MILITARY.COM – As a 20-year veteran of the Army sat in a classroom attending a mandatory course for soldiers getting out of the military and transitioning to civilian life, the civilian instructor made an odd request.
He asked the couple of dozen people in the room to scratch out the words “pronoun, gender, diversity and inclusion” from the workbooks they had been issued.
Much of the class likely thought little of the request — a lingering effect of the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity initiatives in the government — but the soldier’s mind filled with frustration and anger.
The soldier is transgender and was sitting in that class because the Trump administration had made the choice to deny trans troops the ability to serve.
As the soldiers around her [sic] were dutifully censoring their workbooks, she felt like they were quietly removing the change that she, and fellow trans troops like her, worked so hard to instill in the military.
“Stop being a Girly Man.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
A soldier from her unit shot her a look that just said, “I’m sorry this is happening to you.”
The transgender soldier, granted anonymity to protect her [sic] identity out of fear of retribution, said that the entire incident was “just yet another reminder that it doesn’t matter how much they say ‘thank you for all the effort you put in and that your contributions are valuable’ … because at the end of the day, they’re having us manually go in and remove our own contributions from all the documentation.”
Her story is not unique.
Over the past two weeks, Military.com spoke with six transgender service members who described their own process of leaving the military as full of indignities that ranged from evaporating support from leadership to forced administrative leave and being denied the right to wear a uniform at retirement …
