Hope, relief for transgender military families in new policy
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Like many transgender teens, Jenn Brewer faced bullying when she came out. Some classmates called her “tranny,” and a few teachers refused to address the 13-year-old by anything other than her male birth name, she said.
But she and her family found that the biggest difficulty came from her father’s employer: the U.S. military.
Jenn’s father is an Army staff sergeant at Virginia’s Fort Belvoir, and his military health insurance refused to cover private counselling to support the changes his daughter was embracing. Several months later, Jenn said, she was so frustrated and distraught that she tried to kill herself.
“Nothing was working out for me,” she told The Associated Press in an interview, sitting in a coffee shop near her family’s home on the base with her mom, who encouraged Jenn by placing a hand on her knee. “And I kind of felt suffocated by all of the rules that had been put in place for people like me.”