Tracy Monegain, a Marine and transgender veteran, helps fellow transgender veterans navigate the sys

By MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS Richmond Times-Dispatch 17 hrs ago

Jeff Spencer became a Marine in 1979, a time when gay, lesbian and transgender individuals could not serve openly in the U.S. military.

Tracy Monegain was Jeff Spencer as a Marine from 1979 to 1983.

As a gender identity war waged within, Tracy Monegain, née Jeff Spencer, sought to suppress who she was by joining the Marine Corps in 1979.

“At the time, I didn’t know what transgender meant, but I knew something was going on with me,” recalled Monegain, 56. “So I joined the Marine Corps to use it to try to stop the feelings I had of being a transgender.”

He had more traditional motivations for joining the Corps. “But I thought if I could be the hardest, baddest thing on the planet, which was a United States Marine, it would kick those feelings, the confusion between my gender and the way I felt.”

Not that Jeff Spencer ever brought up the subject among his fellow Marines.

“‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ wasn’t even in place,” said Monegain, referring to the former Clinton administration policy on gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the military. “You would have been gone, like now — ifyou made it without getting beat the crap beat out of [you].”

As early as age 8, Jeff Spencer knew he was different.

At age 46, “I discovered the word transgender and started learning,” Monegain recalled during an interview at Diversity Richmond, a resource center for Richmond’s LGBTQ community.

“I finally had enough knowledge to know that the only treatment for what was bringing on all my confusion in life and depression was to transition,” Monegain said.

In 2014, she legally changed her name. Two years later, she had gender reassignment surgery.

In the meantime, she’s become an activist, drawing upon skills instilled by the Marine Corps.

Monegain, a retired state employee, is heavily involved in the national and Virginia chapters of the Transgender Veterans Support Group on Facebook, helping them navigate personal issues and the Veterans Administration health care system. She’s also a moderator for the James River Transgender Society, a local support group that meets first Fridays at Diversity Richmond.

The VA doesn’t do gender reassignment or breast surgeries — Monegain has paid for all of her procedures — but the agency does provide psychiatric and endocrinology care, she said.

Having taken this health care path, she advocates on behalf of other transgender veterans.

“I don’t go to the VA to jump up and scream. I go to the VA to work with them to get people through health care,” she said.

“When I started my transition, I was very, very alone and I didn’t have anyone to turn to,” she said. “Knowing that I’m there with my experience, to give a helpful hand to someone who’s having issues, is very rewarding to me.”

Bill Harrison, president and executive director of Diversity Richmond, noted Monegain’s involvement in that organization’s Iridian art gallery. She’s also an organizer of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance services for transgender murder victims, he said.

“She shares her story quite courageously,” Harrison said. “There’s no better example of a person who served their country and is now transgender.”

Jeff Spencer was born in Akron, Ohio. After joining the Marine Corps, he was stationed at Quantico and did tours of duty in Okinawa, the Mediterranean and in the U.S., with a focus on engineering. He left the Corps as a corporal in 1983.

He saw violence directed at gay enlisted men before they were drummed out of the military. “And that was policy at that time.”

In June 2016, Ash Carter, defense secretary under President Barack Obama, lifted the Pentagon’s ban on transgender people serving openly in the armed forces. But the Trump administration has sought to reinstate the ban, and more recently is considering a definition of gender as male or female based on genitalia at birth — a move that would effectively eliminate from federal recognition transgender people.

No one suspected Spencer was transgender.

“I got along with everybody,” Monegain said. “It was part of the facade that I had to put up. It was a part of my armor to keep people from seeing.”

Part of that involved projecting a “super-masculine” persona.

“Yes, we would gay bash heavily,” Monegain said. “And yes, I would fall right up in there to try to hide who I was.” She paused. “I’m not proud of it.”

Telling his then-wife the truth was harder. At the time, he was battling a depression so deep that he’d put a gun to his head. His weight had ballooned to nearly 260 pounds.

“She told me her husband had died,” Monegain said. Nine days later, she asked her husband to leave.

Monegain doesn’t keep up with any of her former Marine mates. Before transitioning, Jeff Spencer came out to a Marine buddy and fellow judge of competition dogs.

“He said, ‘I can’t support you in this. It’s not who you are,’” Monegain recalled.

But for an individual who has lost so much, Monegain harbors few regrets.

“I enjoyed being a Marine,” including the daily routine, the training and the missions, Monegain said. The Marines, she said, bought Jeff Spencer time and instilled the leadership and organizational skills Tracy Monegain uses today.

“Honor, duty, oh yeah, I bought in. I’m still a Marine. I earned that,” she said. “Whether I’m a man who became a woman or not. Yeah, there are no former Marines.”