In a biography released over the
weekend, a former member of the U.S. Navy SEALs comes out
transgender.
In Warrior Princess, 46-year-old
Kristin Beck, formerly Chris, who served 20 years as a SEAL, reveals
that after she left the service she decided to begin living the life
she was meant to live.
“Chris really wanted to be a girl and
felt that she was a girl and consolidated that identity very early on
in childhood,” Anne Speckhard, co-author of the biography, told ABC
News.
“For years Chris had turned off his
sexuality like a light switch and lived as a warrior,” the book
reads, “consumed with the battle – living basically asexual. For
Chris the other SEALs were brothers and in the man's man warrior
lifestyle, even if he had wanted to entertain sexual thoughts, there
really was never any time to be thinking too much about sexuality.”
The time seemed right after her
retirement in 2011.
“Now seemed the right time to go for
it – to make his body match his identity – or at least start by
dressing like a woman in his regular life.”
Speckhard said that Beck is currently
on hormone therapy and preparing for sex-reassignment surgery.
Transgender men and women are currently
not allowed to serve openly in the military.