Maj. Alivia Stehlik instructs overseas and US army clinical workforce throughout a joint emergency medication workout at Citadel Cavazos, Texas, in 2023. Picture by means of US Military Reserve Sgt. Karen Sampson
Battle disinformation: Join the unfastened Mom Jones Day-to-day publication and apply the inside track that issues.
Twelve years in the past, Military 1st Lt. Alivia Stehlik walked the parade course for President Obama’s 2d inauguration, ensuring the whole lot would move easily. Stehlik spent weeks making plans for the Military’s position within the inaugural parade, coaching troops, and teaching a gaggle of high-ranking generals and admirals on marching in step.
Six-foot-two, with a West Level pedigree, a Ranger tab, ramrod immediately posture, and an infectious smile, Stehlik used to be a really perfect trainer. As a ceremonies officer stationed on the Military’s Previous Guard in Washington, DC—which guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, conducts army funerals at Arlington, and serves because the president’s ceremonial escort—Stehlik used to be a professional in marching. The generals and the admirals, alternatively, wanted some refreshers.
As soon as, Stehlik used to be coaching a feminine admiral who requested why there have been no girls within the Military’s honor guard. Again then, Stehlik offered as a person. She would transition years later after the army allowed transgender troops to begin serving brazenly.
Stehlik had puzzled in regards to the admiral’s query too—different products and services’ honor guards have been blended gender. However the Previous Guard’s ceremonial corporate pulled completely from Military infantry, and girls weren’t allowed within the infantry till 2016.
“Ma’am,” Stehlik advised the admiral, “that’s way above my pay grade.”
Lately, Stehlik, now a significant, is looking ahead to every other determination from some distance above her pay grade about who has the fitting to serve.
President Trump made transgender problems a centerpiece of his marketing campaign, promising to “stop the transgender lunacy” and “get transgender out of the military.” Right through his first time period, Trump banned transgender other folks from serving within the army, regardless that in the end troops who had already transitioned—like Stehlik—have been grandfathered in.
That will not be the case this time.
On Monday, in his inaugural cope with, Trump proclaimed that the federal government acknowledges “only two genders: male and female.” Later that day, he repealed an government order by means of President Biden permitting transgender other folks to serve. Now, Stehlik and hundreds of alternative troops, stationed from Connecticut to Kentucky to California, are bracing to look if Trump orders a brand new trans ban.
Whilst the wait—and weight of the verdict—is also agonizing, there’s little transgender carrier individuals can do to make their case. Like every just right soldier, Stehlik, now an Military bodily therapist, went to paintings at Citadel Campbell in Kentucky at the frigid morning after Trump’s inauguration.
“I actually don’t spend time speculating about it,” she stated. “I’m just trying to be good at my job.”
“Being perfect means not standing out.”
The teachings carried over from the Previous Guard, the place the whole lot used to be drilled to perfection: each and every footstep in lockstep, each and every uniform precisely adapted. Not anything may well be misplaced.
“There was no allowance for, ‘We messed up this time.’ There was no lexicon for that in the Old Guard,” Stehlik stated. “Being perfect means not standing out.”
When Stehlik first transitioned in 2017, she frightened about status out.
“I was the only six-foot-two chick with a Ranger tab,” she stated.
However at the present time, there are different feminine Rangers who put on the respected badge, different transgender squaddies in uniform. She has deployed to Afghanistan and traveled with the Military to Jordan, the UAE, Lebanon. She has handled hundreds of squaddies.
Lately, she is the director of holistic well being and health for the one hundred and first Airborne Department at Citadel Campbell. She lives about an hour south of base in Nashville along with her spouse and a wildly affectionate canine named Mozzie. She rides her motorbike, performs keyboard and piano, guitar and bass, and browses bookstores at the weekend. Regardless of the rising political pressure over trans problems, existence is customary as a rule. She does no longer really feel similar to she sticks out anymore; she does no longer wish to speak about status out.
As a substitute, she needs to discuss her process. On Tuesday, the day after the inauguration, there used to be a quarterly brigade coaching briefing and a suicide prevention making plans assembly. A peer-reviewed paper on optimizing girls’s efficiency in sports activities demanded consideration on her table at house, the place an Military Ranger flag hangs above the squat rack in her storage.
“She’s top notch,” stated Becky Wagner, a former energetic responsibility Military doctor’s assistant who served with Stehlik throughout her deployment to Afghanistan. “She’s just a good soldier.”
Whilst you’re a just right soldier, Stehlik says, you keep out of politics.
“That’s kind of a fundamental part of being a soldier,” she stated.
Hundreds of transgender carrier individuals serve within the army, regardless that the precise quantity is unclear. Estimates from two analysis facilities, the Williams Institute at UCLA and the now-defunct Palm Middle have put the determine round 15,000, however the Pentagon does no longer publicly observe the quantity.
Information from UCLA additionally displays that transgender American citizens signal as much as serve their nation at a fee two times that of cisgender other folks. Maximum transgender servicemembers have greater than 12 years of carrier, stated Rachel Branaman, the manager director of the Fashionable Army Affiliation of The usa, which advocates for LGBTQ carrier individuals.
Any communicate of a ban “harms readiness,” Branaman stated.
Casting off hundreds of long-serving troops, she stated, represents “a lot of specialized training that essentially costs billions of dollars and creates an operational gap.”
Transgender squaddies and sailors have been first explicitly banned from army carrier within the Nineteen Sixties. However issues began converting after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the coverage that had prohibited homosexual and lesbian troops from serving brazenly. In 2013, the Military approved Cpt. Sage Fox, a transgender lady, to go back in brief to energetic responsibility, and by means of 2015, the army branches had made it tough to push aside carrier individuals for his or her gender id. In 2016, the Obama White Area formally ended the ban on transgender carrier individuals.
However in July 2017, amid a rising backlash amongst conservatives, Trump tweeted that he used to be reinstating the ban.
“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military,” he wrote. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”
Stehlik grew up the eldest kid of an Military officer, a West Level graduate, and from her earliest reminiscences, she sought after the similar existence for herself. She remembered the tanks from her father’s early occupation—the “real” Military, she says—prior to he settled right into a extra sedate 2d act in operations analysis on the Pentagon.
She spent a lot of her early life and teen years in northern Virginia, the place her mom homeschooled her and her 4 more youthful siblings. In what would were her senior yr of highschool, she took categories at a area people faculty, after which were given an appointment to West Level, arriving in the summertime of 2004. It used to be years prior to Stehlik learned she used to be transgender, however she felt at house within the Military.
From the start, she knew she have been proper: The lifetime of a soldier used to be the existence for her. Even throughout West Level’s notoriously tough first yr, she liked it—fellow cadets referred to as Stehlik the “happy plebe.”
“I think I felt seen, I felt valued for the things that I could do,” Stehlik stated. “I like doing hard things. I just find intrinsic value in soldiering and being around soldiers.”
So when Stehlik graduated from West Level, she selected to be a soldier’s soldier, commissioning as an infantry officer. It used to be 2008, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been in complete swing, and it could be just about 8 years prior to girls could be approved to serve in struggle roles, just like the infantry. However Stehlik had no longer but pop out as transgender. Like every just right soldier, she sought after to be the place the motion used to be.
Stehlik graduated from the Military’s grueling Ranger college route after which used to be stationed at Camp Casey in South Korea, the place she served as an infantry platoon chief. Her plan have been to use from there to the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment. However she used to be newly married and frightened the extensive coaching and deployments would take a toll on her courting.
So as a substitute, she authorised orders to the Military’s storied Previous Guard. She nonetheless tears up when she thinks about greeting the caskets of fallen troops getting back from Iraq or Afghanistan.
“There’s not a lot that you can compare to having to give a flag to somebody’s surviving family,” she stated. “How do you do right by the people who are willing to give their lives for this idea of what we’re doing here in America, this idea of our country, and of freedom and opportunity?”
Stehlik started her transition at Citadel Carson in 2017, no longer lengthy after she graduated from bodily treatment college on the Military’s clinical coaching program at Baylor College.
Even then, anti-trans sentiment and regulation have been rising around the nation. Via 2017, legislators in Texas, the place Baylor is positioned, had began introducing expenses in the hunt for to control which bogs trans other folks may use. Anti-LGBTQ expenses into account around the nation have swelled lately, from 81 in 2020 to greater than 530 in 2024, consistent with the ACLU.
In Kentucky, the place Stehlik is these days stationed, lawmakers in 2023 overrode a veto to go a regulation proscribing dialogue of gender id and sexual orientation in colleges and requiring maximum transgender minors to detransition, amongst different issues. That very same yr, at a conservative convention, the political commentator Michael Knowles referred to as for “transgenderism” to be “eradicated from public life … for the good of society.”
When Trump tweeted that he used to be going to prohibit trans squaddies, Stehlik used to be stationed at Citadel Carson, Colorado.
“I was like, ‘OK…cool. Yep, I’m your therapist,’” Stehlik stated.
However then her sister texted, asking if she used to be all proper, and defined what had took place.
Trump’s tweet reportedly took the Pentagon by means of marvel, and it took two months for Protection officers and the White Area to hash out what precisely it intended. In the long run, army coverage prohibited new transgender troops from enlisting and active-duty carrier individuals from transitioning, however it didn’t take away transgender servicemembers from responsibility, nor did it restrict them from re-enlisting.
Stehlik stated she simply stored doing her process. In a while after taking place of job in 2021, President Biden signed an government order rescinding the ban.
Stehlik had moved into bodily treatment as a result of she liked serving to other folks keep are compatible and noticed the sector so that you could without delay lend a hand squaddies at the entrance line, holding them deployable and supporting the venture.
However she frightened how troops would react to being handled by means of a transgender therapist, particularly as she ready to visit Afghanistan. She used to be involved her fellow squaddies would possibly really feel uncomfortable, closed off to her, which might make offering care tougher.
However that wasn’t the case, she stated.
“Folks have been far more susceptible with me than I anticipated them to be. Even those younger hotshot infantry and Particular Forces guys which are available in the market, the very last thing I anticipated used to be upper ranges of vulnerability from them about how they have been in fact doing. However I were given that far more ceaselessly than I anticipated.
“And I think it was because I just exist as myself. I’m really unapologetically who I am. And I think that gives other people the freedom to be that too.”
Different squaddies who’ve served with Stehlik stated they noticed the similar factor.
“I’ve brought in some of the oldest, crustiest Green Berets that I know,” stated Lt. Col. Dan Brillhart, an Military doctor who has run clinical coaching workout routines with Stehlik. First of all, he stated, a few of them have been uncomfortable about operating along Stehlik.
“They inevitably, universally fall under her spell,” Brillhart stated. “They’re like, ‘She’s amazing…When I come back next year, I want to work with Alivia.’”
He wasn’t the one person who spoke a few type of magic she dropped at her paintings.
“I used to call her the brigade healer,” stated Col. Jon Put up, who labored with Stehlik on the safety forces help command, offering beef up to spouse nations within the Center East. “She is incredibly emotionally intelligent.”
“Her thing was always: Be a better human,” stated Body of workers Sgt. Logan Haller, who served as her bodily treatment tech throughout her deployment to Afghanistan. “She sat me down and said, ‘OK, Logan, where do you want to go with your life, with your career? … As a soldier, she was awesome.”
Haller remembered one soldier who stored calling Stehlik “sir” as a substitute of “ma’am,” stored pronouncing “he” as a substitute of “she.” Stehlik, he stated, corrected him every so often. However Haller in any case pulled the soldier apart.
“I told him, ‘Hey, either get it right or get out. Find somebody else to take care of you,’” he stated.
He reminded the soldier of a core Military worth: “You treat everyone with dignity and respect.”
“He figured it out after that,” Haller stated.
A Quinnipiac ballot from the time of Trump’s first army trans ban discovered that just about 70 % of American citizens supported transgender troops being approved to serve brazenly. A 2020 find out about discovered a identical stage of beef up amongst active-duty carrier individuals.
Between 2016 and 2021, the Pentagon spent about $15 million on healthcare for transgender troops, nearly all of that on treatment visits, a lot of which might be mandated by means of army coverage on transgender carrier individuals and no longer essentially asked by means of troops themselves. Via comparability, in 2014, as the army started to believe permitting trans other folks to serve brazenly, it spent greater than $80 million on erectile disorder medication.
Mavens who spoke with The Conflict Horse have been hesitant to invest on what a brand new ban would possibly appear to be. However they stated it will span a spread of probabilities, from simply no longer permitting new transgender enlistees to discharging hundreds of active-duty troops.
“I think everybody is just waiting to see what’s coming,” Branaman stated.
She and different professionals stated that the extra excessive risk—casting off active-duty transgender troops—may well be logistically very tough for the army branches.
“There’s going to be administrative chaos,” Branaman stated.
“Who’s going to join the military from Gen Z or Gen Alpha if you can’t bring your gay friend or your trans friend?”
Sue Fulton, a senior marketing consultant to SPARTA Delight, an affiliation of active-duty transgender army individuals, stated that “trying to implement some sort of new ban would be a mess and a problem for commanders.”
Usually, carrier individuals who’re got rid of from energetic responsibility for nonpunitive causes are discharged both administratively or thru a clinical course. Each processes may also be time-consuming and burdensome, with more than a few insurance policies spelling out procedures for required hearings, forums, and attainable appeals. It may be extra difficult to split other folks in sure crucial specialties or carrier individuals who’re with reference to retirement.
When the army discharges a carrier member for clinical causes, it may possibly take any place from six months to greater than a yr. Dashing issues up would most likely require adjustments to different army insurance policies.
Luke Schleusener, the pinnacle of Out in Nationwide Safety, a nonpartisan nonprofit for queer nationwide safety execs, stated that the ones types of adjustments could be “kind of capricious.”
“It’s going to say to a population that has been serving pretty much continuously that you are suddenly not eligible, not because you no longer meet requirements, but because we’ve changed requirements to specifically expel you.”
He and different professionals additionally highlighted issues about recruiting objectives, which the army branches have struggled to satisfy lately. A 2024 find out about from the Public Faith Analysis Institute discovered that 30 % of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ.
“Who’s going to join the military from Gen Z or Gen Alpha if you can’t bring your gay friend or your trans friend?” Schleusener stated.
Twelve years in the past, after weeks of coaching and preparation, Stehlik watched the inaugural parade from CNN’s press field, available to supply professional statement on parade protocols. This Inauguration Day, she used to be at house in Nashville.
Stehlik has performed the piano since she used to be seven. She says it’s the object she’s carried out the longest in her existence. The article she’s carried out the second one longest is serve within the Military.
At West Level, in Eisenhower Corridor, a nine-foot Steinway grand piano sits in a ballroom. Stehlik recalls when she first performed it, framed by means of floor-to-ceiling home windows overlooking the Hudson River.
“I assumed that it wouldn’t be there when I came back,” she stated. It gave the impression misplaced; she concept it should most often be saved elsewhere. But if she subsequent went again to the ballroom, months later, the Steinway used to be nonetheless there.
She were given within the addiction of enjoying it, strolling down the hill from the barracks to the ballroom on every occasion she wanted a ruin from the grind of cadet existence.
On Inauguration Day in Nashville, Stehlik didn’t wish to speak about politics; the inauguration gave the impression political. However she mentioned West Level, the place she started her existence within the Military.
“I am as optimistic and idealistic as West Point is,” she stated. “Sometimes it feels naive to be idealistic, but I just am. I am a hopeful, optimistic human.”
On every occasion Stehlik is going again to West Level, she makes it some extent to stroll all the way down to Eisenhower Corridor to play the piano.
“Sometimes it’s hiding in a back corner behind curtains, and sometimes it’s out in the middle of the ballroom.”
However, she stated, “That piano is always there.”
This Conflict Horse tale used to be reported in Nashville by means of Sonner Kehrt, edited by means of Mike Frankel, fact-checked by means of Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by means of Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.
