When an Army Major Came Out as Transgender, the Military Embraced Her. Soon, the Pentagon May Not (Exclusive)

U.S. Army Maj. Alivia Stehlik, a transgender officer assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., knows how it feels to face a challenge.

“I’m Ranger-qualified, I’m Airborne-qualified, I’ve jumped out of planes, I’ve repelled out of helicopters, I’ve deployed to the farthest corners of Afghanistan,” Stehlik tells PEOPLE. “I’ve done all of the Army things that they need me to do, and I’m a physical therapist, so I understand the medical and readiness pieces of being a soldier.”

But she also knows that President Donald Trump’s challenge to her service is nothing new.

Related: Donald Trump Calls D.C. Bishop 'Nasty' and Not Smart for Asking Him to Show 'Mercy' During National Prayer Service

With 17 years-and-counting in the military, Stehlik, 38, was serving as a woman when Trump, during his first term in office, set in motion a policy to effectively ban transgender individuals from enlisting and prevent anyone in uniform from starting a medical transition.

Stehlik also was serving when President Joe Biden reversed that ban.

And she is serving still as Trump returned this week with an executive order that gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 30 days to devise a plan for banning openly transgender troops.

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” states Trump’s order, which dismissed transgender identity as “radical gender ideology.”

Related: Pete Hegseth Grilled Over Assault Allegations, Comments About Women in Military During Tense Confirmation Hearing

To those who might dismiss her duty, Stehlik says, “I think many folks have never met a transgender service member.”

“We have almost a decade of open transgender service,” she says. “All of the service chiefs have said, we've had no disruptions to readiness, no disruptions to unit cohesion, no disruptions to deployability. Those are our senior, four-star leaders in all of the Armed Services. They testified to that.”

Related: Elliot Page Laments 'Overwhelming Tactics' of Anti-Trans Attacks: 'Just Pushing People Out of Life'

But the sense of whiplash is real, says Logan Ireland, a transgender Air Force master sergeant who first shared his story with PEOPLE in 2017.

Two years earlier, Ireland — who enlisted in 2010 as a woman, before beginning to transition in 2012 — came out publicly in a New York Times op-ed documentary excerpted from the feature film TransMilitary.

Among the “thousands” of transgender troops who currently serve, according to SPARTA, an advocacy group for transgender service members, Ireland says: “We're pilots, we're combat medics, we're law enforcement individuals, we're rocket scientists – we’re performing these vital roles, and it would do a great disservice to our military if we were to get rid of us.”

Related: Air Force Staff Sgt. Logan Ireland Slams Trump's Trans Service Ban: 'Doing This Country an Injustice'

Last year Stehlik became the director of holistic health and fitness for the 101st Airborne Division. Other officers train soldiers in tactical and planning skills.

“My job,” she says, “is to resource the teams that are building our soldiers’ overall fitness, wellness, health, so that they can go execute combat.”

In that role, she has no idea who’s aware she’s transgender.

“It has become essentially irrelevant to my job or who I am at work,” she says. “Nobody’s ever asked. People are just happy I’m here because I’m competent and I’m trained and I’m ready to do my job.”

"When you’re trans and when you’re not trans, you’re still just a human being living your life.
"

Army Maj. Alivia Stehlik

A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as a man, Stehlik followed her father into the service.

“I was homeschooled, I grew up in a conservative family, and even if I hadn’t, I think if you didn't live maybe in New York City or San Francisco in the 1980s and ‘90s, there probably wasn't a lot of access to even the language around being transgender,” she says. “And so I didn't have the words for that until well after I graduated from college. But I knew, and kind of have always known, who I am.”

She came out to her military superior in 2016, and publicly in 2017 — and, after starting to transition that year ahead of Trump’s first-term directive, she volunteered for a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan.

“There was no issue with me deploying as a trans person,” says Stehlik. “Every week I traveled to some little outpost. Sometimes it was just me by myself. Sometimes it was me and one of my physical therapy techs. We would get on a helicopter and fly to whatever post needed us, and we'd spend a couple days treating soldiers at these remote locations who didn't have access to medical care or to a physical therapist who could help deal with their musculoskeletal injuries, and get them back to full fighting readiness.”

Related: Trans Military Couple Put Adoption Plans on Hold After Trump's First Service Ban: 'Now That's on the Back Burner'

“I always worried before transition that it would be really hard and that I would be outcast,” she adds. “That has been the farthest thing from the truth. Everywhere the Army has sent me, I have found friends, I found community. And to be completely honest, most of that hasn't been around other transgender people. It hasn't necessarily even been around other members of the LGBTQ community. You just meet people doing the things you love, going to places you love.”

“When you’re trans and when you’re not trans,” she says, “you’re still just a human being living your life.”

Stehlik recalls a fellow soldier, early in her transition, who asked about her lengthening hair.

“It was different than how he had seen me before, and I hadn't come out to anybody in person at that point, but he kind of made a deal of it,” she says.

“I pulled him into my office and I was like, ‘Hey man, this is the thing.’ He had just gotten selected to go to Special Forces, and I was really nervous, and he said, ‘Oh, cool. Are you still going to come to my Special Forces graduation?’ ”

“That was his question,” says Stehlik. “That encapsulates every bit of how my career has been, where everywhere I go, people are just happy with the fact that I show up for them because that's what we do as military medical providers, and that's what we do as trans service members. We do our job. We show up.”

“What distinguishes trans service members is not that they're trans, it's that they're service members,” she says. “We all raised our right hands and said we would swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That's what binds us together.”

In the military since coming out, “I never felt unwanted,” says Stehlik. “My peers, my patients, my subordinates, they all wanted me there and understood my value.”

Whether the Department of Defense ultimately now advances a ban on future enlistment by transgender people — or an outright purge of those already serving — is not top of mind for her.

“The way I think of this is, we train for uncertainty,” says Stehlik. “I’m a warrior; that’s what we do. Nothing in combat is ever certain. We say that no plan survives first contact, and so we all just train to be ready in uncertain times.”

“Trans service members today are actively deployed around the world,” she adds. “They’re not worried about policy. They’re not worried about any of that. They’re worried about showing up for their team, performing at the top of their game to keep their teammates safe and to execute our nation’s business.”

Related: How a Military Family Was Made Stronger by Their Trans Child: He Taught Us to 'Stand Up for Our Principles'

But serving as an example is still a role Stehlik embraces.

“I told one of my leaders the other day that it was important for me to be public, because this is what the Army taught me — to be brave, and to take risks, and to stand up for what I know to be true and what I know to be right, and for the people that work for me, the people that I'm responsible for,” she says. “Every leader that I've had in the Army has said, ‘Hey, you're mine and I'm going to take care of you.’ That's how we do this.”

After 17 years of doing "badass things" in the Army, Stehlik feels privileged to be in a position where she has a voice: “I’m going to take care of my people. And it's not just for service members, it's for all of the trans people out there in the world.”

“I was a young trans kid and I needed to be able to see that somebody was like me and being successful and was happy and had a good life,” Stehlik says. “I want to make the world a better place for all of the folks out there who need that.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.

Responding to a narrative that transgender service members are "unready" to deploy, Stehlik says she's "proof that that's not true."

“Being trans is really no more interesting than me having brown hair or brown eyes. It's just a vague descriptor of who I am or a characteristic that I have, but it's not relevant to my combat ability," she says. "I'm fully ready to deploy with my unit tonight if that happens, if we get called on.”

“I'm just resolved, and so are my trans service peers,” she adds. “We're here and we are ready. We're resilient, we're deployable, we're currently deployed, and we're going to stick around and do our job.”

Read the original article on People