Latest / Follow the Leighder / Transitioning While Serving in the Army | Maj. Kara Corcoran

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Transitioning While Serving in the Army | Maj. Kara Corcoran · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and joining me from Colorado Springs is U.S. Army Major Kara Corcoran. Welcome to the studio, Kara Corcoran: Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely, I should say Major, you're still in. I found you through your amazing work online doing both your talk on your work for Sparta Pride. Absolutely incredible folks. Let me just read to you her resume real quick from my notes. As I said, she is still in the active duty US Army Infantry Officer, nearly 18 years of service combat experience in Afghanistan. Can you Kara Corcoran: It's the same unit that the Secretary of Defense is from that he has his pin from. Leigh/@followtheleighder: sounds. Thank you. Yes, yes. Thank you. I've only read it. I haven't said it out loud yet, so I appreciate you saying that. An 82nd Airborne Division and a recent graduate of the School for Advanced Military Studies, which is a big deal. She's a transgender woman who transitioned while serving in combat arms, one of the most male-dominated spaces in the military. And then as I mentioned, I found her online. She's the executive director of Sparta Pride, a nonprofit advocating. Kara Corcoran: Hehehehehe Leigh/@followtheleighder: for LGBTQIA plus service members and transgender military policy. When she's not out doing all of that, she's running ultra marathons, like for real, like hundred mile plus long distance, Colorado, high altitude, just pushing herself to the next level all the time. You can check her out Queen of Maneuver and Sparta Pride. We'll do another shout out to where you can follow her at the end. My goodness. Kara Corcoran: you Leigh/@followtheleighder: Welcome. Wow. Like what tremendous feats you are doing. ⁓ I have to ask though, you transitioned while serving as an infantry officer. And as mentioned, it's combat arms. It's a lot of dudes in that space. A lot of real masculine bro dudes. Can you talk about what that was like? Not necessarily policy, but just like your experience of becoming who you are and going through that transition inside an institution. That is a very specific idea of what a soldier should look like. Kara Corcoran: Well, I mean like all the way up until that point I was 10 years into the military I was ⁓ God It's hard because you you recollect this is eight years ago. I went through that process ⁓ I was married at the time ⁓ My ex was pregnant with our twin daughters we I was an instructor in building for that everybody knows from Fort Benning, Georgia ⁓ and while I was there, know, you talk about a lot of support within the trans community. It's hard to find somebody in Fort Benning, Georgia, you know, whether they're in the military or not. ⁓ so I had found at the time the organization I'm now executive director for that's been around for 13 years. And, ⁓ I kind of got a heads up that I didn't see coming was that. The summer before there was a tweet put out that there was a ban going to be put on transgender service members. And they came out in March with this policy and said, hey, if you don't go have a gender dysphoria diagnosis in the next month, you're never going to be able to transition. And for me, like with my spouse at the time, we had discussed in January that like I was going to start my transition after the girls were born. But now this like pigeon hold me into a time that I had to like rush to come out. So like, I'm telling like my, my buddies who are grading like this big off order for all the students that are captains coming through the course. I'm like, Hey, I got, I got to run to the troop medical clinic real quick. Can you guys just, you know, I'll be back. You know, the students are taking the test and I remember walking in and. The first person I talked to was like, well, let's get you talking to your PA like right now, as I was coming out. I mean, I was shaking because, you know, this was something that was going to fundamentally change my entire life. And it's something that I knew that, you know, was part of me forever, but how do you navigate this? couldn't just a couple of years before, couldn't be a woman in the industry. I couldn't be, ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Kara Corcoran: anything else. So it was just one of these really hard things that I was trying to navigate. And when I came out, like, my PA was like, well, we're gonna have to kick you out of the military. And I was like, I don't think you've read the policy, dude. And then from there, went and talked to a medical professional who was just like, Oh, yeah, here's your diagnosis. Like, ⁓ after like one hour. ⁓ So like, it's kind of funny that after like a one hour conversation with somebody, you get a diagnosis and now this is the thing that's being used to kick me out of the military. When the military said that it was something I needed to get if I wanted to be able to go through this process. So it's kind of wild how it comes back at you eight years later and you're like, I'm being kicked out for something that happened eight years ago that you said that I had to do. So that's an interesting ⁓ fact that happened throughout my life. And then ⁓ when I came out, I ⁓ was able to get this diagnosis a couple days before the Pulse went into effect. My daughters were born four days later. You're talking about all these stresses that came about. And at the same time, I'm coming out to people at work. We're just like, hey, Kara, what's going on with you? Why are you so happy? And it's just like, I'm happy because I get to be myself. And it's just like, ⁓ how do you do that? Do you come out to everybody all at once? I chose to tell each person I worked with one at a time. But by the time I got to the last dude, he was like, why didn't you tell me this, Kara? Why am I the last person? I was like, because I respect you the most. And what I found was Leigh/@followtheleighder: Aww. Kara Corcoran: crazy was the most accepting people were like the the guys that I worked with were the hardest ones the ones that like you thought were just gonna be like I'm never talking to you again to be like no, cool. Got you back. You're you're still Corkering to me. You're still cork was my nickname for the longest time and ⁓ But it came with struggles, you know people judging you for one thing or the other like You're in this awkward stage as you're going through hormones. You know, it's after hours. Like I'm going to go use this. like I'm changing into women's clothes. Like, do I use the men's bathroom and women's bathroom? This is just, but it says, don't use the men's, but everything is like this. There are always things that you could, you can do better and learn from. the cool thing about my position is like, you get to bestow some of that advice, you know, ⁓ You don't always have somebody there to mentor you to go through that process. And that's kind of what ⁓ being in part of the organization I'm in now is allowed us to constantly be able to help people through this process and make sure that they are going the right way and navigating something that's difficult because it changes you, not just everybody thinks that it changes you physically, it changes you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially as you go through that process. What typically winds up coming out on the backside, like 99 times, 100 times is like, you're a better person who's optimized your performance and you are, you're happy. You're able to be yourself. Something that, ⁓ I mean, I could get into the whole transgender thing, but people just don't understand that if there is a medical issue and you go solve that issue, you become a better soldier. and you're able to go ahead and continue to fight and be a better member of the team. Why would you prevent somebody from being able to do that? I don't know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I don't and ⁓ when you came out to your team, first of all, we have to acknowledge the institutional juggle that you went through. Like you said, they both forced your hand at the timing of it because of policy. And then later that policy came back to bite you in those eight years. And then you said in those eight years, you had coworkers that you said were some of the most supportive. Like we got your back, we're cool. It's like, and you're cork, you're cork. That's so supportive and affirming. Kara Corcoran: Yeah. And you get, you get through that awkward stage, right? And then, you know, your hair grows out, you're able to change all your documents, you're living full time, people are used to it. Then you PCS, people meet you not as cork, they meet you as Kara. And that whole like dynamic of like, you know, ⁓ you used to be this like, no, I showed up immediately following that assignment. was at command general staff college and like, All the girls were like, hi, we're with you. We got you. You're one of us. And it was like, for the first time at that point, was like, ⁓ like life is life is to me is finally to me is finally normal and to everybody else. No one cared. No one ever cared. And I was able to hang out with friends. Even one of my closest friends, she was, ⁓ she was at building four worked for Colonel on, ⁓ top four and she and I were able to be together and hang out as well. So it's just, it's silly that there's this thought process also that we're evading all these faces. So yeah, fun times. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ you know, like you said, that awkward transition, I can understand that must have been challenging for you and other people, or just, you like you said, awkward. It's also an opportunity to, whatever, but like show folks what it looks like to transition and become your more authentic self. And like you said, like people were like, why are you so happy? And you're finally finding this freedom and showing what that looks like to get there. That can be really empowering for people who have never, have no idea. And they're just like, oh, and guess what? Completely, and whenever you PCS'd, you completed the mission, you were still the good employee that contributed. There was all these things that they, like you said, normalized. It made it just like, oh, it's in, go ahead. Kara Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah, and no one and no one's normal, right? No one's normal if they go through any any life change. I mean, I also at that time, like my ex left me then six months, then a whole year later, like I got my family back. We PCS a for bliss. go become a tank battalion. So like all these things, like whether they are failures or big changes in one's life, everybody goes through different stuff and you're not like any other soldier who might go through some life-changing event or divorce or anything like that. You learn from that growth period and you become a better person from it. You choose how to deal with the situation. And again, for me, I found who I really was and I only became a better person. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, and I'm, that's beautiful, first of all. And I'm glad you had the support both at the transitioning stage and then at the post transition to have the embrace of that, here I am, new chapter. ⁓ Can you talk about, like, did you have any experiences with leadership or chaplains and what did that look like navigating, either the transitioning or the post transitioning? Kara Corcoran: Oh man. So the crazy thing is I, in 2017, when the whole thing came out, I was with, I was at NTC and I was in OCT and we did the mandatory training. Like, first off, I'm like, why do we need mandatory training for this? And like, no one really knew anything about transgender people as they were going through it. And I remember sitting there and the people I was with were all, The guys I worked with were all like, no, this is stupid. I can't believe they're going to let them in the same bathroom as my daughters. And like, that's what turned me off for a year from wanting even transition because none of them ever met a trans person. And then a year later, I finally like come out and everybody's like, Oh, you're still cork. Like I talked about before, but when I PCS from, um, NTC to Fort Benning, there was a chaplain there and One of the very first things I did as an instructor was sit in on one of his classes and it was about morals and ethics. And he went up on stage and he used moral and ethical dilemma. And it was about transgender truths. And he said that transgender service members were immoral, but the policy says they're allowed. And those things don't align and use that as the moral ethical dilemma. And I'm sitting there, somebody who hasn't come out, none of it. I pulled this guy aside after the class and I said, Hey, you can't use that as a moral and ethical dilemma. And he, he just was like, why not Kara? That's not a, what's the issue? And I was like, no, dude, you cannot use that as that, not whatsoever. That's a policy and there's nothing immoral about trans people. And. It's funny because fast forward like six months later, we had continued to like, he worked out a lot. We continued to be friends after that. But then I came out and he never talked to me ever again. And then later on, IPCS, I'm now Tank Battalion XO. I got this other, this captain who's got a family and he is the most welcoming. most amazing dude ever who, constantly was an advocate, ⁓ was always supportive and always there to, to bring people together. And he was a young chaplain. And then soon enough, he's like the acting brigade chaplain and all these other things. And what you realize is like these guys, and he's trying to go to ranger school. He's trying to do all these things. These are the guys like where, you know, There's this side of the community who looks like, looks at Christianity and goes, ⁓ no, they're all bad. And then this other side that's like, no, like they're good people. And the reality is like, there's bad apples in every, every bunch to say that like every trans soldiers, the greatest soldier ever, like that would be, I mean, I want to say that and most of them are, haven't met any bad ones, but I know there's bad apples out there. Every demographic has them. But like to say that Christianity is bad, for the military or that chaplains are bad. That's so naive and so stupid, especially when you have somebody who was supportive of every religion, every aspect, men, women, didn't matter. He was somebody who cared and cared for the soldiers and was there to listen, but also be a spiritual advisor. What was wrong with that situation? I don't understand. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And that is, ⁓ that's the ideal is to have the welcoming for any soldier too. regardless where they are, like you said, in life situations, because just cause you're a soldier doesn't mean you're not human anymore. You're just going to go through the life chapters and things that people go through and you want a chaplain that can, at the very least be welcoming. Even if they can't speak to it, they don't have the vocabulary, they're not brushed up on the latest. Kara Corcoran: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: wording or just, you just want a welcoming person because that welcoming too is so stabilizing and unifying for the whole unit. Just like you belong here, you're here, let's work together on the mission. ⁓ Kara Corcoran: And we've done this throughout history, whether it was integration with the African-American community, ⁓ whether you're going back to World War II and people seeing the ⁓ triple nickel or the Tuskegee Airmen and you're getting all this, you're sitting back and like, ⁓ my God, like they can do it. Just like. There were women who served in the Civil War, whether they were nurses or dressing up as men, they were out there. And there was even a trans man that Albert Cashier who, who continued to live as a man further on after the Civil War. And you go all the way back to women, you know, Margaret Corbin, everybody knows there was Molly Pitcher. Like she watched her husband do the drills over and over again. So she knew how to a cannon. And so when she saw her husband and the crew go down, she started loading the cannon. Like, this is, this is crazy. Can you do the job? And are you a good person and you a member of the team who continues to pull their share of weight? Why are we even having this discussion? Leigh/@followtheleighder: One of the things I think about, ⁓ I wrote in seminary about how female chaplains, female military chaplains aren't even new in history, like you were talking about. And female military chaplains as we know it, is a very like institution. mean, there's not really a one-to-one you can do in history, but I found even going back, ⁓ gosh, I know, sorry Chinese historians, I'm gonna butcher this, but I wanna say it was 3000 BC. the Shang dynasty and the third wife of the emperor he made as the high priestess general and she commanded something like 60,000 troops very successful and the only reason why we know this about Fu Hao is her grave was separated from everybody else's by a like mile and a half or something and so when people rated it back in the 70s they didn't it was something like it got rated in the 70s they all rated the emperors and his stuff and her stuff was largely untouched. couldn't find it. And someone in the 90s found it. Like, I guess through improved technology and long story short, they found her with like, sacrificial execution battle axes, not ones you would take out into battle, but like if you were to do a ceremonial execution of the enemy. ⁓ Like she had ⁓ pitchers and bowls that you would use for spiritual ceremonies and rites. ⁓ Like, Kara Corcoran: Let's go. Leigh/@followtheleighder: she was a high priest as general and was well respected. And again, the third wife of this Chinese emperor. it's just like, okay, well, clearly women can be deeply spiritual and can fight, like, especially when you consider we're all on the same team. We're defending our people together. Like this is, it's our military, it's our borders. It's like, this is where we all come together and do find commonalities in the military. Were there other opportunities in your military journey to just learn and connect from other diverse people that you hadn't met otherwise? Talk about that. Kara Corcoran: I mean, I mean, when I, when I think about who I was before I transitioned, I'm just like doing one of these numbers, just shielding my face because I'm just like, ⁓ man, I was the alcoholic, ⁓ dipped a can of Copenhagen long cut a day. ⁓ I had the fast boat, the Jeep, the Dodge Ram, I had it all. I was like masking a hundred percent who I was, ⁓ hardcore and It's not that I didn't enjoy those things, but that's who I was. But I never understood the perspective that women had to go through until I was, it was in 2015 before I did anything. I never commanded women. I had patrolled with one a couple of times, but never had any type of interaction. And I was, I was, Now an HAC commander and there were these two female medics and they challenged me to a run to the top of Coolconch. This is the 82nd Airborne Division. Coolconch Hill is like literally the top of like the landfill. But it's all like mud trails and you're running like it was two and a half miles out from our motor pool and two and half miles back. And they challenged me to a race and I'm like this infantry captain and I'm just like, ⁓ yeah, whatever. just came back from another Afghanistan deployment. And so I run with them and I'm running all the way up to the top of the hill. And when I get to the top of the hill, they're behind me. I'm like beating them and they literally go, it was nice running with you ma'am. And they took off and they left me in the dust and I got back to the motor pool and I was like, Jesus. And they're like, yeah, we've been here for like 10 minutes. And I was like, What the heck? And it was at that moment that I finally changed my mentality and realized that, wait a minute, I wish I had a whole company of these women because these are two bad-ass women. One of them was one of the first women to be in that first cohort to go to Ranger school. The other one was the first and I think only female paratrooper of the year. And it was right there, just that moment. that it took for you to understand that like, do women belonging combat check? Like, that's, that's like the, the crazy thing is like, there are still a lot of people out there who in veterans who never had that moment to see that women could perform. And so they are stuck and they don't listen. They live in this post-monoristic world where they don't listen to these truths of, of performance, whether you're Lee Ann Hester, getting the Silver Star, clearing out trenches in the National Guard as an MP, or you're a female pilot, like all these things, there's so many examples, they're endless, but people still repute the science of 175 women who have graduated Ranger School at this point. So my interactions, my friends, most of my friends are all women in combat arms, and that's the way it's been for almost a decade now. And then the other flip side is when you finally break out of that shell of your initial social conditioning of who you think you are, right? Like you grow up in high school, then you get institutionalized by the military for a variety of reasons, whether self-inflicted or not. And then you, and then you break another shell and you go through this third iteration, you're finally realizing that, ⁓ wait, understand why this may have been uncomfortable, why this might be uncomfortable for somebody in the African-American community. ⁓ look, I live in El Paso. There's a great Hispanic community that you're like, and now I'm learning from them. ⁓ The one that interests me the most to learn from is the indigenous community right now and what they have had to endure. And I look even back on like everything that's happening to the trans community right now. And I'm still like, We've got a long way to go to fight for our rights that were sacrifices that these other people, whether it was women, African-American community who just, what, yesterday got another thing dinged on them for the Voting Rights Act. And you're just sitting back and going, Southern Liberty Law ⁓ Center is being under attack for exposing the KKK. ⁓ And they had to pay as a nonprofit. They had to pay people and do the job that the FBI should have been doing. And you're sitting back and you're going, what is going on when we have to go through these iterations? And if people would just read a history book, you just, you just gave me a great piece of information about, ⁓ Chinese history that I did not know. And like, I'm sitting here going, you know what? I'm going to look this up later and I'm going to learn about it. It's challenging my beliefs. It's challenging your, your already preconceived notions and doing the due diligence for you as a human being to look it up and not listen to what CNN says, Fox news says, what anything else says that's out there and learn for yourself and form your own opinion as opposed to drinking or taking drinking from a fire hose or taking the pill. That's my perspective on it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I think, ⁓ it's a beautiful perspective. I appreciate what you were saying about wanting to build an army of women. I think about that all the time. At least once a week, I will have a deep fantasy staring out the window where I'm like, I could do it. I could raise an army. I don't know how I do it, but there is a badass women. Kara Corcoran: I'll be your SAR major. That's what I'll do. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I don't even and then I think about it like ⁓ that's a lot of responsibility, but I was like I can just so like I see the power of women I've studied this and and then ⁓ It's and even like you you pointed out perfectly Indigenous folks Native American and and otherwise across the world, but have had female hunters warriors Decision-makers negotiators for treaties and trade like this is The last 250 years of America has also been a shake up for people who have lived a certain way for thousands of years. And I think people forget that. Like we have come in out of nowhere in someone else's story in the last 200 and so thank you for your work with Indigenous because it's that. Kara Corcoran: Yeah. Well, I'm just learning. You know, you have the indigenous people, they had people called two spirit, right? So people that had both female and male attributes and they called them two spirit and they were revered as something to be respected. And because they had this duality, they actually sought advice and wisdom from these trans men and trans women and whatever you want to call it. And it's just sad that, you know, they were willing to accept somebody for who they were at birth or as a trend, like, like transition between ⁓ genders later on life. And they had this type of respect over all time. And now my dog wants to get out of the, out of the room real quick. So I'm going to open the door. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah, you're fine. It's all good. While you're doing that, I'm tell the audience to back up what Major Gorgren's saying in seminary. had an indigenous ⁓ feminist professor and she was talking about the two-spirit and seeing gender as more of, like you said, a spirit and energy flow and that if you did have both feminine and masculine energy, it meant you had what you were like an excess of spiritual energy and you were this sort of like you could see a higher perspective and she was saying almost exactly what you were saying that there came to be a place of wisdom because it was acknowledged that the perspective that the two spirits had was different than any one spirited person can and it was just a cool way to again approach and talk about things that have happened throughout history that modern media is trying to make out of some recent phenomena and it's just not. But I did, I meant, I wanted to talk to you real quick. You're a graduate of the School for Advanced Military Studies, which is one of the most selective military academy ⁓ academic programs in the army, folks. What does your strategic training tell you about what's happening? Kara Corcoran: Yeah, this whole, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: the institution? Are we watching something that can be repaired? Is it something more fundamental? What's going on institutionally? Kara Corcoran: So I mean like this is where I get to throw the disclaimer of like these are my opinions and my opinions alone do not reflect that as part of pride or the Department of Defense ⁓ Honestly, ⁓ first off, is, the whole world is extremely complex, right? And our job always is to try to wrap our heads around the complexity and make it go from complex to complicated to ⁓ simple, more simple, but not simplified. Because by the time you figure out how to get from complex to simple, the system has changed. Everything is an adaptive complex system that is ever changing. And that's why I like keeping up with the news, keeping up with everything. I, one of the things I hate so much is people are always like, Oh, I, I don't even watch the news anymore. It's so bothersome to me. And I used to be like that before I transitioned. And now you, you forget about why it's so important because this speed, which this information age into this. artificial intelligence robotics age that's that's occurring where you now have quantum computing it's happening so fast and So if people manipulate the truth people manipulate the things that are going on you wind up feeling like you're completely behind and You want to listen to a podcast as opposed to read a book you want to listen to you want to see You want an Instagram reel to tell you what's going on as opposed to? doing a deeper dive and then you find yourself in trust with one influencer as opposed to maybe I want to get a whole breadth of things. And then I always look at ⁓ new sources from outside of America to try to understand what's going on inside of America. then ⁓ I shout out to Grounded, Ground News, like they show you from a poll using artificial intelligence of like how many of Like here's a topic that's being reported on and here's a blind side for the left and a blind side for the right. Like you're now seeing what is the right not reporting on? What is the left not reporting on? And then you get to ask your question, the question why, and then you as a human being get to look into it a little bit. So for all of us, we have to understand that everything that's happening in America and or the world globally is happening. at an alarmingly fast rate right now with fundamental change of what's happening. There are small changes, but when you're taking the, you're taking the, not the national parks, but the latest thing that they're attacking is public land. that the forest, the national forest, they're taking that whole service. taking out DC, throating in this district of the dude who's trying to sell off all of our public lands. And you sit there and you go, wait a minute, like, like where's what's the bigger picture here? What's the greater implication? They might not be able to sell it off all right now, but they may be able to settle all off in eight years, you know? And then I understand the strategic necessity to take BLM land where there's key lithium mining in ⁓ a pass outside of like say a city in the southwest and though that might be really good for rock climbing, it is a strategic resource that we need. So finding a way where, you know, we protect our public lands, be able to protect ⁓ the environment and still be able to extrapolate that is something that we've been good at. Now we're just like, we're going to sell stuff wholesale. We're going to go ahead and ⁓ sell even more for developers so people can make money. We're going to buy up farmers' land and corporatize it. And if you're looking at the craziness is, know, old adage, follow the money. Where's the money coming from? Like you have all these things like APEC tracker to determine, hey, which one of your candidates that you're voting for is getting funded from outside the country. and people don't go and look when they go to vote, maybe I should go look into the federal elections committee and figure out who is donating to the people that I'm about to vote for. And so I think the understanding is people are finally waking up to the real complications, but the problem is the changes that are even being made in one and a half years are some fundamental changes that One can argue is destroying the international rules base. However, ⁓ I've had discussions with people where like, Hey, some of the recent actions just takes the tree of Westphalia, throws it out of the window. And that's the tree. says like people are sovereign nations are allowed to be sovereign nations. And you don't have the ability to invade them. then when you see mimicking actions of invasion in Ukraine, then you kind of sit back and go where What is the social order of the global hierarchy? Are we abandoning our ability to be a global hegemony or are we becoming a regional hegemony in the Western hemisphere, allowing Europe to figure themselves out? People are actually turning and looking at China and going, ⁓ my God, China, they're actually making all these great deals and economy and everything. And you're like, no, that actually is an authoritarian state. Like do not revere what authorization state, because you're seeing some of the things being mimicked here in America. And then the last thing is out of all those things, everybody's still just trying to exploit Africa and other countries, whether it's the Arctic or the Antarctic for resources. And you're sitting there going guys, like we should continue to pop up and be able to support other countries use the soft power that we had. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Kara Corcoran: And we're losing those type of things when you're looking at it from a big picture. And so I look at it, there's I could continue to go on, but there's only so much oxygen in the room. ⁓ But there you have to pay attention to what's going on. for America itself, like first off, my oath is to the Constitution of the United States that's up here somewhere right about there. And. That is like people are always like, ⁓ you're trans person. You must be a liberal Democrat. No. And ⁓ Kara, you have some conservative views and you grew up Republican. You must still be a Republican. No, no, I'm an American and I believe in the constitution of the United States of America. And I swore an oath to defend it. Full stop. You know, I obey orders as long as they're lawful within my chain, but full stop. That is what I believe in. And it is an agile and adaptive document that was founded to be an agile and adaptive document. The thing that I am fearful is policies or rulings from one of the branches of governments or orders from an executive branch that create rollbacks. And what I would like to see is a lot of changes that Stanley McChrystal put in a lot of great ⁓ things that you said they could help fix our, ⁓ you know, fix our democracy. And that would be in understanding that like executive powers got a return back to Congress, congressional term limits, things of that nature that can help heal this and start bringing us back to having a leader that brings the two sides together rather than continues to divide it. And ⁓ the last thing I would say that is difficult is you see things like The media continues to get bought by billionaires and that's why people do turn to podcasters and turn to journalists that aren't getting paid by anybody because you're getting more of objective view. But when you do that, are they being held to the same standards that people are supposed to have ⁓ within the FCC, an FCC that's separate from an administration? There's a lot of rules and things that being twisted right now through lawfare and through billionaire influences that is fracturing our democracy for a profit. And as a uniformed service member, like I still have the oath to the constitution, full stop, but those are things that are making people in the military question. And that's not the way it's supposed to work at all. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, thank you for that. one of the things that you do with Sparta, ⁓ you are, Sparta Pride exists because transgender service members, they need a community space, fighting for them, advocacy. Can you talk about what the transgender military ban has actually meant on the ground? not necessarily policy language, but for real people. What does it look like? Kara Corcoran: Yeah, so I mean like Sparta's been around since 2013. Everybody thinks that it was like some Obama policy that got it. No, it was people on the ground who were, whose commands were allowing them to live as a trans-American person. They were like, yeah, don't ask, tell. Like you want to be trans? Yeah, whatever. It's fine. Like there was no like, like there was this gray area and ⁓ It was women who were allowed to, who actually paved the way for us to be able to open. and, and when they said, when they allowed women to combat arms and graduate running school, they're like, yeah, I guess gender doesn't really matter. So transgender people, big thumbs up. it's, it's, it's an advocacy efforts that we have done that have gotten us our freedom, not some woke ideology, not anything like that. It's always been a bunch of transgender service members who love their country, who raise their right hand to want to serve their country. Then there was a first ban and it was like, hey, you're stuck in this weird spot where like, if you came out before this date, you're good to go. If not, you can't transition. And ⁓ there's an exception to policy that allows you through a waiver, but guess what? We're not going to allow you to, we're not going to approve any waivers. And you're just like, then what was, this is a ban. And so we were allowed to serve again. so you have thousands of service members who are constantly doing their job and everything that's going on and everything's good to go. what winds up occurring is before there was like an exception of policy where you could continue to serve, poorly named grandfather clause. Now there is no. There's no clause like that. And it's an all out ban and it's based off of whether or not you had a gender dysphoria diagnosis. There's people who like had erroneous diagnosis thrown on their ⁓ medical records. And then now people are like, wait a minute, this is here. And you're like, no, no, that's not me. And they're still getting kicked out too. And so you have this You have this horrible situation where you have served your country for over 20 years, 18 to 20 years. ⁓ You might get retirement. 15 years, you're over the hump, you're getting there. Nope. They've gone ahead and denied all those exception of policies to allow anybody to retire early, ⁓ except for ⁓ if you're over 18 years, but even some of those are unclear. Then you have... Soldiers who who just joined the military like say you have somebody from from the deep south joins the military Last year, I mean two years ago is going through the process and then they get told ⁓ Hey, just kidding. You now have to leave the military. ⁓ and you haven't been in for six years no separation pay for you or anything you're out on the street and But now they live in a Midwestern state that isn't a nice place to live and isn't friendly towards trans people. So now they don't have a job, they need to relocate, and there aren't as many services out there that people think. And you have transgender veterans now who are refugees from state to state so they can get out of there. Not only that, you have families who have transgender kids who if their doctor provides them care in the state of Florida, they could go to jail. And so their kid can't get the medical care that they need and everybody's saying, well, he's transgender kids like they do. Like just full stop. I knew it, we, a lot of people know that they're trans like early on. It helps to. to go and fix that problem as early as possible. And I say problem, that's probably not the right wording. It's the, there are families who are affected by this, thousands of them. So do they stay in the military? Do they advocate to get into a safe state and PCS to a place like Colorado, California, or whatever. And we're creating this division throughout our country over a population. That's less than 1%. You you talk to brigade commander and they're like, I have 10 soldiers out of 4,000 that are trans. You, we are a make or break for a political statement for, for 10 soldiers who have been doing their job for years. And those kids on the ground and, and men and women, I say kids, cause I guess I'm old now, but these men and women who swore with their right hand to protect and defend the Constitution and love this country now feel like they've just been stabbed in the back. And that, that is not something to easily come back from. So it's kind of suck. Leigh/@followtheleighder: So, no, and like you said, it's so layered. There's so many elements that people aren't even thinking about. And I really do want to dive. I want you to come back for another episode just because we're wrapping out of time today because there's just so much about the topic, so much harm that is being done. And again, this is all tax paid, bureaucratic stuff that this is not the ideal society or taxpayer. This is all the processes. They're failing us and they're failing you. And again, all for 1%. Major, can you please tell folks where they can follow and learn more, support, donate, et cetera, to you and Spark? Kara Corcoran: Yeah, so I mean right now we're helping with grants and lots of these community programs that help our service members. You can go to sparta pride.org. They we also have on Instagram. We also have Facebook and things like that. And in that are we have. ⁓ pages and things that you can sign up. You can sign up as an ally, you can sign up as a family member. Today we're launching Sparta Families and you can go there to help and donate. I mean, for me personally, as an executive director, always busy, but also I'm a uniformed service member. I actually have my separation board on Tuesday. ⁓ And as I go through this board, I have ⁓ this crazy situation that they wrote in the policy and cruelty is the point that just like when I had to graduate from the school for advanced military studies, I couldn't walk across stage unless I was in male regs and I wasn't going to be denied what I got owed. And so I cut my hair, pixie cut, whatever. They're going to do the same thing in order for me to attend my own board. I'm going to, they're going to ask me and corner me to cut my hair again. Cruelty of this policy is the point to harm our service members who have, who have served with honor, have met the standards or deployable and it were deployed all over the world when we started this ban. And that's the hard part. So, Sparter Pride. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes it is. and it's. Kara Corcoran: at sparta.pride for Instagram and ⁓ yeah I guess I'm at Queen of Maneuver on Instagram. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Major Kara Corcoran, thank you so much. That's Queen of Maneuver, Sparta Pride. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your advocacy. I do hope that you'll come back. Folks, let me know what you thought of this episode. Leave your comments. Leave your thoughts in the comments and don't forget to like, follow, subscribe. You know the drill. My name is Leigh Larson and until next time, I'll see ya. All right. Kara Corcoran: Thank you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ can you this needs to ⁓ goodness