A former member of the Navy’s elite SEAL unit who served 20 years on the same team that took out Osama bin Laden has written a book detailing his progression from Chris the warrior to Kristin the warrior princess — a story of a stifled transgendered commando who found the road to inner peace.
Chris Beck served for 20 years on SEAL Team 6 — the same unit that ultimately raided bin Laden’s compound. He retired six months before the bin Laden raid, but nonetheless still went on 13 different deployments during his military career — seven of which sent him to combat areas — ultimately earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, the Daily Mail reported.
But something was amiss.
“Chris really wanted to be a girl and felt that she was a girl and consolidated that identity very early on in childhood,” said Anne Speckhard, who helped the sailor write a book, called “Warrior Princess,” the Daily Mail reported.
The book details the sailor’s new life — as a woman named Kristin.
The military doesn’t allow transgenders — those who identify and dress as the opposite gender, but have not undergone sex change surgery — to openly serve, so sailor Chris was forced to stifle his Kristin self for two decades.
“For years, Chris had turned off his sexuality like a light switch and lived as a warrior, consumed with the battle — living basically asexual,” the book states, the Daily Mail quotes. “For Chris, the other SEALs were brothers and in the man’s man warrior lifestyle; even if he had wanted to entertain sexual thoughts, there really was never any time to be thinking too much about sexuality.”
But now, the former SEAL has found freedom — and said goodbye to the male within.
“Sitting in my back yard or at my fishpond, I no longer feel anger, resentment or depression,” the former SEAL writes, on a website under the old male name of Chris, the Daily Mail reported. “I feel peace. I want to give this option of a ’peace garden’ to my veteran brothers and sisters.”
(Editor’s note: Paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 have been corrected.)
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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