I was Fired for being Transgender by AAFES and treated extremely unfairly by the military.

My birth name is Michael Foley, I am 22 years old and was 20 during the time which I was working for the ((which I was employed from early march to late august, I also previously held a job with AAFES working at the on-base theatre for 2-3 years where my family lived prior to this happening)) NEX a branch of AAFES overseas while my father was stationed at a NATO base. I've known for years that I am not in the right body and growing up in a military environment has increased the stress with the majority of people in the community being very anti-gay due to "Don't ask don't tell."

Due to the strong rhetoric and anti-gay presence that is felt in military I kept it a secret for a long time that I felt this way for fear of embarrassment and my father getting the brunt of it at work. However turning 21 in august and finally getting a fulltime job at the NEX I felt it was time to let my family know and seek help at the Naval hospital on base.

I sought help at the naval base of which they were very unresponsive and told me there was nothing they could do for me eventually sending me to the psychiatric ward where they questioned me about suicide and things I hadn't gone there for. Although many talks were about my gender identity they always lead to them not being able to do anything or simply unwilling to help me. I tried many times to make appointments with doctors. This eventually lead to me buying hormones and trying to self-medicate online. ((this landed me in the emergency room twice on both occasions little to nothing was done and the recommendation was that I stop taking the pills.))

So eventually I stopped taking them. Things got worse at work, I had begun to paint my nails and put on light makeup to support how I felt inside, which lead to me being called into the back by management several times and being sent home and told to take it off or not to come back. They eventually made moves to have me fired, everytime I asked for what they would pull me into HR and to talk to management written down on paper they refused. I'm convinced that alot of what they were saying was completely illegal, I am a civilian my father served proudly in the military for years no decades and they are cornering me for being transgender? At the time unfortunatly that's not how I saw things I was getting severely depressed and not leaving my house, when they finally sent me home for good I stayed home and cried for days not leaving my room at all, I thought it would be different that because I had the strength to confront my fears that everything would go well but they didn't and it felt horrible I felt crushed, I still feel crushed. It didn't end there my mom convinced me to see JAG of which I went to and they called the NEX turns out they did very little as well, I've never felt so horrible in my life. I never thought that a branch of the american government would actually stoop this low to treat a civilian like this and I don't even know what to do. If anyone knows what do I would like help I'm still living with my parents and I haven't left the house since this incident took place.

I've attached a picture I took of one of the write-ups I received during my employment at AAFES.