Trump's Military Ban On Transgender Troops Is Back In Effect — But The Fight Isn't Over

By Linley Sanders


There’s rarely a moment any time Captain Jenn Peace can get some rest, especially these days. She spent the week of April 8, 2019, rushing between Congressional offices, transgender advocacy events, a television appearance on The View, and train rides residence. Amid a vital period for LGBTQ+ rights — as a military ban on transgender enlistment went back inside effect on April 12, and the Supreme Court reported on April 22 that it will make the next determination about whether federal law prohibits transgender discrimination — Peace is still attempting to find a semblance of balance.


Peace's story serves as a focal point of the award-winning 2018 documentary TransMilitary, which also follows Senior Airman Logan Ireland, Corporal Laila Villanueva, and First Lieutenant El Cook working in the military while speedily shifting rules on transgender service restrict them from serving under their gender identity. The hour-and-a-half film highlights how the servicemembers put careers and livelihoods at risk categorize in attempt to stand up for an estimated 15,000 transgender soldiers who aspire to serve their country.


Peace right now works as a calculated intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Business immediately after serving in the military for 15 years, where she worked as a firm commander and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. She once hoped for a “normal, sort of quiet life” with her family member. It seemed feasible once: a life without successive speeches tough America’s ban on transgender troops serving their nation in the military — a sort of life where that level of endless media engagement wouldn’t be needed, where she's simply a mom catching her oldest child’s musical group concert between phone calls and efforts to clean up the house.


Although she’s not there yet.


On April 12, the U.S. Government started enforcing a new policy that effectively bans transgender people from joining the U.S. Military. The system makes it a disqualifying act to have a “history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria” unless the person never transitions and follows specific military rules; any officer who is “unable or unwilling” to adhere to the sex they were designated at birth will not be allowed to serve.


there really is a grandfather clause that permits current transgender troops to continue with hormone treatments and transition plans if they were diagnosed with gender dysphoria before the April 12 deadline. Peace is allowed to serve because she came out as transgender and procured medical care while in the Obama administration, which makes her piece of a little musical group of service members who are excluded from President Donald Trump’s ban.


“It's been a realization that we can't ever be quiet,” Peace told MTV News. “If it's got to be door-to-door, then that's what we've got to do. We just can't afford for anyone to stay silent.”


Peace had her own reckoning with whether to be visible and share her story in 2016, soon after President Obama and Defense Secretary Ash Carter reported a policy that would end the military's long-standing ban on transgender people serving in the military. Peace had been fighting for the change alongside SPART*A, a company of transgender military members currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.


“I thought about getting out,” Peace told MTV News. “But, what I realized is that in the event you desire to create the military better, you've got to be the sort of leader that you hope to be able to see. You can't change a company from the outdoor. You could only change the military by being the kind of soldier that you want there to be in the military.”


Nevertheless, the White House's approval of transgender troops serving in the military reversed in July 2017 right after Trump initially reported on Twitter that he could be installing a new ban to reverse the Obama administration's policy. The change was rapidly challenged in court, although right after a couple of injunctions, it is currently formally in effect. For transgender service members who were allowed to openly serve and obtained acceptance from their commanders and fellow service members, the decision resembles a sharp step backward.


Fiona Dawson, the co-director of TransMilitary, says the film was created to help end the original transgender military ban that President Obama eventually lifted. Under President Trump's ban, they are “back to the original mission” of teaching people about the significance of transgender service and allowing them to meet Peace and her fellow servicemembers via screen.


“As a supporter, I want to use the film to help educate and change hearts and minds, right to the highest level,” Dawson told MTV News. “How could any of us possibly sit by the sidelines once you've got someone like Jenn Peace putting herself out there constantly and demonstrating how unfounded and foolish like this ban is?”


The policy impacts each person, Peace explains. Not only is excluding qualified transgender troops a national security supply across the board because it leaves the military short of its target troop numbers, however it also creates a harmful dynamic where folks are falsely seen as “not qualified” simply because of their gender identity. And Peace worries that civilian transgender people will ultimately face even more discrimination and possibly violence because of the rescinded military rules as well.


“I thought for the longest time that we just had to go [to Congress] with facts and figures and numbers,” Peace told MTV News. “And all those are out. There's no one who cares that doesn't know what all of the facts are. This should not be a partisan supply. It shouldn't be a bipartisan allocate. This is a non-partisan distribute about national security.”


As Peace keeps it up and continues to trim a light on transgender role models and supporter for Congressional support, she asks people to think about other groups who were once restricted from military service, including females, minority Residents of the
U.S., Or openly gay service members. Peace notes that textbooks rarely remember people kindly for fighting against inclusion out of discrimination, fear, or hate.


“This is just that next step,” she tells MTV News. “This is going to be the generation that looks back on LGBTQ+ and specifically transgender rights and will have to account for what they’ve done. Did they speak out against discrimination and injustice against a minority class? It's going to be soon that we will look back and wonder why we did this to ourselves, why we did this to our own people.”


To learn more about issues affecting trans people, head to trans.Mtv.Com.