For 20 years serving in the Coast Guard, Jocelyn Barnes said she wasn’t able to be herself.
The command staff and officers there saw her as a man, and under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the time, she didn’t correct them. Instead, she dressed and talked like they expected, answered to “sir” and kept the fact that she really wanted to serve on the high seas as a female — the gender she knows herself to be — a secret.
“Being transgender is a challenge,” the new Utah resident said. Being transgender in the military, she added, is even more so.