Transgender Military Experiences: From Obama to Trump

ABSTRACT

On September 20, 2011, President Barack Obama repealed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy allowing Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (LGB) people to openly serve in the U.S. military even though transgender service members were not afforded the same protections. On July 23, 2015, Obama’s Secretary of Defense Ash Carter officially rescinded the transgender ban. For this study, survey data was collected from 26 transgender service members beginning in October 2018 and ending in December 2018. A second series of interviews was conducted with seven cisgender veterans beginning in August 2020 and ending in January 2021. The dual purpose of this study was to investigate transgender service members’ experiences during the Obama administration and through the first years of the Trump administration. Secondly, interviews were conducted with cisgender veterans from roughly the same service time period. Findings provide a glimpse into the lives of transgender active duty service members post-DADT and during the Trump Administration ban. Data also reveals how a sample of cisgender veterans view policy and other issues surrounding transgender active duty service personnel. Participants from both groups agreed that unit cohesion and readiness was not negatively impacted by transgender active duty military personnel and that inclusion was a positive and unifying factor.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender service members
• military
• unit cohesion
• military readiness
• cisgender veterans

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Brynn Tannehill for getting the Qualtrics survey to SPART*A members. We also thank the transgender military service members who shared their stories and the cisgender military veterans who participated in the second part of the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.