Good morning.
My name is Danielle Dewitt. I'm currently serving in National Defence. I've been in for 14 years. I came out as transgender when I was deployed overseas, surprisingly, and was roughly removed from a ship in Germany.
One of the first times I came aboard and left the ship.... I found that it was very hard from the other side now, trying to be the teacher and the student at the same time. Being one of the first ones out as transgender had a big effect on things. It was a very big eye-opener, going from the male side to the female side, seeing all the discrimination on the male side, and how much it actually did affect all of the female members.
There was some verbal abuse toward me when I was first coming out, which acted as a means for them to remove me from all ships. As an active serving navy member, that was a very big blow to my psyche. They threw me in an office, to help me transition properly.
Even in the office, I was verbally abused—not by my co-workers, but by people coming in to do regular business. I told my chain of command what had happened, and my chain of command said, “This happens all the time.”
We have a program called Operation Honour. It's not working a hundred per cent. Female members have made complaints and inquiries. Once the investigations are done, investigators decide that there's no actual harm done.
The most recent one was when I was sent to Victoria, and put back on the ships. During fleet navigation-officer training, when I was in charge of training officers, I was degraded. I was crying every night, because they didn't have any respect for anybody who was transgender. I brought this up to my chain of command, and during their investigation, nothing was done—just a slap on the wrist for everybody involved in this.
I talked to other females in my unit—there are only three of us—and all of us said the same thing. Operation Honour has not worked. It has actually failed. There is a long way to go before we can continue going further.
I'm sorry. I'm very nervous.