Being Transgender in the Military

The recent decision to allow transgender people to serve openly is the right thing to do. It is now time to look backwards lest we forget how it was to be transgender in the military and forward to potential implementation problems.

I was in the Army Reserve for 8 years, active duty for 3 years and had military contracts for another 35 years that required military security clearances. I was in the closet for all that time, dressing and going out when I thought it was safe.

I have written about the ravages of secrecy on transgender people in TGForum before but there two other aspects about being trans in the military that I have not addressed (1) dealing with the security clearance establishment and (2) getting access to help from mental health professionals. There are some implementation issues for allowing transgender people to openly serve. Some of them will require some work, but none are insurmountable.

For over 45 years, I lived under the threat of losing my security clearance because I was transgender. I was a student of both competitive athletics and military science so I knew that the first thing to do was to understand the opposition. In this case, the enemy turned out to be my friendly local security officer. When I could “borrow” them, I read both the CIA and DOD security officer manuals and the sections pertaining to transgender and homosexual people which were in the same section with pedophilia, fetishes and voyeurism. They just described what people did from a clinical psychology point of view what “transvestites” and “transsexuals” were and gave no clear-cut answers as to clearance retention. It was all up to the vetting process and your friendly local security officer.

The vetting process involved filling out forms, being interviewed and in some cases taking a “lifestyle polygraph.” In all the requests for information, never once was I asked if I was transgender or anything close to it. They did ask if I was homosexual and I could honestly answer “no,” although upon further reflection, today I would have to admit that I am a transsexual lesbian. They asked me if there was any information that someone could use to blackmail me and I could honestly answer “no” again. Reason was that I wanted to shout it from the rooftops that I was transgender. If anyone attempted to blackmail me, it would have been a big relief.

The questions changed about every decade. Some of the early questions were about clubs in which I had membership. I knew that this might reveal my transgenderism so I took great pains to never technically become a “member” of the several support groups that I attended. If necessary, if I gave them money to support the club, they would put me down as a “contributor” not a “member.” And I never voted in their elections.

Then there was the friendly local security officer. I sized most of them up as displaying an intimidating authoritarian demeanor but most of them were scared to death lest someone in their bailiwick got into trouble or turned out to be a spy. Their careers would be over instantly. Fear was their motive. Consequently they would be more severe than the security guidelines suggested. My solution for these guys was to continue my macho presentation as a football player, family man and a soldier who was associated with a mountain and winter warfare unit. I also sucked up to them more than the other technical people in my organization. I gathered intelligence on the security vetting and enforcement process from them. I continued to shape them to believe in my macho side and, to my shame, reinforced their prejudiced views that they expressed regarding such issues as homosexuals and war protestors. The other thing that helped me, if I got called out for knowing about homosexuality and transgenderism was the mystique of being a psychologist. “And everyone knows that psychologists study some weird things.”

Then there was the problem of getting help from a mental health professional for my transgenderism. This was forbidden by the security establishment. While on active duty it is still forbidden to get medical help outside of the military system. Active duty soldiers because they were not allowed to get medical treatment off base. Seeing a “shrink” was a sure way to lose one’s clearance because it meant that there was something wrong with you. Realizing this from my intelligence work against the security establishment, I first adopted a do-it-yourself approach. After all, I was a psychologist, if not a clinical one. I was not qualified to treat people but I did know about the underlying processes. So I set about learning as much as I could about transgenderism. In the beginning, getting access to information was difficult. Libraries had a few books, but I knew from my intelligence that the security investigators ask your librarian about what you asked for and what you checked out. So I never left a record of how I used the library for transgender studies. I could do my own research through the card catalogs (yes, libraries used to record all their holdings on 3×5 cards). I would find books that I wanted to read and confine my reading of them to the library. I read Jan Morris’s Conundrum, the Bullock books and some of the Transgender Empire. I soon learned that I could not depend on a book being in the library because of checkouts. So, again to my shame, I hid the books I wanted to read in other places in the stacks. The cooking section was always good.

There came a time when the security establishment decided to allow their clearance holders to see psychologists about marital issues. This change in policy was not motivated out of the kindness of their hearts. It allowed them to get your mental health professional to fill out a form certifying that their patient was not a threat to national security. They could also pick up information on any disqualifying conditions if the provider was stupid enough to include it. (Remember, their primary motivation was fear and protecting their backsides.) Armed with these forms, they could always claim that they had done their best to vet you.

I saw this change in policy as an opportunity to get help. I did have some marital problems but they were mainly about how I should deal with my transgender issues. I felt guilty about hiding my crossdressing from her. Should I tell my wife? Should I divorce her because I might be gay? I was lucky to find a psychologist whom I swore to secrecy about my transgenderism and never reported it to the security folks. For those of you into DSM things, I was coded for insurance payment as “mixed anxiety and depression,” not “transvestism,” “transsexualism” or “gender identity disorder.” Who says we need “gender dysphoria” as a DSM term to get reimbursed? There are plenty of other codes available that are appropriate.

So what of the future of transgender people in the military? There are a few problems to iron out. First of all, most military health professionals, like most of their civilian brethren, know next to nothing about transgenderism and transsexualism. Although it is starting to change, medical schools devote little instruction time to transgenderism. Maybe about 2 hours in four years. Although medical folks are starting to take transgender short courses to meet their annual continuing education requirement. Military psychologists have been focusing on PTSD and minimal brain damage cases for the past few years, not transgenderism. There will have to be a massive training effort. And what information will be used in that training effort? Treatment should be evidence-based and most medical people know nothing of the scientific evidence or have examined it critically.

Next problem is prejudice against transgender people in the military. Just as there was a massive race relations program and a program to gain acceptance for gay folks in the military, there will have to be one for transgender people. The military is actually pretty religious about such courses. For example, when I was on active duty, it was mandatory that all soldiers take a two-day course on race relations. And this was required twice a year. Again, what will be taught in transgender acceptance courses and will it be scientifically correct? Will it be merged with gay and lesbian acceptance courses and thus watered down?

Some problems are easily solvable. For example, the military should have no trouble getting hormone replacement therapy drugs to transsexual people. The U.S. military has the best medical logistics system in the world. Another problem that is easily solvable is that there are no trained military surgeons to provide transsexual gender plastic surgery or feminization/masculinization plastic surgery. That can easily be outsourced. The military medical establishment has been outsourcing cases that fall beyond their competence for a long time. I remember when I was on active duty, my buddy’s wife was pregnant with twins in a difficult pregnancy. When the time came, the military had a helicopter waiting to take her to Johns Hopkins and the military paid for all of the delivery expenses there except for meals and TV.

The last non-problem I will mention is that transgender people serving openly will reduce unit cohesion. This is an objection that hate mongers will bring up as they did with race and homosexuality. I think the U.S. is tired of these arguments and they will not have much traction. Besides, there are at least 20,000 transgender people in the military, by my reckoning, who have been serving effectively for many years and many of the NATO countries have formally allowed transgender people to serve for several years. As far as I know there have never been any problems with U.S. soldiers serving with transgender people from these NATO countries.

The main positive about the policy change is that transgender soldiers will no longer have to live in fear and secrecy as many others and I did. There will be a few implementation issues but they are not insurmountable.

Tags: featured, opinion, trans military, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion, Transgender Politics