On January 24, 2021, President Biden signed an "Executive Order on Enabling All Qualified Americans to Serve Their Country in Uniform." While this, in effect, removes the ban put in place by the previous administration, the stories of transgender service members remain critical to moving the discourse forward. We look forward to contributing to the rich history that documents the sacrifices made to serve one's country.

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Many do not realize that the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2011 did not address the military service of transgender persons and that a prohibition on open service remained in place until mid-2016. In June 2016, the Secretary of Defense under President Obama announced that a policy of inclusion would be implemented by July 2017. On 26 July 2017, rather than being weeks into a new policy, President Trump tweeted, “. . . please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow . . . . [T]ransgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” Since that time, the issue has received widespread attention in the press, among advocacy organizations, on social media and, presumably, at dinner tables across the nation. Court cases challenging President Trump’s aim to exclude transgender personnel are currently making their way through the justice system. In late 2018, the president petitioned the US Supreme Court to hear the cases, bypassing federal appeals courts. On 22 January 2019, while the Court declined to allow trial court decisions to skip the federal appeals courts, the Court voted 5-4 to temporarily reinstate the ban, thereby barring the service of most transgender people. On 12 April 2019, the ban went into effect.

It seems safe to assume that most Americans do not know (or do not know that they know) a transgender person who has served or is serving in our military, despite data from 2014 suggesting that 15,500 transgender persons serve in the military and 134,300 military veterans identify as transgender. We also know that humanizing those we do not know or understand is one avenue for, if not changing minds, furthering the conversation. Our book seeks to bring the experiences of transgender military personnel, past and present, to a wide audience. In doing so, we aim to illustrate that transgender military personnel have served honorably and that, rather than being a detriment to military readiness, their presence is both necessary and beneficial. As the national advocacy organization, SPART*A, said in the response to the above Court decision, “. . . as service members, we are trained to continue to do our jobs to the best of our ability. We are in every combat zone where troops are currently serving and we will stay the course as we serve our country with honor and dignity.”