Hours later, Wilson was sent back to the U.S., where he was ultimately kicked out of the Navy because of his gender identity. “Your paperwork here says female, but you certainly don’t look like one.” “I need to know what you are,” Wilson recalled his sergeant major asking one night while deployed in Afghanistan. Wilson, on the other hand, was wearing plain clothes - a sad reminder of his military discharge for being transgender. They were wearing uniforms, bedecked with rank and merit bars earned over long careers serving in austere conditions. Like WIlson, both were transgender and had undergone transition-related surgeries. Seated beside Wilson at the conference were two top-ranking female military officials, one from the Royal Australian Air Force and the other from the U.K.’s Royal Air Force.
The goal of Monday’s gathering, entitled “Perspectives on Transgender Military Service from Around the Globe,” was to hear from representatives of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden - five of the 18 countries that currently allow transgender service - and determine what, if anything, the U.S.
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