Transgender veterans condemn Trump tweets
Wisconsin service members say the move sends ‘worst possible message’
Sheri Swokowski served 35 years in the Army and retired in 2004 as a colonel in the Wisconsin National Guard when she was still known as Jeffrey.
Swokowski was surprised but not shocked to hear Wednesday that President Donald Trump called for barring transgender people from serving in the American military.
“Frankly, I was surprised the leader of our military would even think transgender people were not capable of fighting for our nation, especially since we’ve been doing it since the 1700s,” said Swokowski, 67, who lives near Madison and transitioned to female after retiring from the military.
When “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed in 2011, gay, lesbian and bisexual military members were allowed to serve openly. But not transgender troops, who continued to risk getting tossed out of the military. That’s because “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” addressed sexual orientation, not gender identity. And the military’s policy toward transgender troops was to consider gender dysphoria, the scientific term for people who identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, as a psychosexual disorder.
But that began to change in 2015 when then U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter created a Pentagon group to study the implications of allowing transgender people to serve openly. He also moved all decisions to dismiss troops for gender dysphoria to the level of undersecretary of defense, taking those decisions from battalion and brigade commanders where attitudes varied — some commanders immediately dismissed people once they learned they were transgender, while others didn’t mind as long as transgender service members performed their jobs.
Trump’s Twitter message on Wednesday would reverse the moves under former President Barack Obama to allow transgender people serving openly in the military, citing “tremendous medical costs and disruption.”
“It’s sending the worst possible message that you’re not wanted, that they want you to take off your uniform even though many are the top performers in their fields. It’s showing that the military and Department of Defense is not an equal opportunity employer,” said Swokowski, pointing out that 18 countries, including many that are U.S. allies, allow transgender troops to serve openly.
Swokowski spent 20 years on active duty followed by 15 years in the National Guard, teaching in the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point ROTC program, commanding a National Guard company and working in a variety of jobs while steadily rising in rank, including director of human resources for the Army and Air National Guard in Wisconsin.
Swokowski said Trump’s tweets don’t equate to policy and she vowed to protest any attempts to boot transgender people out of the military.
“If he’s really set on this, the military has trained us to fight and this administration should expect us to do that,” said Swokowski.
Swokowski added: “What does this say about our largest employer in the nation? That it has a