Who is Veterans Day For?
Veterans Day is a day designated for paying homage to the veterans of America’s Armed Forces. Unlike Memorial Day, which is reserved for honoring service members who died in the course of their military duty, Veterans Day is a time for the nation to pay its respects and express its gratitude particularly to the living veterans still among us.
To fully embrace the spirit of this holiday, however, we must also take the time to reflect on the ways society views, treats, and supports its service members and the veteran community. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, transgender Americans volunteer to serve at about twice the rate of the U.S. population overall, with 15 percent of those surveyed being veterans (versus 8 percent of the overall population). With numbers like that, it’s hard to say we are taking care of all our service members and veterans if we’re not taking care of our trans service members and veterans.
