Dr. Tatyana Santiago and Dr. Elijah Nicholas open up about identity, faith, military service, racial disparities within the LGBTQIA community, and what real allyship actually demands.
On Transgender Day of Visibility, the conversation the world needs most is rarely the one it gets. Dr. Tatyana Santiago, a Black woman of trans experience, U.S. Army veteran, practitioner scholar, and servant leader, and Dr. Elijah Nicholas, a Black trans man, former pastor, military veteran of nearly 25 years, and children’s book author, are two of the most compelling voices navigating the intersection of race, gender identity, faith, and policy in America today. Together, they paint a picture of what it truly means to exist, resist, and build community in a country that has never made it easy.
Who are you beyond your doctor title?
Dr. Tatyana Santiago: I’m a woman, a Black woman of trans experience, and ever since I can remember, I’ve been deeply moved by what it means to belong, both to a community, to a mission, and to myself. Everything I do flows from that. I’m also a practitioner scholar. I don’t just study organizations, I build them, not because I love bureaucracy, but because infrastructure is love made visible to me. Who gets protected? Who gets resourced? Who gets seen? Those are moral questions. Above all, I’m a veteran, I’m a healer, I’m a strategist, and I’m a mother in spirit to many people who don’t have someone in their corner. I carry all of those identities at once, and none of them cancel each other out.
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: I am a son, I’m a daughter, I am a sister, I’m a brother. I’m an uncle, I’m a former auntie, I’m Mary’s child, and I’m Irmae’s grandchild, and Velma’s great-great-grandchild. I’m light, I’m love, I’m peace, I’m joy, and I’m happy.
What does Transgender Day of Visibility mean to you personally?
Dr. Tatyana Santiago: Personally, it’s a day that I let myself be seen without all of the armor, because so much of who we are, particularly in this current climate, has had us in such reactive mode. But it’s a day not of grief, because visibility costs us something. Every trans person who shows up publicly is making a calculation about risk. Privately, I use this day to recommit to the truth that my existence is not a political position. It is not a debate. It is my life, and it is sacred.
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: I want to call it what it is: Transgender Day of Visibility. When we reduce those words to TDOV, I think we reduce the meaning of them, especially for people who don’t really understand what it is. For me, as an out Black trans man, Trans Day of Visibility is every single day, 365 days a year.
When did you first realize your identity?
Dr. Tatyana Santiago: I go back as early as cognition, and for me that would have been at the age of 4. I did not have terms such as transgender or transsexual. I knew that something was special, and something was off. I can very vividly recall coming home from preschool and saying to myself in the mirror, God, let me wake up and be a girl. Growing up and navigating the city of Chicago, I’m born and raised on the south side in the Bronzeville area, I didn’t have many folks to represent my lived experience. I remember being 17 and going to a juice bar they would call the Mahjong Cafe, and seeing my very first woman of trans experience, one of my first children’s mothers, the late Sasha Valentino. I had saw her, and in that, I saw myself. I made a commitment in that moment. I said, whatever it is that she did, I’m going to take those steps to live in my truth, because I finally had a compass. Visibility matters. Representation matters.
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: Like Dr. Tatyana, when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I knew that something was different. I didn’t have the language. I transitioned at 49 and started my process at 47. I first had to go through mental health therapy to understand all the nuances of gender and who I was proclaiming to be. That is when I began to get the self-acceptance. Once I could accept myself and articulate who I am, then I could begin to articulate that to others, because I believe it’s a two-way street.
There is a persistent narrative that the LGBTQIA community is disconnected from spirituality. What was your relationship with faith on your journey?
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: I am what I consider an ex-pastor. I’m still licensed and ordained. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Christian family, church every Sunday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Friday, Bible study, Vacation Bible School. I was also damned to hell in all of those spaces, including at home. I had a very difficult relationship with religion that I later came to understand as spirituality. I outgrew Christianity. I could no longer sleep with the turmoil of teaching the truth but not living in my full and authentic truth. In August of 2017, I was being affirmed as an apostle, and in that moment I heard a whisper that said, it is finished. Six months after that, I closed down the ministry. I began to question everything, the limitations and the discrepancies I understood to be in the Bible. I got to this place of going from glory, from religion, to glory, to spirituality. That is when I began this journey of consciousness and understanding spirituality from a different context.
Dr. Tatyana Santiago: That narrative about the LGBTQIA community being disconnected from spirituality is a political construction and not a lived truth. The LGBTQIA plus community is one of the most spiritually alive communities I know. When institutions fail, you go looking for the sacred on your own terms, and that search often goes deeper. I myself experienced outgrowing Christianity and leaning into some of our ancestral practices. My spirituality was not incidental to my identity, it is the foundation of it. I was created intentionally. My life has purpose. I am worthy of love. Those are spiritual convictions, not secular ones.
Both of you are veterans. How did your military service shape the way you see what is happening to trans people today?
Dr. Tatyana Santiago: My background in the military was under human intelligence, which means I was trained to understand systems of power, to recognize when information is being weaponized, and to see coercion in its many forms. I look at what’s happening to trans people politically right now, and I recognize the playbook. Dehumanization through bureaucratic language. Exclusion dressed as protection. It’s not subtle if you know what you’re looking for. That service gave me a deep belief in mission. I still operate that way. I am still in service, just to a different mission. When you are in service or in arms, you are more concerned about someone having your back than what their gender identity or sexual orientation is. I fought for the right for those folks to hate me. I was not drafted. I went freely and of my own volition. When you’re in the military, you sign a covenant. You put your body on the line in exchange for a promise that this country will stand for something worth defending. That covenant cuts both ways. I held my end, and I need to see my country hold its end.
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: I went in the military in 1987, and I lied on that application. What that meant was I spent the next 24 years, 10 months, and 8 days serving a country on a lie, an internal lie. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell caused me to live in deeper hiding. I still have mental health implications as a result of serving during that era. I still go to therapy, and as long as I’m going to therapy, the taxpayer is paying for that. We don’t think down the line about the implications of the policies we implement. Thirty years from now, we’re going to pay the price of the trans military ban we’re going through right now. Our siblings are still actively being discharged, harassed, and discriminated against. I also want to call out that now is the time for our rainbow siblings to stand up for trans folks who are being put out of the military, the same way allies stood up for us during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And veterans leaving the military today cannot get their gender-affirming care from the VA. Nobody is talking about that.
How does race compound the experience of being trans, and how does the broader LGBTQIA community show up or fail to show up for Black trans people?
Dr. Tatyana Santiago: The disparities exist, they are documented, and they are not inevitable. Black trans women face the highest rates of homicide of any demographic in the United States. Those are not abstractions, those are human beings with names and futures that were stolen. There is racism within the LGBTQIA community. Anti-Blackness exists in healthcare systems. Transphobia exists in Black community spaces. Black trans people are often navigating hostile terrain on every front simultaneously, with very few safe havens. Black trans individuals are among the lowest paid and more likely to experience housing instability. Black is not something I could take off because I am trans. Every day that I walk outside of my door, I have to say to myself, is today the day that I do not make it home? I also want to push back on the framing of Black trans people only as victims. We are an incredibly resilient, creative, generative community. We built the language and the culture that the broader LGBTQIA movement has claimed, the chosen family structure, the categories, the ballroom culture, the fire and the wit. We deserve to be named as contributors, and not only as casualties.
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: I am in a space of calling organizations out. When we have larger LGBTQIA plus organizations that don’t mirror their mission, and whose face does not reflect who they claim to serve, that is a problem. Black trans men are often off the table and not even part of the conversation around reproductive health, PrEP, and so many other critical issues. When DEI cuts came, guess who got fired? Black trans people. If we don’t call a spade a spade, where is the change going to happen? We have to have difficult conversations, not just with our non-melanated siblings, but within the Black trans community itself.
What does real, actionable allyship look like for trans people right now?
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: One actionable thing is bringing us to the table and paying us for our work. I am a doctor. I have a dissertation, student loans, bills, and I’m a genius. Compensate me for my genius. What our allies can do is bring us to the table, pay us, and then physically show up, not just on designated days, but on the day that a Black trans person is killed. I need to see that elevated with the same energy and urgency as any other act of injustice.
Dr. Tatyana Santiago: Real allyship uses power. If you sit in rooms where decisions are being made about trans people without trans people present, say something. Demand the representation. I’ve actually moved away from the term allyship and I’m more aligned with the term co-conspiratorship, because allyship allows folks to sit back as observers. Right now, 26 states within this country have some type of gender-affirming care ban. Forty percent of trans minors are living under those bans. We’re seeing a 72% uptick in trans youth who have had suicidal ideations. I don’t care about your pronouns or your bathroom debates when they are trying to outlaw my entire existence. Know what legislation is being passed. Show up during public comments. Ask trans people in your life what it is that they actually need.
Dr. Elijah, tell us about your book.
Dr. Elijah Nicholas: Madoodle is my children’s book series. It’s the story of an African-American little girl who’s navigating the journey of her Uncle Pete, who was once her favorite Auntie Mary. It’s available on Amazon and on my website, elijahnicholas.com. It really is not a story about the trans experience, it’s a story about unconditional love, radical acceptance, and really just allowing kids to be kids and adults to be adults.