Pride Honorees>>
t Creator surprised at popularity of trans pride flag by Elliot Owen
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ehind every revolutionary symbol, is a creator. Nearly 16 years ago, Monica Helms, a transgender woman, conceptualized the transgender pride flag, which is now an established mainstay in today’s Pride events throughout the world. This year, the San Francisco Pride board of directors selected Helms, 64, as the recipient of the Heritage of Pride, Pride Creativity Award to honor her contribution to the transgender and greater LGBT community. “I’m just thrilled,” Helms told the Bay Area Reporter. “I would never have expected this. I wanted to come to San Francisco Pride one day just to say I went. And then
being told about this award – I’m humbled.” The idea for a transgender pride flag emerged in conversation between Helms and the creator of the bisexual pride flag, Michael Page, in 1999. “Then one day,” Helms said, “I woke up with the image in my head. I drew it, came up with the colors, and it worked. No matter how you fly it, it’s always correct, which signifies finding correctness in our own lives.” The flag’s blue stripes represent the traditional color for baby boys, the pink stripes for baby girls. The center white stripe represents intersex, transitioning, and genderqueer people. “It’s important to note that the flag only represented how I felt
“I woke up with the image in my head. I drew it, came up with the colors, and it worked. No matter how you fly it, it’s always correct, which signifies finding correctness in our own lives.” –Monica Helms
June 25-July 1, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23
about being trans,” Helms said. “But I told myself that if other people wanted to use it too, they could. And apparently, they did.” The flag made its first public appearance a month later in the LGBT publication Echo magazine. Helms, who is also a Navy veteran, marched with the flag at its first LGBT event in the Color Guard contingent of a 2000 Pride parade in Phoenix, Arizona, her hometown. Since then, it’s been carried at countless events. “I’ve seen it in so many places,” Helms said, “even carried to the tallest mountain in Europe. Next I’m hoping that the first trans person to go to space holds it up at the International Space Station.” Last year, Helms donated the original transgender pride flag to the Smithsonian. Slated for display later this year, the flag exhibit will also showcase items from Helms’ Navy career, activist history, and personal life. Helms was stationed in Vallejo twice over her eight-year military service. It was during that time she began to express her identity, albeit quietly. “The first time I went out in public as Monica was in 1976,” Helms said. “I went to a motel, got dressed, and drove from Vallejo to San Francisco. I knew no one could find out. At the time, I thought I just liked dressing as a woman and didn’t put a label on it until later. That first label wasn’t even correct.” After being honorably discharged two years later, Helms re-
Courtesy Monica Helms
Monica Helms stands in front of the transgender pride flag, which she created.
located back to Arizona. Identifying as a “heterosexual crossdresser,” she married “the one,” had two children, and began working at Sprint. In 1997, she decided to “live full-time as Monica.” “That realization happened in San Francisco,” Helms said. “I was dressed as Monica for the weekend and my friend started telling me her reasons for transitioning. Then, all the puzzle pieces came together. I needed to do that, too. My trans history has a lot of roots in San Francisco.”
She said that her two sons and three grandchildren are “very supportive” of her. Staying employed with Sprint, Helms moved to Atlanta in 2000. Three years later, she co-founded the Transgender American Veterans Association where she was president until 2013. In January, Helms retired from Sprint. Still residing in Atlanta, she lives with her partner of five and a half years, Darlene Wagner, who is also a trans woman.t
TLC leader looks toward a prideful future by David-Elijah Nahmod
“We are proud to be honored alongside people like Tita Aida and Felicia Flames, who, with their decades of leadership in the trans community of the Bay Area, could not be more deserving of the recognition.”
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ince 2002 the Transgender Law Center has been a leader in the fight for transgender equality. It’s often been an uphill battle, but TLC has prevailed more times than not. In many places, transgender people are now routinely included when equality laws are passed. And, in the last few years, trans kids have role models to look up to with the emergence of transgender celebrities such as Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, and Chaz Bono. Caitlyn Jenner’s recent announcement of her new name and upcoming reality show will only increase America’s exposure to trans people, albeit in Jenner’s case, someone who has the financial resources many transgender people lack. In short, transgender people are becoming mainstream. Last year, Cox graced the cover of Time magazine. The daytime drama The Bold and the Beautiful features not one, but two transgender characters. Scott Turner Schofield, a transgender actor, has been cast in one of those roles, a first for daytime TV. In many ways, particularly around legal and policy areas, TLC has been a major player in the strides that have been made. TLC will proudly participate in this year’s San Francisco Pride parade as organizational grand marshal. It’s an honor the Oaklandbased nonprofit won via a public vote earlier this year that was conducted by the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. Kris Hayashi, 40, who became executive director of TLC in January, spoke to the Bay Area Reporter about what has been achieved and what still needs to be done. “The Transgender Law Center is humbled and excited to represent the transgender and gender non-conforming community at SF Pride this year,” Hayashi said of the organizational grand marshal honor. “We have come such a long
–Kris Hayashi
Rick Gerharter
Transgender Law Center Executive Director Kris Hayashi spoke at a rally decrying anti-trans violence in February outside San Francisco City Hall.
way both as an organization and as a movement since the law center was founded in 2002.” Initially, TLC was a project of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. It eventually became its own nonprofit agency. Its budget is about $1.4 million. Hayashi, a transgender man, noted that there were others from the trans community who were being included in the parade. “We are proud to be honored alongside people like Tita Aida and Felicia Flames, who, with their decades of leadership in the trans community of the Bay Area, could not be more deserving of the recognition,” Hayashi said, referring
to Aida, who is the recipient of SF Pride’s Teddy Witherington Award, and Flames, also known as Felicia Elizondo, who is this year’s lifetime achievement grand marshal. “From Laverne Cox and Janet Mock to the president’s State of the Union address, there has been an undeniable increase in trans visibility in the last few years,” Hayashi said. President Barack Obama specifically mentioned transgender people in his State of the Union speech, which was a first. Mock and Cox, both African American trans women, have successful careers. Mock wrote the best-selling Redefining Realness; Cox stars in the Net-
flix series Orange is the New Black. Hayashi said that the community could not celebrate its gains without also acknowledging and addressing the rising epidemic of violence against trans women. “At least 10 transgender women of color have been murdered in 2015 alone,” he noted. “Bills have been introduced across the country to criminalize transgender people for simply using the bathroom. Here in California an initiative has been proposed that would require people to ‘prove’ their gender to use the bathroom and place a bounty on any transgender person found in a bathroom.” Hayashi was referring to an initiative proposed by the right-wing Pacific Justice Institute that would require a person to use restrooms and other facilities in government buildings “in accordance with their biological sex.” As the B.A.R. noted in an earlier article, should the bathroom privacy initiative pass, it would allow individuals to file a civil claim for violation of privacy against a government entity or a person for “willful violation” of the act, with violators potentially liable for no less than $4,000 in damages and attorney’s fees. A person whose privacy “was
violated while using facilities,” or who was unable to use facilities because of a violation under the act, would be able to seek damages through the state courts. High rates of transgender unemployment – higher than 50 percent according to some reports – and the need for better access to health care were other issues that Hayashi said are faced by trans people. Hayashi said that he’s ready to face these and other challenges. He also said that he loved his new job. “Things are going really well,” he said. “Pride is just the start to an exciting summer for us. We plan to open our first office in the South through a partnership with Southerners on New Ground.” There are also, Hayashi said, new projects in the works to address injustices faced by trans people, in particular trans women of color, in the prison and immigration systems. Challenges regarding HIV issues are also being dealt with. “There is still a lot of work to be done, all of it exciting and much of it groundbreaking,” he said.t For more information, visit www. transgenderlawcenter.org.