She was 'a woman living in a man's body.' This may be more than you may want to know, but it is a brief interview with Beck back in 2014...

By Chuck Hadad, Susan Chun and Dana Ford

Kristin Beck served as a Navy SEAL for more than 20 years
Then named Chris Beck, she deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa
Beck retired in 2011 and has since come out as transgender
"No one ever met the real me," she says.

After years spent fighting in some of the world's worst wars, former U.S. Navy SEAL Kristin Beck says she knows what she wants.

"I want to have my life," she told CNN's "AC360."

"I fought for 20 years for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I want some happiness."

She wrote about the experience in a book, "Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming out Transgender."

As a man named Christopher Beck, she deployed as a SEAL 13 times, including operations in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Along the way, Beck earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.

Identifying herself as a woman, Beck had felt trapped in the wrong body since grade school, but didn't come out until after leaving the military in 2011.

Doing so earlier would have been too big a risk because in the United States, transgender men and women are banned from military service.

"That's a chance that -- if I took it -- I might be dead today," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper last year.

The CNN Film, "Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story," offers a fascinating glimpse of Beck's life. "I just wanted to tell someone my story," she says in the film. "And maybe set an example for some of the younger generation -- just say that I'm still a human being, and I deserve dignity and respect."

Beck says she deals with "a lot of prejudice out there. There's been a lot of transgender people who are killed for prejudice, for hatred. When the book came out -- some amazing support and some amazing praises -- but also some pretty amazing bigotry and hatred."

In the film, Beck talks candidly about how she reacts to prejudice. "I just try to be friendly, and I just say 'Hi, how are you doing?' You know, 'Good to meet you. I was that Navy SEAL, you know, transgender, you might've seen me on TV.' And they go, 'Oh, oh wow.' And then they realize that maybe trying to get into a fight with me wouldn't be a good idea. Maybe they should be nice."

Beck says she doesn't need people to love, or even like, her.

"But I don't want you to beat me up and kill me. You don't have to like me, I don't care. But please don't kill me."

'No one ever met the real me.'

Beck explained her years of hiding as living like an onion. Deep down, under various layers, or skins, she hid her female persona.

"It is a constant, but as you suppress and as you bottle it up, it's not like on that surface," she said. "You would never notice it because I can push it so deep, but then it does kinda, like, it gnaws at you. So it's always there."

In the film, Beck pulls back the curtain on her unique childhood, when she used to pretend to be sick so she could stay home from school and indulge in her secret. "I would put nail polish on. I could have, you know, a pair of my sister's shoes on," Beck said. "It was like a reset, it was like a vacation for me. So I had my vacation away from Chris."

Beck believes she might have wanted to become a SEAL because they are "the toughest of the tough."

She thought: "I could totally make it go away if I could be at that top level. ... Maybe I could cure myself."

But the feeling of being born in the wrong body never went away, and for her entire military career, Beck kept her secret.

She said virtually no one, out of the thousands of people she worked with, knew the truth -- it was so well hidden.

"No one ever met the real me," she said.

Though her identity was hidden, the rest of what Beck offered was true.

"I gave true brotherhood. I did my best, 150% all the time, and I gave strength and honor and my full brotherhood to every military person I ever worked with."

Beck married a woman and had children. "I was just trying to fit in to the stereotype American dream, exactly what my parents and everyone expected of me," Beck says in the film. "I met someone who's -- who's awesome, you know, we got along good."

Beck chose to reveal the secret to her wife slowly, to "see what the acceptance level" was. "She wasn't totally digging it. So she had no idea what she was getting into. Definitely wasn't the top on her list of things that she wanted, so it hurt."

As much of mainstream America learns more about what it means to be transgender, Beck says even she is still trying to figure out some aspects for herself.

"It took me a long time to get to this point where I'm comfortable living in my own skin," she says. "I'm very comfortable living the way I'm living right now, because it's natural to me now, and I've never had that."

What she seems sure of is, "I'm not a gay man, I'm not a drag queen, I am not maybe total dude, and I'm not total feminine, I'm not totally female," Beck said. "I think I'm living more in that gray world."

I too was a man trapped in a woman's body. For a whole nine months, till I was born. A woman trapped in a man's body is a line of b.s. Some men are afeminem but are not W O M A N. Ok! I hear that some are born with both male and female genitilia,but don't have female breast. I don't know any and those I do have simpathy for them. If surgery can help them into the sex that they are or choose, more power to them. But don't give me that b.s. that a bad ass soldier or an athlete like Bruce Jenner was a woman their entire life. Trapped in a man's body,while making babies, not having babies.

There's also this...

A Navy SEAL's biggest secret: Life as a transgender
Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY Published 12:22 p.m. ET June 4, 2013 | Updated 12:22 a.m. ET June 5, 2013
Former team members praise Beck's courage to come out after 20 years.

Story Highlights

Chris Beck served as a Navy SEAL for two decades
Beck carried the secret of identifying as female during service
Kristin Beck made the announcement on a LinkedIn page; she has written a book

In the super-secret world of the Navy SEAL, Chris Beck carried around an explosive secret of his own during his 20 years with the elite, all-male unit: a transgender life.

In the memoirs 'Warrior Princess,' published Saturday, retired Navy SEAL Kristin Beck — formerly Chris — writes about life struggling with her sexual identity and then going public.

Chris Beck served 20 years as a Navy SEAL, including seven combat deployments, and earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Beck retired from Navy SEAL Team 6 in 2011, only months before it raided Osama bin Laden's hide-out, and was always careful to keep the secret close to the vest.

Kristin Beck, 46, who works as a military consultant in the Tampa area, decided in March to go public by posting a new LinkedIn profile picture of herself dressed as a woman.

"I am now taking off all my disguises and letting the world know my true identity as a woman," Beck wrote on her LinkedIn page.

Beck said some SEAL buddies thought at first that it was a joke, but she assured them it wasn't.

Beck began hormone treatments three months ago. She also received laser treatment to remove facial hair.

In the memoirs, Beck notes the irony of one mission as a Navy SEAL in which he was disguised as an Afghan man to blend in with female-hating Taliban men.

"It was weird that I could grow a beard and trick them into thinking I was one of them – and really I'm an Amazon woman in disguise as a U.S. military guy in disguise as a Pashtun!"

The book is dedicated to Beck's family, to the "underdogs, the activists, the downtrodden," and to SEAL teammates, to whom Beck offers a personal message: "I am still the same person with the same experience and the same spirit."

The memoirs, published by Advances Press, notes that Beck has been married twice and has two sons, but was often removed from their early life because of frequent deployments and to avoid dealing with personal issues.

The book includes some reactions from former team members, including praise for Beck's courage in the forward, which was written by former boss, retired Navy SEAL and astronaut William Shepherd.

Other reactions:

• "Being a SEAL is hard. This looks harder."

• "I am thankful that your decision was to confront your challenges rather than, as you stated in your own words, 'put a shotgun in your mouth.'

• "You're a Team Guy, first and foremost, and you always will be. I'll drink a beer with you anytime, anywhere, for any reason, no matter how you are dressed ... especially if you are buying."

Beck's co-author is Anne Speckhard, an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School, whose has specialized in post-traumatic stress disorder and counter-terrorism.

What's striking about Beck, Speckhard said in an interview with USA TODAY, is how normal she is. "She's healthy, normal, a next-door-neighbor person."

Speckhard described Beck, who attended the Virginia Military Institute, as a highly competitive individual who played sports in school and always wanted to serve in the military.

Speckhard said she does not see Beck's decision to join the Navy SEALs as an act of overcompensation, rather as fitting a character as a high achiever.

"As a woman, he would have joined the SEALs as well," Speckhard said. The Navy SEALs currently do not take female candidates.

In this you might be admitting to a personal trait of your own.. like the inability to understand what it is that is happening around you, so you assign it 'entertainment'.. and laugh.

You will only have the rest of your life to feel embarrassed by that.

After backroom Pelosi, toilet closet server Hillary, Whispering collusion Obama, I understand, I think, why anyone would feel that the politicians should not be trusted nor believed.

So, you see, we agree.

First I have to start with the SEAL. She served here and there and she won this and that. NO!!! He served and won this and that. He tried this so called transition thing after he served. As a she, full time from the beginning, these accomplishments wouldn't have happened.

Military personnel are just another tool for the Admirals and Generals to use to accomplish victory and protect America. The military is not there as a social experiment. These personal are like a very complex weapon. A large steel weapon might be the greatest weapon at the leaders command. But one brass part and the whole thing weakens and can fail at just the wrong moment and cause severe loss of America life. Do we take that chance because of one confused individual who can't accept their real, natural, biological identity? Does that one confused individual have the right to test their confusion on the battlefield with a potential loss of life and the battle at risk? These elements, like gays and women, can disrupt unit cohesion at critical points and cause potential unacceptable losses.

Privacy and capabilities: Does he/she or she/he sleep with and shower with he or she? Does he/she and she/he have to qualify under he or she standards? And why are they different in the first place? We need the best personnel, not the best he and she available. Are he/she and she/he on drugs that might affect their performance? Why should the military and the VA be saddled with these expenses, and eventual full (as possible) transition surgeries to cover, 'I now feel like a he/she or a she/he.' All the military should count on is that you are the best unit we can put into the battle situation as an individual and part of a cohesive team of members who are in full support of each other, able to support each other, and able to count on each other.

Let's look at two separate units of 12 heading into a serious very dangerous combat situation.
One unit has 12 straight men measured at 95%.
The other unit has one woman (the best they could get) measured at 80%. One she/he measured at 85% with her male hormones. One he/she at 95% due to the female hormones. One gay man measured at 100%. And 8 straight men measured at 100%.
I know that I would take the 12 straight men any time. You can make your own choice. But remember, anything goes wrong and one or all could die and the objective could fail.

I remember trying to become a fireman at the age of 58. I passed the physical, but about 90+% of the women failed. Everyone said that no one should care who saves their life or puts out their fire. Of course. Lets not be stupid. But it isn't that simple. You put into the job the best you can find for the job. You don't hire on quotas and hope you can raise them all up to the level that the best would have been. First, we had blacks suing because their weren't enough that passed the mental exam. Quotas. So we got more stupid hires. Then after many years, the women sued because they couldn't make the physical demands to be hired. So we got weaker candidates. Quotas. Stupid. You hire for the best team possible. Then they showed us a video of a real hero, who climbed up the fire ladder about five stories and reached out and caught a 100 pound as she fell past him from about three stories above him. Would a woman have caught her. I doubt it. I'll admit, I might not have either. But the male natural body strength saved that girl's life.

The whole point is that you don't hire to satisfy politicians of weird agenda. You hire and train the best to fulfill the needs of the unit, whether it is Police, Fire, or the Military and don't settle for less or people whining about there needs to be this or that when they won't fit in or measure up.

cheers

We've been a nation well over 2 centuries. Every year but one we've had men and women in the military.

With men and women, we lost and tied a few, but won some really big wars that were necessary for the survival of this country.

The military is not there to give everybody a feel-good experience. It's not there to show the world that we can grab rainbows and ride unicorns off intto the sunset.

The military is there to kill people and bomb the s*** out of buildings and other structures. Or threatened to do the same.

There are no participation trophies in Wars. You win or you lose.