“I don’t believe that transgender people should be in the military.” In 2015, when I heard those words from my supervisor, I was a young technical sergeant in the United States Air Force, and a closeted transgender person. My boss, a master sergeant, went on to explain to me and a couple of other airmen in the office that transgender people had too many problems, that they had mental health issues, that there were too many logistical problems with dorms and open-bay showers and not being deployable.

I was 10 years into my career. I had deployed a couple of years before to Afghanistan and had earned a number of decorations and praise from my leadership. I always kept my office door open, and routinely walked around and talked with my peers and the airmen for whom I was responsible about their work, their hopes and plans for the future, and provided the best mentorship I could while instilling in them a sense of independence and trust. Unfortunately, there was a part of myself that I could not be honest with them about. In a military service that prides itself in having “integrity first” — the first part of the Air Force’s official core values — I wasn’t able to reveal a very vital piece of my identity that made me Alexandria Holder. In fact, I couldn’t even be Alexandria Holder; I was Corwin Holder, a male airman.

I lived a lie because I had to. For decades, transgender people had been forbidden to serve in the United States military. Executive Order 10450, signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, was used to deny federal employment to the L.G.B.T. community (among other groups) on the grounds that we were guilty of “sexual perversion.” It was put into place during a time when gay people in government positions were being rooted out and fired — a byproduct of the anti-Communist campaign led by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in Washington. This was despite people like Christine Jorgensen, the first American publicly known to have received gender-reassignment surgery. Jorgensen was an Army veteran who became a very public transgender advocate in the 1950s. Transgender people were further targeted by Army Regulation 40-501 in 1963, declaring us mentally unfit for service.

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My wife, Brittanie, and I talked about the secret I was keeping. She knew how much it upset me, and she worried that I would make an impulsive decision, like coming out to my Air Force peers or choosing not to re-enlist. Brittanie asked me what kind of person I was. She asked if I was going to be what my supervisor had described, unable to serve by choosing to be unworthy of the uniform. She asked if I might not do better to stay in, to live up to my full potential and to prove to everyone that transgender people could serve, and serve well.