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| U.S. Marine helicopter mechanic. (Jehan, 2008) |
Hi all. I'm Jehan, a gay trans guy from Portland, Oregon, and I'll be your milspace blogger here at FRW, writing about my both my own experiences and about broader trans issues in the military and space exploration.
I won't just blog about the United States military, which doesn't allow trans people when other nations' forces do, but we'll start there since that's my experience. I'm not the last word on trans military members, either. I never brought it up while I was enlisted and, thus, never got to really talk about it with anybody else.
This is a photo of a Marine in my unit at work aboard a U.S. amphibious assault ship in the Pacific Ocean in 2008. I served five years in the Marines as a woman when only 6% of the force, or about 13,000 of 260,000 Marines, were women. Most of those billets are in personnel, administration, communications, or logistics and supply. I worked as an aviation mechanic so I always roomed with women but worked alone with men in all but the last year of my enlistment.
I collected buckets of anecdotes along the way that highlight the absurdities of the military's attitudes towards gender identity. Defaulting the military narrative to male is one such absurdity; assuming that an individual's nonconforming gender identity is an automatic indicator of a bad Marine is another.
I also learned to identify the bad habits I picked up even in spite of knowing better. When discussing the Marine in the photo above, even I have to restrain myself from saying "he". You could certainly make the argument that, probabilistically, I'd likely be correct in assuming that the mechanic there is male. Women were only six percent of the Corps at the time, after all, but assuming "he" over and over in all situations erases women entirely so that the word "Marine" becomes synonymous with "slender, conventionally attractive, muscled, heterosexual white male."
This narrative really helps no one. It creates a stereotype to which no white, straight, male Marines can live up to and it erases the vast swath of Marines who don't fit that mold entirely. Major decisions and legislation end up being created on behalf of imaginary, nonexistent Marines.
Second, the mechanic there on that helicopter may very well appear male and not actually consider themselves so, and it's nobody's business but theirs. You can't tell by looking if a pre-transition individual is trans or not. That mechanic on that helicopter may see herself as a woman because her genitals, her understanding of her own gender, her socialization, and her sex marker assignment at birth are all congruent; that is, they're all in agreement. All is well. She's female: assigned from birth and happy as such.
But the mechanic on that helicopter may firmly see herself as a woman despite a genital abnormality, despite a sex marker of 'M', despite attending the all-male Marine Recruit Depot San Diego because she was born west of the Mississippi. She may be wrestling with anxiety about physically being seen as a man every day, with rooming with males, with the assumptions that the masculine culture in the Marines brings about men and women -- but all of that is correctable with surgery and she'd be a better, happier, more effective Marine if it were simply corrected without fuss so she could go about the job she loves.
And that's something I want to make it clear: I loved my job when I was on active duty. What's not to love? I got to fix airplanes all day. I got to mentor young Marines and do physical, interesting work. I loved troubleshooting a bad relay panel and signing off on the repaired part to fix a downed jet. I loved the travel and the adventure and the service.
So let's say both of these hypothetical women love their jobs just as much as I did. Those of us who were within a year of separation while at sea were all offered a reenlistment opportunity so our signing bonuses were tax free -- a big deal when you're talking tens of thousands of dollars. So let's also say both of our hypothetical women Marine mechanics are proud of their work, proud to be Marines, and deeply committed to staying in the Corps.
The personnel office will call them in individually and make them an offer to reenlist.
One of those women will be able to work out a nifty bonus and sign on the dotted line.
The other will have to make up an excuse like "I want to go to college" and return to her shop knowing that this will be her last deployment. She'll have to give up this life that she loves, that she's good at, where her contributions are important and valued, simply because she needs an operation and to get on some medication to address an underlying medical condition.
If the first woman needed her gallbladder out, needed to take thyroid medication, had just given birth, had been wounded in combat and been through major surgeries, or had just beat cancer after months of chemotherapy, she could work through those issues with her branch of service and apply for a waiver to reenlist.
The second woman simply could not. There is no waiver in any U.S. military branch for sexual reassignment surgery.
Where does that leave me? Assigned female, raised to be a girl, feeling quite ambigenderous and not willing to compromise my freedom to make the sex reassignment surgery decision.
I was offered a fantastic bonus while at sea in 2008 to reenlist and make a lateral move to a counterterror linguist position. I struggled with the offer but finally told them I was getting out because I wanted to go to college to get my Master's. I would have seriously considered reenlisting if I knew the Marines would still allow me to serve after my surgery but I couldn't continue to lie about it.
And make no mistake: the policy, just like the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, doesn't actually mean no trans people serve. It just means they're lying while serving, which undermines everything we hear about the Corps values of honor, courage, and commitment. It's a shame and a sham.
Now, three years later, I'm in graduate school for engineering. I'm post-surgery, physically fit, a month away from a name change, and mentally feeling fine. I intend to work with robots in space exploration and I want to be an astronaut. I've got internship offers, good grades, great mentors. Things are great.
Well, for a given definition of 'great', because everything is great except that my military experience has made me deeply skeptical of my chances to actually become an astronaut. Even LGB people say "of course we can't have trans people in the service!" as if they know what the service is, what it means, what it's like, and how common surgery and therapy are for enlisted personnel in general.
Not to mention, it's the height of irony for an LGB person to say, "Everyone knows trans people would be disruptive!" in the wake of the striking down of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
I'm blogging here at FRW because I know I'm not the only trans person who's making a career in the military-industrial complex. We've got some trans icons already whom I'll introduce and talk about. I'll also dig up some studies in human factors engineering that address mental and physical issues in work in difficult or remote locations under stress.
And, finally, because I know other young trans men and women are enlisting anyway, I'm going to talk about what it was really like for me.
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