According to Army major Alivia Stehlik, who came out as transgender in the spring of 2017, she was anxious about the reactions of her fellow soldiers and coworkers, particularly since she works as a physical therapist.
Most of your patients require personal contact, and at first I was apprehensive that people could find it awkward, she added. She did, however, say that in the eight years since coming out, she has been pleasantly pleased at every turn.
No one cares that I’m trans, she said, including my patients, coworkers, and other people I’ve worked with. They simply refer to me as Dr. Stehlik or Major Stehlik. That’s all.
Whoever is in political power at the moment shouldn’t affect our service.
Lieutenant Nicolas Talbott, Army Reserve
On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting transgender individuals from openly serving and joining the military. In order to address gender dysphoria—the medical term for the distress resulting from a misalignment between one’s gender identity and sex at birth—some trans people require medical and mental health care. The policy contends that this is incompatible with the military’s strict requirements for troop readiness, lethality and cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.
The precise impact of the order on the thousands of trans military personnel like Stehlik is unknown. This directive indicates that being trans fundamentally contradicts a soldier’s dedication to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life, in contrast to a similar policy Trump announced during his first term in 2017.
According to the order, a man’s claim that he is a woman and his demand that others respect this deception are incompatible with the selflessness and humility expected of a military member.
When NBC News interviewed trans military personnel who might be impacted by the directive, they all expressed a similar strategy: They intend to oppose the order while continuing to perform their duties.
When asked how she has felt since Trump issued the order Monday, Stehlik, who is stationed at Fort Campbell on the border between Kentucky and Tennessee, responded, “I’m just resolved.” Stehlik graduated from West Point in 2008 and received his officer commission.
Shortly after coming out, Stehlik spent nine months in the summer of 2018 treating soldiers in Afghanistan. She claimed that her expertise and the patches she wears on her uniform, which attest to her attendance at specialized military training schools, help her build trust with her patients and make her an effective worker.
According to her, trans people are just as prepared and deployable as everyone else. In order to be deployed, we must fulfill the same medical and physical fitness requirements. Additionally, trans military members who have already fulfilled the requirements to deploy are at danger all across the world as we speak.
Two trans individuals seeking to enlist and six trans military members filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday over the executive order.
Second lieutenant Nicolas Talbott, who has been in the Army Reserves for about a year, stated that he joined the lawsuit because he is afraid that Trump’s executive order may compel all transgender service members to leave the military altogether.
He added that the removal of thousands of trans service members would negatively affect readiness overall. “That’s going to have a huge impact, not only on myself personally, where I would be facing losing my job, losing my future career, and losing all of the benefits that come with being a member of the military, including my health insurance,” he said.
Talbott was a plaintiff in a case against the Trump ban in 2017, which kept him from joining at the time. He claimed that he made the moral decision to join the lawsuit that was filed on Tuesday.
Every time a new politician is elected to power, we don’t want transgender persons or any other minority member of the military to have to deal with this, he stated. Whoever is in political power at the moment shouldn’t affect our service.
Similar to Talbott, Navy Cmdr. Emily Shilling has previously been banned from the military for being transgender. Two days after the initial Trump ban went into force in 2019, Shilling stepped out, emphasizing that she was not speaking for the Pentagon or the Navy. She told NBC News in 2021 that the ban made her live a double life, with her personal life as a trans woman and her job requiring her to continue acting as her biological sex.
She claimed that she started to flourish after Biden issued an executive order in 2021 permitting transgender individuals to serve openly. She fought for and received her medical clearance to fly high-performance planes once more after being promoted to commander, which she claimed created a precedent that enabled other trans military members to follow suit.
She claimed that she has felt as like she is on a mission since Monday. She has served for almost 20 years and is also the president of Sparta, a group that advocates for trans veterans and service personnel. She stated that she would like to discuss what authentic trans Americans and service members look like with representatives at the White House or the Pentagon.
Since we have been serving openly for almost ten years, we have demonstrated that the initial justifications for not allowing transgender service are all untrue, she added. We have very low medical expenses. Our downtime is quite brief, and it has little impact on morale or unit cohesiveness.
Trump has targeted trans rights with several executive actions since last week. The State Department froze all passport applications seeking a sex-marker change after he signed an order hours after taking office, stating that the U.S. government will only recognize two sexes: male and female, and that these sexes are unchangeable and based on fundamental and unquestionable reality.