Transgender Veteran Discusses Modern American Communications
Transgender Veteran Discusses Modern American Communications
Charlotte Clymer, a transgender veteran and activist, speaks on media communication.
(Charlotte Clymer shares thoughts on American media communications in W&L’s Northen Auditorium. | SOURCE: The Spectator)
“I firmly believe that there has never been a more difficult time for folks to enter the communications space,” remarked Charlotte Clymer to listeners at Washington and Lee’s Northen Auditorium.
Clymer, an Army veteran, activist, and communications consultant, spoke to students and community members on March 19, 2025. During the talk, Clymer advised listeners about effective communication strategies to get messages across.
Clymer pointed to America’s increasingly divided society as the most essential reason why communications is such a challenging field to enter right now. Clymer discussed the prevalence of “information shortcuts,” mental heuristics that create “an automatic assessment of someone or a situation based on one characteristic.”
Clymer pointed to experiences as a transgender person, stating that an information shortcut could lead people to believe that transgender individuals such as Clymer are “radical communist[s]” because their gender identities conflict with their biological sex.
Clymer self-identified as “center-left,” having “proudly served in our military,” and attends church every Sunday. Clymer criticized the progressive wing of the Democratic party, citing their alleged use of harmful information shortcuts by promoting messages like “if you do go to church, then you must be against my rights.”
Clymer asserted, "We are now in the age dominated by alternative forms of media,” when there were previously just three primary cable news networks. Clymer emphasized the influence of social media in delivering news to Americans, making it “much harder to have consistent standard accuracy when it comes to flushing up the facts to build awareness.”
According to Clymer, another reason for trouble in the communications discipline is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Clymer said that AI programs will “decimate the communications field” because of their proficiency in creating documents such as press releases.
Clymer then discussed solutions to the difficulties facing the field. The first piece of advice was “to know your audience.” Clymer emphasized how understanding the audience is a skill that practitioners constantly build, specifically underscoring the importance of speech patterns and paying attention to how people use language.
Clymer advised that one should learn “how they talk and then talk back to them the same way” to adjust “your pitch to them based on what they need.” Further stressing the importance of listening in communications, Clymer argued that “80% of being an effective communications professional is listening.”
Clymer’s next piece of advice was to “know your objective,” illustrating the point by discussing activism practices as objectives and how to be an effective activist. Clymer said that current activism seems like “simply going to a march, holding up a sign, and … screaming at people,” but lacks “the necessary outreach to understand where the people are coming from.” Clymer emphasized that to achieve progress, activists cannot just surround themselves with people who “already see the same perspective you do.”
Clymer also discussed the Evangelical movement in America, giving credit to the Evangelical movement for creating “a movement that brings people in by creating a safe space to feel like a part of a community.” Clymer criticized the far left for not offering a similar invitation. Clymer then pointed to an example in 2016 where the “existing progressive movement were not welcoming” to upper-middle-class, white women who wanted to be more involved in politics.
Next, Clymer emphasized the importance of authenticity, arguing that people can tell when someone is not being true to themselves. Clymer discussed experiences attending Republican events, and emphasized refusing to “tone down the makeup or not be feminine or not talk about things that matter.”
Clymer then advised the audience to start “devouring information.” Clymer discussed the importance of “reading people you disagree with,” “reading the propaganda that's out there,” and “studying books on the history of activism and great activists.” By engaging in such practices, Clymer stated that people can “take the things that did work [for historical activists] and find new things that work” for modern activist efforts.
Clymer then encouraged them not to limit themselves to “a subjective worldview.” Clymer stated that “just like other people can be wrong, so can you,” and that accepting the limits of one’s knowledge makes interacting with others more straightforward.
Clymer then motivated the audience to take risks and not relinquish their activism. As an example, Clymer noted how the #MeToo Movement began because a woman “refused to accept things as they are, who took a big risk in trying to organize, particularly, black women who were victims of rape and sexual assault.”
Clymer pointed to personal activism experiences, specifically in trying to get a Houston megachurch to house people displaced because of a hurricane. Clymer emphasized that there was pushback from the church leadership against the activism. Clymer recounted receiving death threats for “asking that people who are trapped in a flood have somewhere to go to be safe in a church.” However, the church eventually opened to the flood victims, to which Clymer said, “Activism is constantly making people uncomfortable and dealing with a fallout of their discomfort.”
Clymer concluded the remarks by showing audience members a video of Clymer criticizing the first Trump administration’s ban on transgender people from serving in the military. In the video, Clymer discusses carrying caskets of soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. Clymer said that “every casket and transfer case I carried was covered by an American flag,” and that despite not knowing details about their identity, “they died in selfless service and they wore the flag of this country to the grave.”
Clymer added, “No one at Dover Air Force Base or Arlington National Cemetery asked if those we buried were secretly transgender.” “Here are thousands of openly transgender service members, trained professionals, some of the best in the varieties our military has to offer, serving right now, many of them in combat zones,” Clymer said.
After the video, the audience asked a variety of questions. One person asked Clymer about the American public’s understanding of patriotism and how personal experiences shaped Clymer’s patriotism. Clymer defined patriotism as “loving your country enough to want to see it improve.” Clymer expressed that military experiences spurred the realization that “you can work with people who disagree with you.”
The “military does a really great job across the spectrum of challenging people to get past the biases and their assumptions,” Clymer said. “People who join the military really put patriotism ahead of themselves, ahead of their ego, and I think there's nothing more American than that.”
