SEAL Team 6 member becomes Pentagon’s poster girl in transgender recruiting

[skin]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/26/seal-tem-sixs-kristin-beck-transgender-recruiting-/
Bill Gertz, The Washington Times

A former member of SEAL Team 6 has become the poster girl for a Pentagon effort to include transgenders — people who have undergone sex-change operations — in the ranks.

Kristin Beck, formerly Senior Chief Petty Officer Christopher Beck, spoke recently at several high-profile events at intelligence agencies and the Pentagon to promote the integration of transgenders.

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Beck has made some missteps along the way of becoming the public face of challenging the ban on transgender service members, but she is best suited to spark change from within the DoD.

[kira21 ♡♡♡]

Interesting but poorly written.  It refers to us as transgenders and mixes gender with 'sexually related terms' meaning sexual orientation.

[suzifrommd]

Interesting but poorly written.  It refers to us as transgenders and mixes gender with 'sexually related terms' meaning sexual orientation.

Of course it does.

The WT is an anti-progressive newspaper. The purpose of this article was to scare their readership about changes to the military, not to educate them about transgender issues.

[Eva Marie]

I saw some quotes in the article from transphobic military people. The ironic thing in all of this is that transgender people are already serving in the military just like Kristin did prior to coming out. The only change here is to allow trans people to quit hiding who they are.

[ErinWDK]

This news item may or may not mean much.  Things written from a transphobic perspective are not of much use.

I saw Kristen Beck at the one transgender conference I have attended and she gave a really good presentation.  She can connect with people, people in the military in particular.  As has been noted many times here what is needed for better trans* acceptance is education and Kristen is working on that in a really high profile manner.  Kudos to her.

She has one book out where she was hornswaggled into working with a ham handed co-author and I have read part of that.  I sort of backed off after hearing her description of the circumstances surronding the writing of that book.  She is working on a better version that should come with a title "Lady Valor" I will have to dig and see if that is out yet.  That should be a good read.


Erin

[kira21 ♡♡♡]

Oh I didn't realise the whole paper was like that. TBH I didn't see that there was a second page.

[Katherine]

She is quite brave for coming out the way she did.  I'm retired military and was in a similar unit for most of my career.  The military is not ready for the transgendered.  She has a Facebook page and website.