fter my surgery and later issuance of a new birth certificate last November, I wanted to apply to the Department of the Navy (DON) to change my recorded gender. The Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) keeps track of servicemembers and retirees genders, so I wanted, for gender affirmation and DOD acknowledgement, my gender reflected in my Department of Defense (DOD) records. There is no gender marker on military identification cards, so it's not an issue of being outed by… Read more.