I am absolutely unswayed by comments (not here, but elsewhere) that sound like, “We must do this because everyone has a right to serve and it’s a moral imperative!”
When discussing the military, that’s not true.
The focus of the military needs to be on assembling forces intended to give us the ability to procure decisive victory in armed conflict. If women, or transgender individuals, were inimical to that goal, I would absolutely oppose their inclusion.
But where Trump goes wrong is: they’re not. When the issue is studied, the conclusions are relatively clear: there is not any clear detriment. The objectors never point to studies or analyses, but merely evoke a sort of “but everyone knows” that bad stuff will happen.
But that’s not the way to make decisions. Show me how permitting transgender people to serve is some sort of net readiness or mobilization weakness, and I’ll hop on board. But you cannot. Because it isn’t.
Right – I’m fine with kicking out the programmer or welder who’s a fuckup and trans, just exactly as I’m fine with kicking out the programmer or welder who’s a fuckup and cis. Because we’re losing those sailors, or soldiers, or airmen, or marines, based on fuckupedness. When you kick out people who are high performing and retain those not as high performing, you weaken the mission.
I endorse this with a slight caveat – it’s important to our national security that our military be seen as open and welcoming to any American who might be able to serve. Americans will be less likely to volunteer for an organization they see as discriminatory or immoral. There might be a very small amount of backlash the other way (i.e. bigots who don’t want to serve with trans people), but historically, considering volunteer rates after desegregation and after women and gay people could serve openly, I think this is shown to be far less significant than the benefit of allowing more folks to serve.
Another stupid move by Trump. I renounce, denounce and pronounce it to be folly.
OK, now that’s out of the way, I have a few GQ type questions:
CNN is saying there are between 1,320 - 6,630 Transgendered individuals serving in the military currently (according to Rand, Corp.). Why are the error bars on that number so enormous? Do we really not know?
Will we ever know exactly what “the generals” recommended to Trump? I think we’re all assuming that this is Trump’s personal directive, and it may well be. But I’m wondering what the advice he got from “the generals” was.
Does the military still limit women from serving in certain capacities? If so, what was the plan for Transgendered folk? That is to say, if you were a W -> M Transgendered person, were you limited to serve only in those roles that women were allowed to serve in?
You gotta feel for the poor Secret Service agents that will now have to consider a whole bunch of disaffected and disgruntled former soldiers with a lot of free time on their hands after being drummed out of the military.
This may answer some of John Mace’s questions, I’m not expert but I did go through the mandatory USAF transgender policy briefing a few weeks ago.
The current policy went into effect on 1 June 2016. In order to transition, a transgender individual needs to be diagnosed by a military doctor with a legitimate medical condition requiring some level of medical intervention in order to transition. The doctor will put together a medical treatment plan. Once that plan is complete, the system of record (DEERS) will be updated to reflect the servicemember’s transitioned gender. At that point, that person is that gender according to the military, full stop. That means if there are limitations on females, those same limitations apply to a transgender female. However, I don’t think there are any career limitations based on gender anymore. I could be wrong.
No of course not. You’d then have to prove how losing those folks would harm National Security.
Please kindly point out where I said I was “fine” with the ban? Bet you can’t find it, since I’m not, in fact, “fine” with it.
[QUOTE=me]
“If you want to make this yet another case of “You don’t agree 100% with what I said, you are a horrible bigot who hates transgender people and puppies too, probably!” then fine, go ahead if that is what makes you feel better”
[/QUOTE]
Anyone who met the qualifications, which were specifically drawn up to maximize readiness and national security, not due to arbitrary bigotries. Any limitation that is due to anything aside from the desire to maximize military readiness harms our national security by providing pointless limits on who can join, as well as portraying the military in a poorer light which is harmful to recruiting.
Again, please point out where I said I am “fine” with the ban? If you can’t, it’s because you are incredibly stupid and let your idiotic emotions sway any sort of coherent discussion about a topic. Good luck with that.
So this is your standard for a ban on black people, or Samoans, or left-handed redheads? You wouldn’t agree that this harms national security until someone did a detailed study that showed a loss of critical skills?
That’s nuts, if true.
Apologies. Your refusal to accept what should be incredibly obvious – that limits to the military based on nothing more than bigotry harms the ability of the military to fill necessary slots and needs – is very stupid.
manson1972 – do you believe a blanket ban on black Americans would harm our national security? Why or why not? How about gay Americans? How about left-handed-redhead Americans? How about Samoan Americans?
So, you don’t even know if your pointless submarine story is relevant to this topic? Wow, that’s not surprising.
If you think sub Captains are not in charge of readiness and training of their crew, than that shows how little YOU know about the military. Especially if you think the loss of some random E-5 is a threat to National Security. Perhaps you need a refresher on National Security, the Military, and how the two are related.
Without reading the report in detail, I’m struck by three things:
(1) the estimate on the number of transgendered personnel appears to be based on the prevalence of transgendered individuals over all and the number of military personnel over all (i.e., if the prevalence is .5% of the population and there are 1.3 million servicemembers, then there must be 6,600 transgendered servicemembers. I understand the conceptually, but I’m not sure how helpful that is in determining the number of people who will be “kicked out”.
(2) The report appears to have been written before transgendered individuals were permitted to serve openly. So, I assume, it describes the world that will exist again.
(3) Not that it really matters for what I’m wondering, but given that it was written before any change in policy, it’s conclusions on impact are inherently attempts at prediction. The discussion on readiness as a result of medical issues (which is most of the report, it looks like, makes sense). But it’s comments on unit cohesion seem to be limited to (1) integrating gays and lesbians went okay (even though they acknowledge that transgendered individuals are viewed differently and treated negatively) and (2) foreign countries had no problems doing it.
I’m still not sure how many people would be affected by this, which was my real question. The RAND report suggests that a small majority of transgendered people (55%) lived socially as their “target gender” and that an estimated 40 active duty members would seek to transition each year. (I can’t tell if “transition” includes “social transition” and “medical transition,” or if it’s just “medical transition”).
I’m not taking a position on the decision. I’m just trying to drill down on the factual basis for the claim that thousands (even 15,000) servicemembers are going to be dismissed tomorrow.
It is an incredibly high estimate. The OP’s article cites the RAND estimate at around 2500 and a 2014 Williams Institute study that “suggests” around 15 000. The RAND study probably stuck with the .2% of the population ratio widely accepted before the 2014 Williams study which significantly raised that to about .6% of the general population. But .6% of active military would be about 9000. So while I haven’t read the study, I’d be curious to know why they would estimate (or what would suggest) that military would be so over-represented with transgendered people.
Not sure how your question is relevant. In general, classes of persons forbidden to join the military were related to bona fide qualification issues, restrictions which are aligned with genuine impacts to military performance. For example, a person scoring an AFQT of 15 was not eligible to join.