Ok, great. I’m actually in Communications, and that was my AFSC when I was in. And I’ve never been in a unit where the entire communications infrastructure depended on one person. What if your so-called greatest LAN Manager in the history of LAN Managers got sick on the boat and died? Our entire National Security would be harmed by that ONE person getting sick and dying? Surely you have to see how ludicrous that sounds.
If that person had died, would the Captain mark your boat as “NMC”? If not, then his death would not affect National Security, no matter HOW much he knew/did. And if the Captain allowed his boat to sail knowing that if that one particular person died, his entire boat would become NMC, then the Captain is more of a threat to National Security.
As I said, maybe you are not aware of what National Security means, or what it takes to harm it.
I absolutely agree that the RAND study supports the view that the medical costs of allowing transgendered individuals will be low, because fairly few military personnel will choose to undergo medical transition. And I’m not suggesting that the limited additional cost isn’t outweighed by the value of allowing them to serve. (Tangentially, I know a number of people who were disqualified from military service ostensibly because they had medical conditions that might lead to high medical costs–which the military/VA would bear–but would not affect their ability to serve in the short term. I don’t know if they were being honest. But, I do concede that increased medical costs are a legitimate consideration). Obviously, the RAND report demonstrates that, even during the Obama administration, the medical cost was a concern or it would not have spent so much time on the question.
What I’m curious about is the factual support for the claim, which pervades this thread, that thousands, even 15,000, servicemembers are going to be summarily dismissed under the new policy.
Except you seem to be ignoring something pretty damn important and obvious: the ban doesn’t just affect current trans military personnel, it affects any future trans people who would have gone into the military. It’s placing an arbitrary restriction on who can join the military; eliminating any future benefit trans personnel could have contributed. That quite obviously affects national security. It’s not just about the immediate impact.
National Security includes a lot of things. Yes, the loss of a single LAN manager, or even a single submarine, doesn’t place us under massive risk of ceasing to be a nation. But a crappy LAN manager might reduce the effectiveness and readiness of a submarine, and less effective submarine might reduce the effectiveness and readiness of a carrier task group, and a less effective carrier task group might harm our national security to some small but still significant degree.
Not end-of-the-country harm, but harm nonetheless. All these sorts of little harms can add up. This is an own goal – a pointless policy that helps nothing and can only harm our security, even if it’s not massive, monumental harm. We shouldn’t be shooting goals on our own goalie even if we’re up 10 to nothing.
National security is a big and broad topic. It’s reasonable to discuss relatively small things that nonetheless might cause a small bit of harm to our security. It’s ridiculous to dismiss these concerns because they’re relatively small.
And yes, when I served, a submarine had a single LAN manager. They probably should have had more, but that’s a separate issue than banning trans people.
Probably not better, I would say. I certainly never said it wasn’t worse. I simply was looking for some sort of proof that it would harm National Security. So far, the argument seems to be “Of course it harms National Security, you stupid, stupid head” and “Trump will next ban everyone except rich white guys from the military” and “Shut the fuck up!”
None of which seem adequate to me to explain how this will harm National Security. The Army alone lost 16,000 people last year, and probably that many the year before. And the year before. Not sure how many the Marines, Air Force, and Navy lost, but I could look it up if I had to. But it’s not my argument to make. And if you think that our military couldn’t withstand the loss of 15,000 additional people, you better damn well get behind the budget increase, because that would be a sad state for our military to be in.
If the government decides that shrinking the military is needed to accommodate higher priorities (like deficit reduction or more funding for the arts), then there’s a reasonable debate to be had on whether that’s a good idea. There’s surely pros and cons. And if a service member is kicked out of the military because of some serious injury or disease, that’s unfortunate for the person, but it is understandable on the principle that the person probably can’t do his or her job. But kicking people out because of their gender identity? I can’t see how it even makes sense, other than as a form of bigotry.
And I will be the first to say that having transgendered people in the service presents some new and sometimes difficult issues. Like, I have been told that Marines in basic training still use communal showers. It will cost time, effort and money to address things like that, and I’m sure there are other issues that need to be thought out.
But I don’t see how issues like that are show-stoppers. I recently talked with someone who worked on gender integration issues for one of the armed services. Basically, this service got a bunch of men together to figure out how to integrate women into certain quarters. (Incidentally, it took a long time for them to think that they really needed a woman on the panel, who immediately raised issues the men never thought of, like disposal of feminine hygiene products.) But if we can figure out how to get women serving in a challenging environment like a submarine, I’m sure we can figure out how to deal with trans service members serving in places are ho-hum as the Pentagon, while figuring out the other issues along the way.
Which of course we can do. It’s really only intolerance that is at the heart of any argument to the contrary.
manson’s being either stupid or disingenuous, but I admit the 15,000 number seems high to me as well. I’ve seen estimates for the American population overall as being 0.1% to 0.3% transgendered (for the broadest use of the term). Is this being extrapolated to the number of people in the U.S. military?
Really? There are approximately 2 million amputees in the US who are not allowed to join the military. Obviously, amputees are able to serve in the military since there are amputees serving in the military right now. Do you think prohibiting amputees from serving in the military affects National Security? I’m gonna say no. Limiting the ability of a small subset of people from enlisting in the military does not affect National Security, no matter how bad, stupid, cruel, inhumane the ban is.
Again, I don’t agree with the ban, I don’t think it’s “fine”, I don’t think it should be done. I also don’t think it will happen. But even if by some retarded miracle it does, our National Security will not be affected.
As I understand it, that’s exactly how it’s done. And then there is a “bonus” for the fact that male-to-female transitions are more common than female-to-male and (therefore) a disproportionately male environment would have a higher percentage of transgendered individuals.
Falchion mentioned upthread that the higher number may be due to the high percentage of males in the military coupled with a higher ratio of bio men being transgendered compared to women as one possible reason. But the biggest reason for that 15,000 number would be because the 2014 Williams study put the ratio way over earlier studies, at a national average of about .6% transgendered.
This comment has nothing to do with your view of LGBT issues, because I have no idea what you think about such issues overall: you can’t be this fucking stupid.
In any large organization, there’s going to be a certain amount of churn of people leaving for their own reasons. Sometimes the organization will attempt to lure some of those people back with higher pay, especially if they are very valuable. The organization may or may not replace people who depart with new hires, depending on various factors.
This routine fact of life has virtually no relevance to the organization firing people for no real purpose at all.
To use an example, let’s say Microsoft’s business is slightly off this year and through attrition, it shrinks its overall workforce by a few thousand, using strategies to try to retain valuable people, replace critical positions, and leaving lower priority positions unfilled. You can’t honestly claim that this bread-and-butter human resources management is in any way comparable to Microsoft firing its Irish-American employees as a blanket policy because they smell too much like potatoes and beer.
The number of transgender individuals in the US military were very small in proportion to total numbers (not that an injustice to even a small minority is a good thing!).
To my mind, the most important part of the study as reported in the press release is the comparative part: plenty of other first world militaries have transgender friendly policies without any problems, including (for example) the Israeli army, which faces regular military threats.
[Emphasis added]
In summary: it will affect few people; the costs are miniscule; other countries already have transgender friendly policies - without any effect on “operational effectiveness, operational readiness or cohesion”.
Conclusion: banning the transgendered has no real-world factual support.
