As a lesbian teen growing up in Houston, Sam Rodriguez longed to join the U.S. military. But its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which was instituted 1994 and drove gay soldiers into the closet, was not something Rodriguez could accept.
“I'd been out as a queer person since, like, freshman year, and I didn't want to subject myself to an institution that was going to force me back,” Rodriguez, now 38, tells Fortune.
But a few years after DADT was rescinded in 2011, Rodriguez enlisted in the U.S. Navy, explaining, “I wanted to be a part of something that was bigger than me.”
Rodriguez soon began identifying as nonbinary—a gender identity that is not exclusively male or female—and using they/them pronouns.
They began gender-affirming testosterone therapy to honor their “transmasculine” side in 2018—two years after President Obama ended a long-standing military ban on transgender people serving openly, and right before President Trump’s first ban on transgender military service took effect. That ban specifically blocked transgender people from enlisting, not continuing to serve, meaning Rodriguez was allowed to stay on. But it was still “a heartbreak," they say.
“Watching others be forced to either hide their identity or leave service altogether was devastating,” Rodriguez recalls. “It was a stark reminder that my ability to serve was precarious—entirely dependent on policies that could change with political tides.”
President Joe Biden reversed the ban in 2021 and Rodriguez felt “cautious optimism,” although “the fear didn’t fully go away.”
Now, after nine years in the U.S. Navy as a Second Class Petty Officer, Rodriguez has reason for fear anew: Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order, which gave the Secretary of Defense 30 days to come up with a policy that will make it clear that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
In short, another ban. And whiplash.
“It makes me feel sad and it also makes me feel angry,” Rodriguez, based with their spouse and young child in San Diego, tells Fortune (stressing, like all service members interviewed for this article, that they speak for themselves and not the military). “With the yo-yoing of the policy, it can make it hard for people to know where they're safe.”
That's an idea that's now resonating with all transgender soldiers—and all trans Americans, says Aimee Ruscio, a Washington, D.C.-based psychotherapist who treats transgender patients and has worked with trans service members.
“People do have a deep need to feel like they're safe—physically safe, but also that they're accepted as they are,” Ruscio, who personally identifies as nonbinary, tells Fortune. “And that's part of what gets shaken when something like this happens.”
The mental-health effects of being told you do not exist
The precise number of transgender individuals currently serving in the U.S. military is not known, although 2018 stats (the most recent available) from the non-profit Palm Center put it at around 14,000; in general, about 1 million American adults and 300,000 youths are transgender.
Still, debates about the mere existence of trans people continue to dominate the national narrative—including in Trump’s executive order about transgender military service: “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood,” it notes, “is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
Being told you don’t exist, says Ruscio, is “a fairly obliterating statement.” And being told that one’s “internal sense” of who they are is wrong, they add, “can create a lot of shame and can create a lot of anxiety.”
The attack on transgender rights had begun before Trump took office, with 26 states passing bans on minors receiving gender-affirming care. Since his inauguration, Trump has issued several executive orders targeting trans people, including one that insists upon only recognizing two sexes, male and female; one that directs agencies to restrict gender-affirming care to anyone under 19; one that bans trans women from participating in women’s sports; and the military ban (now being challenged in court).
The psychological impact of anti-trans legislation—and, by extent, executive orders—is well known at this point, and includes heightened levels of anxiety, depression, and suicide risk, according to the American Psychological Association. And the return of Trump—who had been outspoken about wanting to dismantle transgender rights on the campaign trail—has especially affected LGBTQ youth: The Trevor Project saw a 700% increase in crisis-line calls right after Election Day.
But trans people of all ages are at risk. The first study to assess post-election transgender mental health found anxiety had increased 45%, depression by 19%, and feelings of dread by 30% among trans Americans from the month before the election until the week afterward.
For those also in the military, the stress may feel compounded. “Serving in the military significantly impacts service members’ identities, shaping their self-perceptions, worldviews, and mental health and well-being,” notes a 2024 article about military identity in the journal Military Medicine. That, says Ruscio, may prompt the feeling of being attacked on two fronts.
“It's another way of saying that you can't exist, right? Because the message is: You can't be trans and be a service member. And yet, people are like, ‘Oh, but I'm here. I've been doing it, and it hasn't been a problem,” Ruscio says.
“Any time that your service is brought into question based off of who you are, that always creates a level of angst,” says Kara Corcoran, a 38-year-old combat arms officer and student of advanced military studies who also serves as vice president of SPARTA Pride, the non-profit organization supporting trans people in the military. She enlisted because she believes “in the American ideals of freedom and liberty,” and wanted to protect them, and still does today.
“I’ve dedicated most of my life to the military,” adds Corcoran, who has served for 17 years. Now, despite the anxiety of the impending ban, she says, “You show up every day and you put on the uniform and you do your job, and the overwhelming support of my peers and leaders continues to show that, no matter what, I am a valued member of this team.”
Healthcare under attack
In addition to the stress over anti-trans rhetoric is that of having one’s health care—which the military offers through TRICARE insurance—threatened.
"One of the pieces of the bans is that these are not based in science or clinical evidence, they are literally based on political ammunition," Kate Steinle, chief clinical officer at Folx, a national LGBTQ health care provider, tells Fortune. "Clinical care is different—you address the person in front of you and use a protocol… because that is what is going to protect somebody’s mental health." That is simply evidence-based care—the same approach used for "any other type of medical care," she says.
“I think the key point here is that transgender healthcare is simply healthcare,” says Bree Fram, who has served for 22 years and, as a colonel in the Space Force, is one of the highest ranking out transgender officers in the military. She joined the Air Force in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“That was one of the moments in my life where everything changed in a heartbeat,” says Fram, 46, who came out as transgender when Obama first lifted the ban in 2016. “I wanted to give back. I wanted to be part of something larger than myself, and I wanted to protect and defend the freedoms that we'd been given by the generations that came before.”
Rodriguez, who also transitioned using TRICARE for both hormone therapy and top surgery, pushes back against the medical-care argument of the executive order, which states that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty,” including those “that require substantial medication or medical treatment.” It references “the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved” as being "incompatible" with effective service. Trump has also, in the past, said such treatments were too expensive (citing figures quickly shown to be false).
But as SPARTA Pride noted in its statement responding to the executive order, “While some transgender troops do have surgery, the recovery time and cost is minimal, and is scheduled so as not to impact deployments or mission readiness (all of which is similar to a non-emergent minor knee surgery).”
Rodriguez says their hormones cost the military an average of about $16 a month. “It’s pretty cheap,” they note. “A top surgery…on average, costs between $8,000 and $12,000, but a shoulder repair or a knee repair can be anywhere between $20,000 and $60,000. I've had both of my shoulders repaired,” Rodriguez points out. “I could have had top surgery three times.”
'We know who we are'
To help alleviate such anxieties for other transgender troops, Rodgriguez, for one, is co-facilitating a six-week therapeutic writing group through SPARTA.
“It’s just helping people hone in on what they can control right now, because there is so much uncertainty, and that can make any person feel stressed,” says Rodriguez, who has also been appointed as a Naval Medical Service Corps Officer. “It's been a really powerful time to just come together and have community.”
Fram, who made it through the last ban, says, “It feels like the stakes are even higher this time around.” That’s because, she explains, “When you see the erasure of transgender from every government website database, the feeling that our existence is what's at stake in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of our nation is different this time around, rather than it being just a military-specific thing." With rhetoric around trans people allegedly disrupting everything from women's sports to the medical system, she says, the message is that "we are the problem in more ways than one.”
But Fram, just like Corcoran and Rodriguez, is focusing on resilience—a quality she believes transgender people have in spades.
“We already have had that experience of society telling us who we are or who we should love from the time we were born, and we had to find it within ourselves to say that despite the standard, despite what I'm being told from friends, family, parents about who I am, I know that's not the case,” she explains. The current executive order is just the latest example of that ongoing conflict, amplified.
“I think we fall back on that knowledge that we know who we are,” Fram says. “We know that we exist. And no proclamation, no executive order, no change in government policy can invalidate or erase our existence.”
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