"A former member of the elite U.S. Navy SEALs has come out to say she's now a woman.
But the book says that Chris "had considered living as the woman he felt himself to be for a very long time, but while he was serving as a SEAL he couldn't do it."
"For years Chris had turned off his sexuality like a light switch and lived as a warrior, consumed with the battle -- living basically asexual. For Chris the other SEALs were brothers and in the man's man warrior lifestyle, even if he had wanted to entertain sexual thoughts, there really was never any time to be thinking too much about sexuality," the book says.
After her retirement in 2011, however, "Now seemed the right time to go for it -- to make his body match his identity -- or at least start by dressing like a woman in his regular life." ABC
Kristin Beck, formerly Chris, served 20 years as a SEAL and fought on some of the most dangerous battlefields in the world, but after she left the service she realized she wasn't living the life she wanted.
"Chris really wanted to be a girl and felt that she was a girl and consolidated that identity very early on in childhood," said Anne Speckhard, co-author of Beck's biography "Warrior Princess," which was published over the weekend. Speckhard told ABC News Beck suppressed that secret for decades, however, through the trials of SEAL training and the harrowing missions that followed, growing a burly beard as she fought on the front lines of American special operations.
Brandon Webb, a former SEAL who served on a different SEAL team than Beck, said that Beck's reputation in the SEALs was a good one and said she was, by all appearances, the "consummate guy's guy." But the book says that Chris "had considered living as the woman he felt himself to be for a very long time, but while he was serving as a SEAL he couldn't do it."
"For years Chris had turned off his sexuality like a light switch and lived as a warrior, consumed with the battle -- living basically asexual. For Chris the other SEALs were brothers and in the man's man warrior lifestyle, even if he had wanted to entertain sexual thoughts, there really was never any time to be thinking too much about sexuality," the book says.
After her retirement in 2011, however, "Now seemed the right time to go for it -- to make his body match his identity -- or at least start by dressing like a woman in his regular life." ABC
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man,
neither shall a man put on a woman's garment:
for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
Deuteronomy 22:5
