A Tale Of Two Armies

There are two articles that were making their rounds on Facebook the other day; they are different as day is to night. First the day,

National Coming Out Day: British Senior Transgender Officer Shares Her Story
Morning Ledger
By Regina Inonog
October 12, 2015

With the recent celebration of National Coming Out Day comes the inspiring stories that followed. One such story is that of Captain Hannah Winterbourne’s, the highest ranking transgender officer in the British Army.

The captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers spent her first few years as a man in the Army before making the decision to transition at age 25, while on duty at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.

“Being in the Army I felt I had to put on a veneer of confident outgoing masculinity,” she said. “I played a good game. I suppressed a lot of feminine characteristics and learnt to behave in a very masculine way because that’s how society had conditioned me to be.”
[…]
“The army has been very, very supportive. It is a great place for transgender personnel. They don’t care if you are LGBT, black or white, as long as you can do your job.”

And now about the darkness…

Transgender officer who spent $50,000 to become a woman slams US Army rules that force soldiers to keep calling her 'sir'
Daily Mail
By Kieran Corcoran
PUBLISHED: 7 October 2015

A transgender soldier in the U.S. Army has hit out at military rules which mean her subordinates still have to refer to her as 'sir'.

Captain Jennifer Peace, an intelligence specialist, started transitioning into a woman in early 2014 after a decade of military service that saw her fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But, despite the 30-year-old undergoing surgeries to make her look more feminine and being recognized as a woman by the federal government, military officials insist on treating her as a man.
[…]
And though she says they began being supportive, high-ranking officers later put her through psychiatric tests and medical evaluations, with one even suggesting she leave the military altogether.

Before she returned to duty with her new identity, commanders even issued orders to troops she was in charge of, insisting they continue to refer to her as a man, because the Army does not officially recognise the possibility that soldiers can change gender.

It must be a living hell for trans service members in the U.S. military and they must possess courage to want to stay in the military. I hope that U.S. military doesn’t delay much longer in changing the their policy for trans sevicemembers.