--- title: Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity | TIME description: An estimated 15,000 transgender troops currently serve in the U.S. military. Each has risked dismissal from military service for revealing his or her identity. That could all be about to change. Directed by Gillian Laub and Shaul Schwarz canonical: https://time.com/video/R659iSlZ/ og:title: Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity og:description: An estimated 15,000 transgender troops currently serve in the U.S. military. Each has risked dismissal from military service for revealing his or her identity. That could all be about to change. Directed by Gillian Laub and Shaul Schwarz og:url: https://time.com/video/R659iSlZ/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/R659iSlZ/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity twitter:description: An estimated 15,000 transgender troops currently serve in the U.S. military. Each has risked dismissal from military service for revealing his or her identity. That could all be about to change. Directed by Gillian Laub and Shaul Schwarz twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/R659iSlZ/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity [Watch (HLS stream): Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/R659iSlZ.m3u8) (14:08)  _Published 2015-07-15. An estimated 15,000 transgender troops currently serve in the U.S. military. Each has risked dismissal from military service for revealing his or her identity. That could all be about to change. Directed by Gillian Laub and Shaul Schwarz_ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:23 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [South Korean Military Discharges Transgender Tank Driver, Despite Her Pleas to Serve](/video/vIlYxJ7D/) ### South Korean Military Discharges Transgender Tank Driver, Despite Her Pleas to Serve [First Take: Gillian Laub](/video/tTiJgHT3/) ### First Take: Gillian Laub [Four Generations by Gillian Laub](/video/13BuBqHh/) ### Four Generations by Gillian Laub --- ## Transcript When I found out I was going to Afghanistan, a lot of people were like, excited. Some people were shaken up. But I was more optimistic at the fact that I could, you know, maybe die and not have to face the reality of, you know, the life that nobody knew. I have a family. I had a wife, I had my pets, and I had things to come back to. But at the same time, those didn't mean anything to me because I wasn't able to be me with God, as you know, as a main focus of my life. I made a bet with him. I was like, Hey, 5050, you know, if I flip this coin and it lands on heads, I keep my heads off the lions on tails, I'm a blow it out when I flip that coin. I was hoping, you know, that I can just choose a way out. But I landed on heads, you know, And God, obviously to me, wanted to keep me around, but I didn't know why and I didn't question him. But I made a promise, you know, if I'm going to go and try to live the rest of my life, I'm going to try a little bit happy. I was like the really the most selfish being active ever chose to thing. But I was done pretending. I've been done for pretending for years. And yeah, I seem like a coward way out. Easy, way out. But it was something that I value that problem. And, you know, memorials are made after people. Who die in war. Memorials are made for trans people who balance dreams. I felt proud to be an American soldier and to be able to wear the flag on my shoulder and show that as an American, this is part of paying for our freedom and paying for our rights. The military does employ the most transgender people out of every corporation or any job in the United States. 15,000 people are transgender in the military serving right now. That's 15,000 people that are questioning who they really are and trying to be a soldier protecting the freedom of American rights. They're patriots. They are doing stuff that only 1% of the population does. And to have that cloud over them, I feel, limits them from having their full potential of being the best that they can be. Ironically enough, it was my promotion that outed me after they had saw that my enlistment paperwork said Female. I talked to a sergeant major and sat down, looked me in the face and said, So what are you? And I remember thinking, I'm human first and foremost, and I'm here to do my job. I took my first job, testosterone, and it was like I took my very first breath of life that made me a better person. And it made putting on that uniform so much easier. So I began without telling anybody except my closest friend at the time, and nobody asked any questions for a year. So while wearing a uniform and at work, I was female. I was she. I was her. But outside of work, in civilian clothes, outside of the base, everybody saw me as male. And then I left my command in Hawaii and arrived on the East Coast to begin my deployment training. I arrived by myself. Nobody from my unit was with me and everybody took me again at face value. So I went through uniform issue with the males, and then I went on to do combat training with the males. And then when I arrived in Afghanistan, I was in the barracks with the males like I had been through my entire training. And that's the picture I sent back home to my family whenever I was over there. My mom actually got rid of all my pictures from about time I was one to fairly recently. So 22, 23 years old. It was almost like having those pictures on display or hanging up in the living room or anything like that would be like having a stranger in your house for both of us. So she decided to get rid of them. And now all we have are pictures moving forward. I'm leaving out. Why would you just sit in one spot? I had this funny. Name for these patrols. I'd just like to go ahead and do my part and just try and do my job and live my life. I mean, look at the Army's core values. The loyalty, honor, respect. I mean, like these people, me included. I was honest with my chain of command. I took the courage to to tell them the truth, and they still kicked me out for it. I mean, I go to work scared every day that today is going to be the day they're going to hammer down on me for being mean, for just being mean, for just existing. I obviously joined the military as a male, and after a year of serving in the Army, I began transitioning from male to female. And by the time I left about five and a half years later, I left as a female soldier and definitely had a lot of anxiety that like somebody would call me out on it or somebody would just go in and start pushing the regulations and kick me out. But I remember there was this one instance was probably the last four months that I was in active duty. I was sitting in a conference room and it was me and my battle buddy. We were waiting for a brief and it was just the two of us. And I leaned back in the office chair and my makeup compact had actually fallen out of my cargo pocket. And you just looked at me, looked at the compact, and I was trying to think of some excuse as quickly as possible, like I was holding on to it for another female soldier. I was starting to say something like that, and all I did was reach down, picked it up and handed it to him and he's like, Dude, everybody knows, nobody cares. You're just still the same soldier that I've always hung out with, that I've always worked with. And and it doesn't bother me any. Being openly transgender in the military is found as a behavioral health disorder or mental disorder, and they can kick you out administratively or through a med board for being transgender. It's definitely hard to go from one extreme to the other when I have an amazing weekend with my friends and then wake up Monday morning and put on my uniform and know that I can tell anybody at work how busy my weekend was, what I did. It's it makes you feel separated from everyone around you. Like, this is me and this is me excited. This is me. Living doesn't feel like anything. It feels like normality. It feels like I'm just expressing who I am, what I am, you know, that's like, God made me this way and I want to fully express it. I'm going to fully love it and hold on to it and be able to do what I'm going to do to be me. And no one can take that from me. I mean, they can try as hard as they want, but this is who I am and this is who I always will be as grandmother. I don't care. There is grandmother. Hi, Carla. I saw I was okay. I was terrified. They may not that. Grandma doesn't like me. I say Grandma doesn't like me. So I'm going to get going. I'll talk to you guys later, okay? And I'll. Bye. Love you. The She isn't just busy. I mean, every time she's just busy or is is like I talk to her for a second and then she just walks away. She's been there, like, my whole life. And now since, like, this part of my journey when, like, she can help me and everything is just not there. I talked to a sergeant major, and he made me produce government paperwork that said I was male. And then he sent me back to work. And then only 15, 20 minutes later, I was pulled back again and told to pack my bags and I would be out on the next rotator, had to be escorted back to my room because all of a sudden I was a female and male space. So I had to be supervised to pack my bags and I had to bring everything to the loading docks and wait. And I was surrounded by these people who were going home after a deployment that had lasted them a year. And they were continuing talking about the things they were looking forward to, the things that they couldn't wait to see again, their families, their brothers, their sisters, their kids have a certain meal. And all I wanted to do was go back to work. I always knew that it was really just kind of bound to happen. Eventually, it was only a matter of time that the wrong person would figure me out and kick me out for it. Even though I was sworn in as a female and to the Ohio National Guard, the Battalion XO definitely made sure that you used to regulations in order to kick me out for being transgender. So within a year of being sworn in and completely accepted, I was rejected and kicked out. And even now that I'm a defense contractor, I make three times my salary as an active duty soldier. I'd definitely trade it in a heartbeat just to just to wear the uniform again and be a soldier like I was before. I nobody knew about my secret and nobody knew about the situation I was in. And it was actually easier to be in Afghanistan than it is to be in the States. There was only one thing I really had to do was go out and do missions and that really there's no future, There's no past. There's only that moment. 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