Elisa Rae Shupe | |
---|---|
Born | James Clifford Shupe
Washington, D.C., U.S. |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United States |
Branch | United States Army |
Service years | 1982–2000 |
Rank | Sergeant First Class |
Awards | |
Children | 1 |
Elisa Rae Shupe [2] (formerly Jamie Shupe; born James Clifford Shupe) is a retired United States Army soldier who in 2016 became the first person in the United States to obtain legal recognition of a non-binary gender. In 2019, she released a statement explaining that she had " returned to [her] male birth sex." [3] In 2022, she published a statement reclaiming her trans identity and condemning the anti-trans movement due to her story being used to push conversion therapy. [4] [5] [6]
Assigned male at birth, Shupe was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in southern Maryland as one of eight children. [7] She and her wife, Sandy, were married in 1987. [8] They have one daughter. [7] She served in the U.S. Army for 18 years, receiving a number of military decorations, and retired in 2000 as a sergeant first class. [1]
Shupe says she was physically and sexually abused by relatives during childhood. She recalls her mother punishing her for behaving like a " sissy", [8] and says that she was denied the right to explore her gender expression or gender identity. [1] That suppression continued through her military career, which included periods before and during Don't ask, don't tell. [7] [1] After she retired, Shupe began living as a transgender woman in 2013. She chose the gender-neutral first name "Jamie" and convinced the Army to change her sex marker to female on military records. [9] [10]
In June 2016, Shupe successfully petitioned a Multnomah County, Oregon, court to change her sex designation to non-binary, in the first legal recognition of a non-binary gender in the United States. [9] [7] That November, she was issued a birth certificate in Washington, D.C., with a sex marker of "unknown." [10] Lambda Legal later cited Shupe's petition as a legal precedent for non-binary gender markers in the passport lawsuit Zzyym v. Pompeo. [11] San Diego Gay and Lesbian News argued that her case was a "significant victory for the trans community". [12]
Shupe critiqued gender-affirming surgery, cautioning against what she said were high complication rates. [13] She also expressed opposition to transgender people serving in the military. [14]
In January 2019, Shupe announced that she no longer identified as non-binary and was returning to identifying as male. [3] Shupe expressed an intention to de-transition in an essay in a conservative publication, The Daily Signal. The essay went viral among opponents of transgender rights. Shupe spoke at a Family Policy Alliance event, and was then invited to a secretive group of anti-transgender-rights politicians led by Fred Deutsch. Mentally unwell at the time, Shupe eventually felt exploited by the conservative groups. [15]
In 2021, she began using the name "Lisa Shupe", and in 2022 published a statement that during her detransition she helped sell conversion therapy to the public while privately self-medicating with estrogen, which resulted in a life-threatening blood clot. She stated: "I also authored this to hopefully prevent these groups from further using me as a pawn in their vicious war, legislative and otherwise, against the transgender community. For the record, I have formally renounced my previous ties and allegiance to radical and gender-critical feminists, conservatives, and faith-based groups." [4] Shortly after in 2022, she received a legal name change to "Elisa Rae Shupe". [2]
In March 2023, Shupe leaked over 2,600 pages of emails, spanning a period from 2017 to 2023, between her and a group of what Mother Jones calls "representatives of a network of activists and organizations at the forefront of the anti-trans movement". [5] [6]