Liam Rubin had already joined the Israel Defence Forces as a woman, Linoy, when he finally realized he wasn’t comfortable in his body, and decided to begin the process of changing his sex.
As the Jerusalem Post points out, he recently elaborated on his experience in a Facebook post.
קוראים לי ליאם ואני לוחם בקרקל, התגייסתי במרץ 14, בעצם.. כלוחמת. במהלך השירות הבנתי המון על עצמי ועל כמה שהכחשתי את מי ש…
Posted by חיילים מצייצים on Thursday, February 18, 2016
“During my military service, I came to learn a great deal about myself and the extent to which I was in denial about who I really am,” he wrote. “That was when I came out of the closet as a transgender and began a process of changing my sex.
“That means taking hormones and visiting many doctors. The amazing part is that the army allowed me to do all of that and to remain in my battalion.”
Rubin is actually not the first IDF soldier to identify as transgender. In May, 2015, Lt. Shachar, who also joined the army as a woman, went through the process of changing his gender, which the IDF detailed in a blog post.
For Rubin, he said that the sex change “scared the higher ups” at first, but eventually the IDF’s Medical Corps changed its policy to accommodate “individual transgender operations.”
“I am a proud transgender and an even prouder combat soldier serving in the IDF, and I will continue to fight in order to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by our community,” Rubin wrote.
He added that there are currently close to 60 transgender soldiers serving in the IDF.
