For Transgender Service Members, Honesty Can End Career
It felt like the pinnacle of his career, working the graveyard shift in a windowless plywood facility in Afghanistan, monitoring a Special Operations mission as it unfolded in real time on grainy video feeds.
After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars training Landon Wilson to intercept communications, the U.S. military was capitalizing on its investment in the young sailor, already regarded as a rising star in a critical, highly technical field.
But shortly after 2 a.m. on Dec. 7, when a superior tapped him on the back and summoned him outside, one of the secrets that mattered most to Wilson began to unravel.
“This Navy record says female, but this paper says male,” the grim-faced sergeant major noted, displaying two sets of personnel records. “So, what are you?”
More: For Transgender Service Members, Honesty Can End Career
h/t to Pam Spaulding