopefully those who are both.
In 2020, Nance was ready to leave Myrtle Beach.
“I was afraid of the lack of support that I might get here,” she said.
Then she met LGBTQ individuals in the area, including Pride Myrtle Beach. “I was ready to run and hide, but then I was like, ‘You know what? No. Myrtle Beach needs people like me, Myrtle Beach needs us here to try and help make things better.”
