Australia
— A soldier is fighting to stay in the military
while having a sex change operation to turn him from G.I.
Jane to G.I. Joe.
Every day this Fort
Campbell soldier puts on his uniform, he realizes it may
be his last. "It's hard, but it's a challenge I knew I
had to take."
You see, this nine-year
army veteran, who we'll call 'Greg' and who asked that
his face not be shown, is currently going through an
emotional and physical transition, a sex change that will
take him from a female soldier to a male
soldier.
"I'll go forward with my
surgeries as much as possible. The lower surgery, the
sexual reassignment surgery - I don't see it happening in
the near future. Chest surgery, though, shouldn't be a
big issue."
Before changing his name
six months ago, his unit knew him as a woman even though
he was taking hormones and had facial hair.
"Nobody's ever really
said that much to me about it. They accept it...they'll
question it, but nothing negative has ever happened
because of it."
While most think that
being in the military would be the last thing that
someone in his situation would want; he says that's not
the case.
"It's actually the first
place we all run to. There's a great number in the
military that are just never spoken of. The latest one
that's come out was a Colonel Special Forces who applied
for the Congressional Library Position and was turned
down when he identified himself as being
trans-gender."
When asked, "what has
been one of the hardest things you've gone through just
going through this entire situation", Greg replied, "I
have to live at a point two lifestyles and at times that
gets kind of hard, and it's kind of hard... but it's
worth it for what I want."
And what Greg wants is to
remain in the military as a man, even though soldiers in
similar situations before him have all been
discharged.
"I don't, I don't flaunt
it...I am who I am, and that's just what I am, but I do
my job, and I do what's required of me. And I can still
meet the military standards of either gender. I hold
myself to the standards of a male, not the female. So, I
can do my job, so why kick me out?"
