The U.S. Navy has introduced policy changes affecting Sailors with a current diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria, revising service eligibility criteria and separation procedures, according to an announcement on 13 March 2025.

The updated policy states that the Navy will only recognise male and female sexes, with gender being considered immutable. As a result, Sailors affected by the policy may request voluntary separation, and those who choose to leave will not be required to repay any education benefits or bonuses previously received.

According to the Department of the Navy, waivers for retention or accession may be granted on a case-by-case basis. In addition, Sailors eligible for voluntary separation pay will receive twice the amount of involuntary separation pay, provided they have served between six and 20 years.

“The Department of the Navy is committed to ensuring the privacy and dignity of affected Sailors,” the statement noted, adding that there are no active efforts to identify individuals with gender dysphoria.

Sailors requesting voluntary separation may be placed in an administrative absence status—allowing them to remain on full pay and benefits—until their departure from the Navy is finalised.

For further details, the full policy update is available at the MyNavyHR website: NAVADMIN 2025.

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

61 COMMENTS

    • World has changed and alienating people just seems stupid, in an era where recruitment numbers are down. I suspect once the adults get back into the white house that this will be reversed again.

      • it’s the military, it’s all about discipline and not free expression of political ideology. If one wants to wear a dress on his freetime, it’s his right, but it has no place at work. glad that some adults are calling out this nonesense.

          • as a matter of fact there are below the knee skirts as part of the uniform in the US Navy and other services, not everyone is in combat fatigues

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        • It’s political ideology to discriminate against people who serve their country. If someone has been through the full sex change operation, what’s exactly the problem with them using their current gender’s facilities. Utter nonsense

      • should we drop medical requirements altogether? allow mental illness now? should obese people not be alienated as well?

    • How is it a “good move”? Just let adults be adults, for pity’s sake – especially given how it’s been observed that a) letting people be themselves, free of judgement and criticism improves their state of mind, and b) it has no effect on you unless you’re the one undergoing such a series of procedures.

      • In answer to A, if you joined the military to be free to judgment and criticism you came to the wrong place. In answer to B, having people who need antipsychotics and hormones treatments (not to mention being virtually undeployable during the course of surgery) is extremely foolish. That’s before you get into letting a dude in a dress use the women’s barracks facilities.

  1. Regardless of what we believe about the subject, the policy as one of the raft of executive direction has been very poorly implemented. The uncertainty, miss-direction and ever-changing policy notes makes this an incredibly difficult topic for us to empathize with as the individual devasting impact on those transgender service people is so far from the lived experience of most. It is clearly very easy to be flippant, crude or dismissive when considering the topic. These are real people; the US Military has a surprisingly un-barbaric health care process (contrary to my own stereotypes) and the medical transition from Service is generally a positive one. This isn’t and is not intended to be. Regardless of gender, physical and mental health, and Service record, these people deserve to be treated like any other veteran. There is an ever-increasing sinister undertone to much of the workforce policy coming from the DoD.

  2. The necessity of adhering to established social conventions instead of demanding that they be altered to suit one’s personal desires is perfectly defensible on the basis that the needs of the many outweigh the whims of the few.

    • Well established conventions used to include segregating the races on USN ships, are you condemning the removal of that practice?

  3. It would also be interesting to know if this also contravenes the service person’s constitutional rights of free speech and association the same way the ban on homosexuals serving in the US services did. Comments from actual constitutional lawyers welcome.

    • You will find that the courts have consistently held that when you sign the on the line, you give up all rights found to be a violation of good order and discipline.

    • No US Court ever ruled that the ban on homosexuals in the US military violated the First Amendment. The case law is quite lengthy and complicated but legal objections to the ban on homosexuals derives from a Truman era law establishing a Uniform Code of Military Justice which banned sodomy in the armed forces. Once the US Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v Texas in 2003 that the Texas state law banning acts of sodomy was unconstitutional and established a “right to privacy” (which appears nowhere in the US constitution), Congress’ ban on sodomy in the Armed Forces was doomed. There is a long list of cases but it was Obama who decided in 2010 that the effort to keep the ban on homosexuals was a losing proposition and signed legislation allowing gays in the military to be open about their sexuality.

  4. Seems rather daft to me.

    Ignore the debate on whether trans people are men or women: they’re people. People who want to serve their country, and Trump, Vance & Musk seem intent on utterly pissing them off, excluding them and all but forcing them out.

    How long until they do the same thing to gays/lesbians/bi people? And then to Hispanics, to blacks, to Asians? To women?

    They’re going after “woke” things like this now, but how long until they slash all VA benefits and entitlements, etc?

    • Steve, I think you have hit the nail here. The ‘woke’ attacks to rattle up the Republican base are just smoke and mirrors. It keeps the wrong stuff in the front of our minds and on the front pages. Who are they going to blame when they run out of this particular minority? There is a systematic deconstruction of the American state occurring, similar to the fall of the Soviet Union. This country is fast becoming a functioning oligarchy, the VA are very much on the chopping block…

    • And yet since the US Army and the Trump administration announced they were heading in this direction recruiting numbers went up. Special accommodations have no business in a military force.

    • I would like to see research on their career performance relative to the average. It could be very interesting.

  5. This policy change is simply an attempt by the Trump regime to reimpose its ban on trans servicemen after the previous ban was overturned in court. As they cannot ban people for being trans they’re now trying to ban people for having gender dysphoria.
    The courts will inevitably overturn this again, and the regime knows this. They’re just hoping to grind down those affected so much that they decide to leave voluntarily.

  6. Bad move: a good dictator knows that the usual ideological crusades aren’t applied to the keys of power such as the military.

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