A patriotic love story, an unlikely romantic adventure, behind the scenes in aviation history. Based on real life. Joe Ware was a man of national note, a conservative Republican Christian 40 years older, and I was private, a liberal Democrat Jewish transsexual. He was former Lockheed Skunk Works, who helped make the first two Air Force Ones for President Eisenhower and who was Depart-ment Manager of Engineering Flight Test over the U-2, and the SR-71; I was a social worker and, before that, in the National Security Agency, NSGA, NSOC, SIGINT, Ft. Meade, Mary-land. Shadow Life: Aerospace, Love, and Secrets is a beautiful romance between two people in a mixed marriage, fighting to stay together, corrects popular misconceptions about transgender and transsexual living, and makes a suggestion. I've been in this since the 1970s, I've lived the life, and I've helped others. Inspired by Kenji Yoshino (Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, 2006), I'm concerned about the current direction of the transgender paradigm: It's still hiding key stigmata. I know where the bodies are buried. I've done it myself. I tried to keep my sexuality away from other people's concern, but there is no such thing as actual stealth living. People knew. I wouldn't discuss it, and my husband and I caught hell for years. Now I see most transgender people doing the same thing in another way, unwittingly enabling prejudice and opposition they don't handle any better than I did. It's not the fact they're transgender they're hiding but what they really need or desire. The transgender movement is winning access to places most don't even want to go, where dis-robing is required. If they can't say it, they can't show it. So they don't go, marginalizing them-selves into a less than equal integration, furthering lack of awareness, preventing equal em-ployment, and where it's discovered during sex, possibly even incurring surprise violence or murder. Trans people can never fully integrate into society if we're embarrassed to embrace ourselves. Leaders of the social movement cannot advocate for something they downplay. They need to bring these issues to the fore, not leave them to serve as doubt and denial, not relegate them to the periphery or treat questions as offensive. Rhetoric must be as clear in media as it would be in locker rooms so that those who are interested may more fully integrate. I've waited 20 years for leaders to do so. Most of them don't, so I did, herein. Shadow Life is explicit.
About the Author: Jenna Ware is/was an MSW, LCSW, clinical social worker, and before that was in the U.S. Navy in the National Security Agency, NSOC, NSGA, working with SIGINT, Ft. Meade, MD. She made the social/anatomical switch from male to female in 1981, with SRS (transsexual); worked in forensics and with chronic/sub-acute; and has helped or supported LGBT since the early 1980s in areas such as but not limited to transition, social integration, employment, rape and suicidality. After graduate school, Jenna obtained her private pilot certificate, eventually getting her ATP S&M and CFI, focused primarily on tailwheel transition training. In 1989, at the age of 32, she met a fellow pilot at the airport, an older man of 72, and they never separated. He was in aerospace, helped make the 1st 2 Air Force Ones for President Eisenhower, the U-2, and the SR-71. Though he was a conservative Republican Christian 40 years older, and Jenna was a liberal Democrat Jew (by conversion mid 1980s), they were joined at the hip. She helped found the Joseph F. Ware, Jr. Advanced Engineering Laboratory at Virginia Tech. From their 22-year relationship, and 17-year marriage (until his passing in 2012), Jenna internalized the concept of respect with difference, something the world needs if it ever intends to get along. Living "stealth" for 31 years, from 1985 to 2016, Jenna made numerous mistakes in her life, costing her (literally) millions of dollars, complicating her life and her marriage, until she learned she was causing most of her problems, herself, or making them worse than they needed to be. Inspired by Kenji Yoshino of "Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Liberties," she brings the concept of embracing self to other trans people of all kinds.