Well, let's give Donald Trump credit for one clear act of sanity. The White House announced today that the United States military is not going to surrender to the demands that transgenders be treated as normal people when it comes to fighting wars:
President Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States will no longer “accept or allow” transgender people in the United States military, saying American forces “must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory” and could not afford to accommodate them.
If you disagree with Trump then, in my view, you are an extremist and in denial by human biology. While transgender people exist, they are an extremely small minority. A biological rarity if you will. This is not to say that transgenders should be treated differently under the law. No. They should have the same basic rights as a biological man or woman. But the U.S. military is not a social biosphere for testing social and sexual justice theories. The Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Air Force are predominantly male and heavily dependent on unit cohesion.
The vast majority of the members of the U.S. military units are heterosexual. The social justice warriors who promote the mythology that you can have a gender neutral Army or Marine Corps, for example, have never been around 18 to 20 year old young men who are fully charged on testosterone and generally thinking a lot of the time about having sex with females. One of my old mentors, a retired Marine colonel told me the story of being in South Korea on maneuvers when he was a young lieutenant. As he came out of his tent one morning his nostrils were assaulted by the smell of human sweat and kimchi. The aroma was piercing and his nose led him to the last tent in the camp site. There he found two 18 year old privates enjoying the fleshly delights of a South Korean farm girl who, by the smell of things, had not been a frequent visitor to bath water.
His lesson to me? "The troops will do anything for pussy." Whether you like it or not that remains a reality today. The vast majority of soldiers, sailors, pilots and marines are not focused on embracing or protecting transgender folks. When they step naked into a shower the vast majority are not ogling one another in hopes of spotting the dude who wants to be a woman.
Trump made the smart and simple decision–he is not going to subordinate the war fighting role of the U.S. military to pandering to extreme minority political positions based on the notion that transgenderism is a normal, common phenomena. It is not.
hear, hear!
The correct decision on many levels. The SJW dupes will be frothing at the mouths over this “travesty”.
All
Trump is definitely a counter-revolutionary. The woman on the street in NY City who was interviewed about him a while back and who said “he is destroying our world” spoke the truth if she meant that he is destroying the “world” of the left. The trans-gender ban will cost him nothing politically. Those who will be offended would never have voted for him anyway. Several other categories will come to Trump’s mind:
1. Open gays. They are not protected by law.
2. Women serving in the combat arms (infantry, armor and Special Forces)
3. Women being pushed through very hard infantry skills courses like the Ranger Course and the USMC Basic Infantry Officer course. The services under immense political pressure have been putting carefully selected women junior officers through these courses to prove a false political point. To get them through they have been cutting corners on physical requirements, re-cycling these students to give them a chance at redemption if they fail, and dispatching general officers to supervise instructors to make sure they did give a failing grade.
I presume that service of women in other than infantry, armor and SF would not be affected by any such roll back in allowed roles. pl
This is the correct move, since it may help to flush out the slick obfuscation campaign to create legal doctrines about “transgender” and “gender identity” that hide from the public all the possible effects of any legal changes.
The spectrum involved in this hustle is–
1. Crossdresser.
2. Transvestite.
3. Transsexual, Shemale, Tranny, TGirl, TS, Ladyboy (who sometimes describe themselves as “fully functional”, as in male sexual functioning).
4. Transgender (a person who has had a sex change operation).
This leaves out the only biological condition that to some degree could apply, but to my knowledge has never been made an issue: hermaphroditism–
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1033669
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8313919
The best policy was the previous one: “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. That way, those who were homosexualist/gay and who got along with with others could not be considered a problem. And those on the list of 4 above, who usually are overt about it, would be excluded.
By reducing the available talent pool the American military will inevitably have lower quality people serving.
Here is some Canadian military propaganda:
AEL
Ha! Ha! pl
I am amused by the “outrage” that the pseudo left is spewing over this.
Trump’s aim was to divert attention from the mess the Repubs are making with their health care nonsense. He achieved that with two lazy tweet during his morning dump.
—
There is no reason in my view to allow anyone into the military with this or that special attribute that demands attention or could hinder the mission.
All units that come near the front should be gender segregated (this includes submarines and many smaller ships. The WWII Russian military had female sniper battalions who had some success. That could be way to go.
(Surely right about not voting for the POTUS.)
Still, just as a matter of simple logic:
This is not to say that transgenders should be treated differently under the law. No. They should have the same basic rights as a biological man or woman.
refutes:
But the U.S. military is not a social biosphere for testing social and sexual justice theories.
The established proposition, your should have, is not subject to “theorizing it away.”
The requisite formulation is something like, ‘even though trans and gay and bi enjoy the same biological rights as anybody else, they are not effectively fit to the performance requirements of the military, (or some such phrase that erases the appeal to ‘theory,’ and to the premise that the societal norms need apply in military culture.
Excellent argument, and the fact that it works equal well for race in no way distracts. Purity in the armed forces always serves a nation well.
Col.,
I’m sure we’ll see “The Resistance” grow. Looks like Trump is taking control of the media narrative once again.
Be careful when loading first year naval cadets bed sheets into washing machines–avoid breaking them. Lean them against the wall in a proper order before loading;)
It would seem that ability should be the primary criteria for soldiers and sailors. All the noise about who should be able to serve is essentially theoretical. An extreme point of reference would be the rock opera Tommy.
Hollywood and Silicon Valley are apoplectic.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/26/apple-google-and-facebook-ceos-slam-trumps-transgender-military-ban/
But look at the comments. N on is buying it.
The Russian female snipers in WW2 actually werent segregated, iirc they alse werent organized in sniper batallions (i think there was a sniper training unit later on that was a batallion, but this was for training)but rather attached to rifle divisions.
Sniper is a pretty lonely job though, the spotter, also known as the person a sniper interacts with the most, was generally female s well however.
Cases in which the spotter was male, or a male sniper had a female spotter, generally resulted in an affair. Thing was, sniper/spotter is a 2 person team, if they love each other it less damaging then if 2 people love and favor each other (over their comrades) in a more then 2 persons setting (which is the issue with female soldiers in male units, not considering jealousy etc.).
Frontline affairs were generally overlooked as long as no pregnancies resulted, although you could be severely out of luck and get a hard ass (hopefully soon to be fragged) politruk.
Night witches werent segregated (Guards bomber rgt 388, the actual night witches, was intended to be segregated but reality intervened) either and had a number of male officers as well.
Russia also had the quite impressively named “Womens batallions of death” in WW1.
Other thing, USSR had a lot of pre war paramilitary opportunities which were also open to women. The women who performed well generally had preexisting paramilitary training, and were generally speaking self selected for martial aptitude.
This reminds me of a rather amusing satire by Fred Reed, ‘Squids and the Inner Light of Being’.
https://www.unz.com/freed/squids-and-the-inner-light-of-being/
First, I’d like to recommend an excellent website opposing social engineering in the military:
Center for Military Readiness, founded by Elaine Donnelly
https://cmrlink.org/
Second, we have all noted how the MSM moves in lockstep on various foreign policy issues,
such as favoring endless, pointless, wars in the Middle East
that only give Muslims in the U.S. an excuse to commit acts of domestic terrorism.
Also how they are united in doing everything they can to get Trump out of power.
But note how the MSM also moves in lockstep on radical social change in the military.
It’s worth asking why the MSM is so united on those issues.
I certainly have my answer to that question,
but it might be considered “disruptive” so I’ll refrain from giving it.
It seems to me that the primary quality for the military should be the ability to handle the job. If a gay or transexual can pass the same training standards as a heterosexual male, why should they be excluded? My avowed racist father served during WWII in Europe. Even after the war, he and his army buddies would constantly talk about how bad it was that they had to work and live near blacks. Even though the combat units were segregated, blacks served in support units, cooks, truck drivers etc.
As a young boy I can remember he and his fellow soldiers talk about blacks should never serve in combat units since they were too dumb and unreliable and they would get “real” soldiers killed. Are transexual and gay soldiers the new negros?
I like that image of Trump as World Destroyer. After Trump’s election Le Pen said, ‘Their world is collapsing, ours is being built.’
It’s phraseology redolent of Yeats’ poem, ‘The Second Coming.’ The last two lines read:
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Yeats believed the Christian foundation of Western civilization was exhausted, and thus a new pagan ethic represented by the ‘rough beast’ (a reference to the Sphinx in Egypt) must symbolically reorient the spiritual pole of the West.
I prefer to interpret the last two lines less as an anti-Christian polemic and more as a poetic commentary on the renewal of order within a civilization. The denizens of the old order stand horrified and demoralized before the inexorable rise of a new system of values (the ‘rough beast’), which contradict their own. But the new values, will habour a vitality inspiring belief, bringing the reign of nihilism and and dissolution to a close. For some of us, that’s a message of hope.
Poe’s Law strikes again.
jdledell
Yes, it may just be too early for this kind of social experimentation. Once again, those who will object to Trump’s decision would never serve themselves and his political base will not object. pl
Is having deep-seated emotional dysfunction really the same as being black? I know it sounds judgmental, but the mental health related statistics with transexuals speak for themselves. Suicide rate 20x that for hetero and 5x that for gay in Sweden, the most PC country on Earth.
An interesting report found by following links from the CMR website:
“Transgender Policy Could Cost Military Billions Over Ten Years”
by Peter Sprigg
http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF17F52.pdf
This provides some documentation for the concerns of Rep. Vicky Hartzler.
As to the thinking in the White House that led to Trump’s Tweet,
Politico seems to have a good inside account:
“Inside Trump’s snap decision to ban transgender troops”
A congressional fight over sex reassignment surgery threatened funding for his border wall.
By RACHAEL BADE and JOSH DAWSEY
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/26/trump-transgender-military-ban-behind-the-scenes-240990
In 1966, I signed up for the draft, as required, but I was rejected (1-Y). Obviously I am way too old now to serve but I object because it is one of many recent stupid decisions and that base, at best, represents a quarter of the population. For many reasons, in my opinion, it would be proper for the fighting forces to in most ways represent the country that they serve.
Trump’s policies are indecipherable to me, but his political instincts rival if not exceed those of Nixon and Reagan. This move on his part will cement his support among his base.
In the last few weeks I have felt that the California legislature made a serious error in passing that resolution to boycott North Carolina because of that state’s passage of the bathroom bill. This forced them to repeal that bill since California is just too economically powerful — who in North Carolina would want to lose hosting NCAA basketball tournaments. Even if the state’s politicians caved in on the issue it has to have left some deep resentments among their people. Nothing good will come from increasing the red state/blue state division.
Kristen Beck served. At least the transgenders in the military are serving. Their CIC was a draft dodger.
I agree that this is a well timed distraction. As to who should and who should not fight, I think it depends on risk. If you are being invaded by a substantially larger power than it might make sense to use all available personnel though not necessarily in intergrated units. The US does not fight for her existence. The US fights third world nations in the third world. The US can afford to be picky.
An estimated 12,800 transgender citizens are currently members of the U.S. military. Are they serving in order to be part of a social experiment and/or to somehow validate their gender identity, or are they serving for much the same reasons that other members of the U.S. military are? I can’t say for sure, but I would guess that the last alternative is much more likely. As for “those who will object to Trump’s decision would never serve themselves,” doesn’t the presence of those estimated 12,800 transgender citizens in the U.S. military raise some doubts about that? Now if you mean that those who are not now serving in the U.S. military and who object to Trump’s decision would in most cases never chose to serve themselves, I would agree. But that’s a rather different matter, no?
I have always believed that in this poem Yeats was pushed by his superb sense of cadence and pace into writing something he himself did not know the meaning of. Your interpretation brings meaning to the final passage but I suspect any meaning we find in it is meaning we put there ourselves rather than find there.
It may not be that good a place to find our meaning in, that final passage. The first section hits the spot. Yeats was a Londoner as well as an Irishman and could not but have been unaware of the vapidity of English thinking in those days. Our greatest writer of that time, Kipling, gave us the most vivid prose and verse but didn’t, in truth, have two ideas to rub together. Or rather he had several, but they weren’t ideas worth rubbing together. Over in Ireland they had been playing about with their own version of late Romantic mediaevalism fondly imagining they were doing the Celtic thing. They weren’t, and weren’t doing much else either. Overall, and most importantly on the Continent, the totalitarian materialism of the modern world was shaping up for its long battle with the totalitarian Blut und Boden vision already foreshadowed by Nietzsche in his more apocalyptic moments. Underlining in blood that time of spiritual, political and intellectual decay were the killing fields of Verdun and the Somme.
So Yeats got all that, and that is why the first passage contains the most quoted lines of modern poetry. They’re as relevant now as then. More so. We’re still in much the same place.
But that final passage? They’re still divided as to whether Yeats was a fascist. I don’t think he was but Auschwitz lies so heavy on our thinking about that time that most would categorise him as such. I think he was just a mess, in terms of political philosophy, but not the sort of mess I would feel sympathetic to or would want to take as any sort of prophet.
But as I say, I don’t think he really knew what he meant by those final lines. If that makes it open season on interpretations of them, I’ll take yours; we could do with a bit of cheerfulness while we wait to see whether Trump makes it past the totalitarians .
Attempting to close Leander’s use of the strike tag.
Nancy, Kristen Beck, formerly Christopher Beck, did serve with honor for 20 years in SEAL teams 1, 5 & 6. I think she received reassignment surgery, etc
after she was no longer active military. Did she use her VA benefits to
transgender? Perhaps. She does have a powerful message & I doubt the President intends to meet her “face to face to tell her she’s not worthy.”
Chelsea Manning receiving reassignment surgery/therapy while doing time
in Leavenworth seems to be a totally different matter. Admittedly I’m
perplexed.
Good decision. A few years ago I paid a visit to an Australian warship with an “integrated” crew. In the enlisted mess you could almost smell the hormones. young sailors, of both sexes as well as a “butch” table. Adding transgender would be a powder keg. As it was, I was told of several romances, plus affairs, that were most definitely prejudicial to good order and discipline.
As for combat infantry, there is enough emotional tension in a single sex unit as it is. Adding transsexuals or women with the scholarly admonition of the social justice warriors to “treat them just like any other soldier” is an impossible request.
Dear Publicu Tacitus,
I think to US leaders (and maybe some generals?), more and more problems look like nails for a military solution, rather than developing proper (social) tools.
So the politico’s say lets use the military for nation building. lets use the military for policing. Lets use the military for social engineering. and so on.
Reminds me of the F-35 which is designed to do so many tasks it does none well.
Except shift barrels of cash into Lockheed Martin’s coffers.
Lars, you make a good point. It all should be performance AND risk based assessment. The latter is the more important aspect and always requires long observation periods and complete data collection. Once the civilian leadership opened up the military to overlook gender in all of its aspects, this started the ball rolling as to the long term effects both physical and psychologically. The military has always been the pressure cooker for social experimentation and today is no different. Time will tell what the effects are.
Personally, I think this is more a typical Trump diversion away from whatever it is he doesn’t want the MSM to focus on. He only pisses off the people who already hate him. They will never reconsider regardless of anything he does. So, for him this is an easy one. Obama did the same when he ended the don’t ask – don’t tell policy. It was also a freebie diversion.
However, this does provide an opportunity to capture real data using scientific methods and the military is very adept at doing this. It has a fixed base cost so they can research anything more or less for free and it is a captured audience as soldiers are not covered at all by the Constitution but rather by the UCMJ. You lose your basic Constitutional rights when you become a soldier. It is similar but not identical. We cannot permit free speech in the military or insubordination, or failure to follow orders etc,. These are recognized facts and are required for a fully functional military organization to be effective.
It has never been satisfactorily studied (without bias) as to whether any of these alternate sexual behaviors and gender self-identification is in fact “normal”. We have apparently accepted the self-certifying by those in the LGBT community that they are normal and identical in every respect. But, that has been done without scientific basis. Now we have an opportunity to study a self-selected population (service is all voluntary since the end of the draft in 1975) for long term effects at every level including physical. It is a regulation that every soldier who dies on active duty have a complete autopsy not for forensic reasons but to gather data on the adult population in the US using military as a sample of the overall population. This is how we get all those wonderful statistics we use. We also get to have a hard look at personnel interactions and judicial/disciplinary aspects as well. It is a wonderful opportunity to finally answer some very basic questions and the LGBT actually have forced these questions to be answered. They may not like the results though. On the other hand it may prove that it is no big deal. We will see because this is already happening in a big way.
Orwell on Yeats and fascism:
“Translated into political terms, Yeats’s tendency is Fascist. Throughout most of his life, and long before Fascism was ever heard of, he had had the outlook of those who reach Fascism by the aristocratic route. He is a great hater of democracy, of the modern world, science, machinery, the concept of progress — above all, of the idea of human equality. Much of the imagery of his work is feudal, and it is clear that he was not altogether free from ordinary snobbishness. Later these tendencies took clearer shape and led him to “the exultant acceptance of authoritarianism as the only solution. Even violence and tyranny are not necessarily evil because the people, knowing not evil and good, would become perfectly acquiescent to tyranny. . . . Everything must come from the top. Nothing can come from the masses.” Not much interested in politics, and no doubt disgusted by his brief incursions into public life, Yeats nevertheless makes political pronouncements. He is too big a man to share the illusions of Liberalism, and as early as 1920 he foretells in a justly famous passage (”The Second Coming”) the kind of world that we have actually moved into. But he appears to welcome the coming age, which is to be “hierarchical, masculine, harsh, surgical”, and is influenced both by Ezra Pound and by various Italian Fascist writers. He describes the new civilisation which he hopes and believes will arrive: “an aristocratic civilisation in its most completed form, every detail of life hierarchical, every great man’s door crowded at dawn by petitioners, great wealth everywhere in a few men’s hands, all dependent upon a few, up to the Emperor himself, who is a God dependent on a greater God, and everywhere, in Court, in the family, an inequality made law.” The innocence of this statement is as interesting as its snobbishness. To begin with, in a single phrase, “great wealth in a few men’s hands”, Yeats lays bare the central reality of Fascism, which the whole of its propaganda is designed to cover up. The merely political Fascist claims always to be fighting for justice: Yeats, the poet, sees at a glance that Fascism means injustice, and acclaims it for that very reason. But at the same time he fails to see that the new authoritarian civilisation, if it arrives, will not be aristocratic, or what he means by aristocratic. It will not be ruled by noblemen with Van Dyck faces, but by anonymous millionaires, shiny-bottomed bureaucrats and murdering gangsters. Others who have made the same mistake have afterwards changed their views and one ought not to assume that Yeats, if he had lived longer, would necessarily have followed his friend Pound, even in sympathy. But the tendency of the passage I have quoted above is obvious, and its complete throwing overboard of whatever good the past two thousand years have achieved is a disquieting symptom.”
Women who desire to be in the military are often butch dykes. The wives and girlfriends of soldiers aren’t big fans of women in the military, for obvious reasons.
I remember commentator Steve Sailer pondering many years ago what would come next now the gay marriage issue had been fought and lost, he suggested transgender would be the issue they would move on to next. I was little sceptical at the time.
Transgender in the military, great issue to campaign in favour of in 2018. Big issue in the rust belt.
Those who want more diversity in the military should be asked why soldiers (since at least 2,000 years) are dressed in “uniform”, why do they “march in lockstep”, why is basic training constructed to created “esprit de corps”.
There are sound military reasons for all this. It increases efficiency (more dead enemies, less own losses). More diversity would like have the opposite effect.
Please you ignorant motherfuckers, ban me for good.
“Trump’s aim was to divert attention from the mess the Repubs are making with their health care nonsense.”
IMO that’s the other piece of good news for the week: yet another Republican failure to pass Ryancare.
Single-payer now!
“Aware”. Sorry. That “Post” button is remorseless.
I loved reading your comment, EO. My younger son’s English teachers in school were fond of trying to find meaning in every symbol and phrase that an author wrote, to the point of saying “Sometimes authors don’t realize the meaning they put into their stories when they write them.” Yeah, sure.
WRT Trump’s declaration I am satisfied, but uneasy. Uneasy because I think Styxhexenhammer 666 (youtube political commentator) has a point when he says this will be taken up in the future by the Supreme Court and found unConstitutional (if the LGBTQ+animal/fairy-kin movement doesn’t get it struck down via other means, such as libtard President in the future). I do not look forward to the social unrest that will be forced on the majority by this extraordinarily small minority of Americans. The Williams Institute has collected data that suggest that trans individuals are actually overrepresented in the military because it is a stable place for employment and allows them to hide their issues; the men join to suppress their feelings of being a woman, and the women join because it allows them to act more like the men they believe themselves to be. My concerns are prompted by the fact that nationally, 40% of trans individuals attempt suicide (10x the average US suicide rate). They are deeply unhappy people, and will obviously need extreme psychological care throughout life. The negative consequences to their fellow soldiers because of their troubled mental states may be significant and unreported. Then there will be the inevitable requests for hormone therapies and gender reassignment surgeries; the taxpayer should not be expected to pay for these.
I agree with Publius Tacitus and other commenters; I have never felt that the military should be the testing ground for SJWs. People are prevented from entering certain career paths for all kinds of reasons, including intellectual capacity and physical ability. While I believe everyone should be treated humanely and compassionately, it is not the government’s responsibility to contort the military so that it is a place of refuge for all the people who believe they don’t fit into society.
raven
Were you speaking to b? you are displaying the inability of the snowflakes to cope with people who disagree with them. Was “ignorant motherfuckers” directed to all here? As you must know by now a very high percentage of people on SST have one or more advanced degrees. pl
“If you disagree with Trump then, in my view, you are an extremist and in denial by human biology. While transgender people exist, they are an extremely small minority. A biological rarity if you will.”
I’m confused. I thought transgenders were people who had had sex-change operations. If so, they are not “biological” but artificial.
As far as it goes, I agree with Trump here. It just keeps getting crazier and crazier. First, it was women in combat. Then it was homosexuals in the military, and now … trannies? Where’s it going to end? None of this does anything at all to boost readiness, so we’ve got to put our foot down somewhere.
On another subject, it’s also nice to see that the current de-escalation scheme in Syria seems to be working, despite Bibi’s sour grapes.
LeaNder
NAVY SEALS are in the navy, not the army. Get it? 20 years is a normal time for someone to RETIRE, not resign. Your ignorance of anything military is embarrassing. pl
Larry,
” Are they serving in order to be part of a social experiment ”
Yes and this is just the first return salvo of the war on traditional America.
Larry Kart,
How on earth would the DoD know if there are 12,800 transgenders serving? That figure sounds like it’s way too high.
What is the study methodology? How is transgender defined?
Are the transgenders deployment ready? How are they being evaluated on their enlisted evaluation reports and officer evals? Center of mass? Higher? Lower?
Simply tossing out a figure like “12,800” may evoke an emotional response in some, but it is, really, meaningless. It’s a “news” person technique.
Deep seated emotional dysfunction is not proprietary to gays and transgender people. Look at the drug and alcohol abuse prevalent among white males. Look at the suicide rate among ex-military. It was not that long ago that being gay was considered a dysfunction, but now society and the military seem much more at ease with gays. How many more decades will it take for transexuals to reach that status?
Makes me think of endocrine disruptors in the enviroment and hermaphrodite bass in the upper reaches of the Potomac river in West Virginia. Ha, ha, that would be a hoot if America is turning itself trans or ambivalent sexual through poisoning the enviroment. Didja see the study where sperm counts are at 50 percent of 40 years ago. Gonna have to get on that synthetic T, cancer be damned. We do it all to ourselves.
Pat – I think you hit the nail on the head – society and the military need time to get used to these kind of changes. I’m 73 and have seen many of these kind of changes in my lifetime. Changes in attitudes come slowly as women, blacks, and gays have found out. Frankly, with my upbringing, I am astonished at how much change has occurred and been accepted. 30 years ago who would have thought gays would be in the military and serving without an absolute upheaval.
“Rand estimates that there are 2,500 transgender people currently on active duty in the military, and about 1,500 in the reserves.”
OK, some of the posters have convinced me that due to my “old-fashioned” notions that I was wrong to think that lady boys shouldn’t be allowed to serve. So, now that you’ve won me over, please convince the army of North Korea, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Russian army, etc., as well so they can be at least as butch as we are. And, then onto our allies, such as the Thai military who’s country, in spite of having a very large and visible population of lady boys, considers them to be mentally ill; now there’s a challenge for you if ever there was one, go for it please.
Somewhere civilian leadership, if indeed the term is not an oxymoron, needs to ask itself what is the fundamental purpose of the military. At the moment they seem to think that its purpose is to serve as a career opportunity, primarily for those who find the civilian job market unwelcoming.
Its real purpose is, of course, defense of our nation, and all else should be sublimated to that end. Pleasing the wishes of the citizens who want to serve is not relevant. Taking on those to serve who can best accomplish the mission is the only reasonable criteria.
Too much of our legal social framework is based on “it’s not fair,” but life in reality is often unfair. What’s fair about a falling cliff, or a hurricane? Crying about unfairness is for six year olds, and the military does not need any of those.
maybe just change your name to raving & things will feel better?
cheers,
Nancy K,
Yes, the poor victim served while draft dodger Bill Clinton was president. Now he/she/ze or whatever the PC pronoun de juour is can use all that leadership ability and victim-hood status to a) run for office or b) fill the bank account. I’m guessing the choice will be ‘b’.
Followup thought, in any job, safety always takes precedence over all other concerns. One could argue that Trump’s decision places safety first.
“When the war ended, few in Russia wanted to acknowledge these women’s experience. That they were sent into battle, mostly as reinforcements after the slaughter of so many men, was more an occasion for national shame.”
NYT lies again – news at 11! No, no one tried to “silence” or “suppress” that information. And Alexeich is a Russophobic hack, who will do anything for the money.
“Russia also had the quite impressively named “Womens batallions of death” in WW1. “
That was the only impressive thing in them. Like many other “batallions of death”, these shock troopers were wasted during the failed summer offensive of 1917. The Provisional government thought it would be a great PR stunt for them and that they would “shame” male soldiers into fighting hardly. As usual, they miscalculated.
jdledell
Half the suicide rates among active and former military are old people like you and me. They just have given up in the face of diminished capacity, terminal disease, etc. A large part of the rest of the suicides are active duty people which have never been overseas. pl
LeaNder
The US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps. these are all different career services within the Defense Department. The US Navy and the US Marine Corps are both under control of the Secretary of the Navy. The US Marine Corps is basically the Navy Department’s army. I am “retired from the Army for career service. I am still in the Army but on the retired list. Resigned means that you left and severed all ties with the service you once belonged to. pl
Nancy K
That’s true. DJT was a draft dodger as was Bubba Clinton, Cheney, GW Bush really once he got through free flying lessons in the Air NG. How many more should we list in both parties? Pence maybe? These people are too good for military service As Sun Tzu (the chop suey Clausewitz) wrote “do not waste a good man by making him a soldier.” pl
Trump will not revisit the current rules regarding gays in the military, and neither will the Republican Party. That battle has been lost (and the GOP never really wanted to fight it, for fear of permanently alienating younger voters). However, they have to appease the base, hence the current preoccupation with the nation’s bathrooms.
I see Dunford has had to note patiently that there is a chain of command and the Tweeter-in-Chief is supposed to follow it.
Yes, the numbers of how many serving in the U.S. military are transgender are squishy because the Defense Department doesn’t keep track. Here is some further information/speculation from Politifact:
‘The Defense Department would not elaborate on Trump’s announcement, including how many transgender people served in the military. Reports have said the Pentagon does not keep track of transgender personnel.
‘Instead they sent us to the military’s transgender policy web page, which as of this writing had not yet been updated. A Defense Department spokesman said the policy would be revised “in the near future,” with White House input. A Trump spokesman did not answer our attempts to contact him.
Congressman Ted Lieu’s spokesman Jack d’Annabale said the congressman got his estimate [of “thousands of people”] from a May 2014 brief by researchers at UCLA’s Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy.
‘They used responses to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, sent to respondents by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality. The definition of transgender included “those whose gender identity or expression differs from those traditionally associated with their assigned sex at birth,” according to the study.
‘Extrapolating that 0.3 percent of the population identified as transgender, UCLA’s researchers estimated that there were “approximately 15,500 transgender individuals are serving on active duty or in the Guard or Reserve forces.” It also said that about 134,400 transgender people were veterans or retired.
‘Another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in September 2015 used data from the UCLA brief and other sources to determine that 12,800 service member would be eligible for transgender health care. The study suggested of those, 188 would use benefits for transition services, at a cost of $4.2 million to $5.6 million.
‘More recently, the Pentagon commissioned a June 2016 RAND Corporation report studying the effects of integrating transgender service members. The think tank estimated that there were between 1,320 and 6,630 active duty transgender personnel, and between 830 and 4,160 in the reserves. The midrange estimates were for 2,450 active duty and 1,510 reserve duty service members….
‘The RAND study used the National Transgender Discrimination Survey and other surveys, including private insurance data. RAND started with a lower population prevalence than UCLA did — 0.19 percent instead of 0.3 percent — accounting for the lower figure.
‘If we combine the top RAND estimates for active duty and reserves, between 2,150 and 10,790 active duty and reserve service members may identify as transgender.’
As for Fred’s certainty that all the transgender citizens serving in the U.S. military are doing so as part of a “war on traditional America” that is masquerading as a social experiment, Fred’s skills as a mind reader are considerable.
Transgender people are people who “identity” as belonging to a gender other than their biological/birth gender. Transgender people may or not be transexuals, i.e. people who undergo surgery in an attempt to modify their genitalia from male to female or female to male. Don’t have exact figures, but I believe that not that many transgender people decide to have such surgery these days, especially of the female-to-male variety — that because such surgery is complex, and the success rate (in terms of satisfaction with the results) is not high.
The funding bill was the real issue. Transgender reassignment surgery should never be paid for by the military. The same for other elective surgeries like breast augmentation, nose jobs, whatever. The military medical system is solely to keep the soldiers fit to fight and changing your gender is a personal choice and nothing to do with readiness. Personally, I think the gender as defined by your DNA (X/Y chromosomes) are how you should be legally and not what you “think” you are.
This was all about pacifying two groups of Republicans the first wanted to prohibit gender surgeries and the other didn’t want to say so to their constituents as they are basically cowards. Trump ended the debate to get this very important funding bill passed. He can walk back the Transgender ban by simply becoming “enlightened” as after all there are now 12,000 of them on active duty. But, at the same time he can ban elective surgeries and get what everyone wants and come out a winner.
Well at least those wives and girlfriends don’t have to worry that those women are after their men.
It is human nature. I recall back when I was enlisted pulling ambulance support on the tank ranges at Grafenwoehr Germany back in the mid-70’s. There was roughly one ambulance for every 5 tanks on the line and we pulled 7 days traught duty. Boring as hell, cold and very noisy. The ambulance next to me had a line of soldiers waiting outside and we hadn’t seen any patients for weeks at ours. Turns out the ambulance in question was manned by 2 female corpsmen running a side business.
I rotated to a Troop Medical Clinic in Stuttgart in 1974 which had roughly 2,000 soldiers assigned to our TMC. We had exactly 50 female soldiers on the installation and they were all welders as the installation was a depot maintenance facility for armored vehicles. I might add all the women were “bruisers” which is not too unexpected given their MOS. These were tough and big women in what I thought was very good health and fitness. When I think of women having any chance of becoming Rangers I think of these gals. Yet, every day on sick call at least 10 women were there. Our typical sick call was less than 100 soldiers (unless there was a field deployment then it went way up) so the ratios were all wrong. These were not shammers and the women had serious health problems due to the extreme nature of their work. I realized then that there is a reason women do less physical things.
Later in my career I had the pleasure to command a joint TOE/TDA laboratory unit and it was roughly 50% female. I had a co-ed barracks and I was surprised that there was very little actual romance happening in the barracks (except the lesbians). But, when it came to actual problems of the disciplinary nature which includes drug and alcohol abuse, spouse abuse, etc. it was 70/30 with the women having the most problems. I had a system for our unit (as we were actually extremely busy doing laboratory work) that anyone who max’ed the APFT was excused from unit PT. This was a big incentive but it turned out that the only people who ended up having to do the mandatory PT were females officers and female soldiers. I had 250 officers under my command (of which 15 were full colonels) and 300 soldiers. As we were a tactical unit as well as providing essential services to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East I was required to meet the unit readiness standards so it was a bear to keep everyone in readiness and the women made it extremely difficult. I will say though that the majority of the female officers were exceptional and required very little attention on my part. It was the junior enlisted who presented the most challenges. I understood this well having risen through the ranks and jumped from SFC to 2LT in my 12th year of service. I can say though we always met our ALO status requirements and were fully deployable all the time despite our secondary TDA mission which everyone considered our actual mission.
My point is that for females it was a huge challenge and in many ways unfair to the women to try and require identical treatment and standards. I liked it much better when we had a separate Women’s Army Corps and they still did an excellent (perhaps better) job back before VOLAR (volunteer Army).
The LGBT issues just compound already extent problems in the military so it will be interesting to someone in the future to analyze the impact of Obama’s decisions.
@Lyttenburgh
I am aware of that, this was however not the fault of these women who served under very harsh conditions.
@Londonbob
WW2 was an existential and defensive war for the Soviet Union.
There are differences between people who sign up for offensive wars in expeditionary outfits, and people who literally fight invaders, particularly genocidal Nazi invaders, on their own homeland.
I find it quite off putting to characterize such people (I sincerely doubt that you are acquainted with a statistically significant sample) based on their outward appearances.
Also, this is WW2 Soviet Union we are talking about. Additional Soldiers increased Soviet strength, and increased Soviet Strength means increased chances for individuals to return home alive.
Significant others at home worrying about spousal infidelity as opposed to the spouse getting killed, maimed or captured is pretty much the definition of a first world problem.
“Just like when Truman demanded equal treatment for black Americans in the military, an ass end of backward-looking holdouts will whine about buck sergeants and the end of the world. Somehow the Army survived black people, pinoys, latinos, Italians, Poles, and everybody else who at one time was an untermenschen.”
So you’re conflating gender dysmorphia with the historical struggle for racial equality? Do you know how stupid and demeaning to the Civil Rights movement that is? I have much sympathy for — and think we should all act kindly to — those suffering from gender dysmorphia, but sheesh man get a grip.
There have been many multicultural and multiracial armies throughout history.
Many of those were also multiracial. The Mongol army (a highly successful fighting force that was not particularly renowned for its adherence to modern progressive values) frequently was not very Mongol.
As such, one could trivially use history to rebut arguments against desegregation by “backward looking holdouts”.
There have been multisex armies, although incidence of women in actual combat roles was significantly lower (female commanders happened more frequently then female infantry).
From a cultural evolutionary standpoint, women are less replaceable then men, and societies/cultures which sacrifices their women in wars tend to be out-competed by societies which do not do so.
There are a number of exceptions to this argument, which f.e. does not apply much in wars were civilians are under more threat then members of the military (great reason why YPJ, Kurdish female militia, is actually a pretty good idea), but it generally holds true.
Available talent pool is not that important, given that the required talent slots outside of massive all out wars can be filled by more expendable men.
I am not aware of any historical army that used people with transitional gender roles.
The exhaustive DOD commissioned 2016 Rand study mentioned in Larry Kart’s post above addresses many of the issues raised by commenters on this thread including the experience of foreign militaries; four of them (Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom) were the subjects of Rand case studies:
“….At the time of this study, 18 countries allowed transgender military personnel to serve openly: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom….”
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1500/RR1530/RAND_RR1530.pdf
lally
So what? Contractors will say any damned thing to get their fee. You have to be nuts to want transgender people in your unit. pl
OMB
I thought you retired as a major. pl
Nancy K
“those women” Do you mean males who think they are women. They probably would want the men, or do you mean females who think they are men? pl
Fully agree. The arguments in support of Trump’s bigotry against transgender people here are almost the same arguments made against Truman’s order banning racial discrimination in 1948. The special snowflakes of bigotry feel icky when they see someone different than them, So those snowflakes need to ban those who make them feel icky. How “brave” of them. Frankly, I’ve never seen bigger cowards.
According to a recent RAND study between 1,300 and 6,700 transgender individuals are presently in active duty service. A recent AP article said that the Pentagon knows of fewer than 300 serving openly.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1530.html
That’s laughable, claiming that the comparison between the struggles of two group of human beings for equality insults one of those groups. The sole premise of that argument is bigotry.
Your ignorance on this is stunning. Discriminating against people on the basis of the amount of pigmentation in their skin is bigotry. Stating that you are not going to allow an extreme minority into a military unit because these aberrations claim to be a sex other than what their DNA dictates is not bigotry. To equate the two is pure nonsense.
Larry Kart,
“‘Extrapolating that 0.3 percent of the population identified as transgender, UCLA’s researchers estimated that there were “approximately 15,500 transgender individuals are serving on active duty or in the Guard or Reserve forces.” It also said that about 134,400 transgender people were veterans or retired.”
This assumes that transgenders successfully enter the service and then complete basic/boot in the same proportion as non-transgenders. I find that assumption to be spurious and amateurish for a number of reasons.
At least the report admits that all of this hubbub is over, at maximum, 0.3% of the population.
“Frankly, I’ve never seen bigger cowards.”. Are you speaking of the combat vets who post here?
That is pretty insulting to those serving. Unless you personally know them and know why they serve, you should retract that. Remember that until recently they had to serve but keep it to themselves. We had thousands of gay serve while in the closet and they weren’t part of any experiment.
Steve
I believe women of any kind (natural or transgender) are disruptive in a fighting unit that has men but females of all types could probably serve elsewhere, not in combat with men. Banning them from certain jobs makes sense but not from the entire military – modern militaries have lots of support personnel.
That brings up an interesting question: what about female to male transgenders who have completed transition? They would look like men and they would probably be eager to prove they are men.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what Trump or the military brass decide. Some estimates put transgenders in the military at a 2 times the rate of them in the general populous. Transgenders, for whatever reason, have and will continue to enter the military but they’ll hide it as they have. Nothing will change. The real question is whether having closeted transgenders is better than having out of the closet transgenders in the military.
I have to agree that it makes no sense for the military to pay for surgery for these people. They shouldn’t get time off or special considerations because they are transgender. What I don’t get is if someone has had their surgery, and is performing well at their job, what is the need to get rid of them? Shouldn’t the focus be on performance? If someone was in your unit and functioning well for a couple of years, then comes out as transgender, you would automatically decide they should go?
Steve
Where did I ever say it was proprietary to gays and trans? Other dysfunctional tendencies may also disqualify people from military service.
Hitching the trans cart to the gay horse is a fallacy just as is hitching the gay cart to the black horse. Three separate categories with different issues. Nothing compares to the trans desire to subsume personal identity to the fantasy of switching their basic biology. It’s a formula for perpetual personal crisis that severely affects how they interact with society. And no one is obligated to accept the risk it presents to certain exacting group performance demands.
I realize it is fashionable in some circles to compare mental health issues and race, but it is insulting to those who fought to overcome racial discrimination. Gender dysphoria is not the only mental health issue that can disqualify one from military service. People get weeded out for psychological reasons all the time. Are those people also victims of discrimination?
When you consider the source, such a basic error in methodology should not be surprising.
Interesting fact-based perspective and one that seems to have been excluded from the discourse.
It didn’t serve Germany too well.
Reading Kristen Beck’s Bio, I feel he was most likely a better man than you and she is a better woman than me.
Males who think they are women are usually not referred to as “butch dykes”.
I have met a few men who became female and were in lesbian relationships. However I have never heard of a women who becomes a man being in a homosexual relationship, but I imagine it happens.
I believe it was Shakespeare who said all is fair in love and war.
Nncy K
IMO you know absolutely nothing about WW2> pl
NancyK,
Thanks for the personal attack. Clinton was still a draft dodger.
Nancy K
Shakespeare was laughing at the idea. He did that often as in “to tine own self be true…” pl
Steve,
When did everyone on active duty appoint you as spokesperson?
I know he was and I have no respect for him regarding that.
Trying to close LeaNder’s unclosed del tag. (I think)
Agree with you completely. The military or rather we the taxpayers should not pay for their surgeries, but if they are transgender and perform their job well they should not be discriminated against.
Don’t the trannies have to take a shitload of drugs every day? What if they’re in the field taking fire and water is short? Just two mouthfuls each every 4-6 hours? Does the tranny’s medical need to gulp a handful of gender-maintaining drugs trump the water survival need of your fellow solider?
What if the tranny has to dump his gear with all the bottles in it? Does he revert to female strength in three days?
Can diabetics who need daily meds join the military?
Nancy K
Is the military a jobs program? pl
Endocrinological / biochemical / genetic engineering + sophisticated surgery are forces that may significantly alter how institutions address sexual orientation in the future. I suspect it will be different than how we perceive and act regarding transgender people today. Second order consequences of the Prez’ policy could be the rise of cadres of armed patriotic LBGT martial units akin to 3%ers and OathKeepers. There are powerful urges within the human soul that are beyond the intellect… they demand acton. This is yet another reason for a public service program requiring all citizens participation. We can work it out, but in the future.
It is true that this will be strongly supported by his base. This support from his base is the reason that Pres. Trump has announced this. It isn’t because Pres. Trump has any strong opinion on the issue; he is driven by political expediency or whoever has his ear at the moment. http://i.imgur.com/7AOu8pc.jpg In terms of those who will object: My two older brothers and one uncle all served in Vietnam. None of them were lifers but only one of three agree with President Trump’s decision. I don’t count myself among them since all I did was a six year reserve stint. Just a point of observation.
Anthony Scaramucci graduated in 1982 from Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School in Port Washington,[15] where he served as student council president.[16] He earned a B.A. in Economics from Tufts University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
I rest my case.
I wouldn’t have been “nuts” enough to “want transgender people in my unit” if I were of the age and gender to serve back in the day. But the list of countries allowing transgenders to serve openly indicates a change of attitude toward such matters. Although, a reading of the case study chapter shows widely varying solutions and seemingly ad hoc approaches to the implementation of the policies among the four countries.
No I was just repeating what Steve said re performing their jobs well. However many learn skills they use later in life while in the military.
Nancy K
I see. You understand this as a matter of Social Justice. pl
KH, are you suggesting one can use the html del tag to close the strike tag? Del should close whatever tag used? Supposing you refer to the delete, or the del html tag?
Nevertheless, I still think that the easy erasure between whatever transgender may be, is, or will be in its multitude of expressions, let alone its long cultural tradition, versus transsex is highly irritating:
https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/transgender-and-transsexuals
Steve,
Performance of what, the unit or an individual soldier within it?
Finally! Tequila!!
http://www.newsweek.com/first-lgbt-unit-created-fight-isis-syria-its-name-queer-insurrection-641148
Trump’s tweet said “After consultation with my Generals and military experts…”
Any information or guesses about who they were? Apparently not the CJCS or SecDef.
Allen Thompson
CJCS’ statement is merely about procedure. DoD awaits official presidential guidance. pl
Three comments:
First, why on earth should “transgenders” have any right whatsoever
to demand that the general public pay to satisfy their personal desires?
I am referring to all the medical expenses that they demand simply to satisfy their weird special desires.
Second, given that biological differences between the sexes are a matter of, by definition, biology
(Per Wikipedia:
In humans, biological sex is determined by five factors present at birth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans ),
when a person’s mind is out of sync with their body re “gender identification”
why do the
quacksdoctors judge that the problem is with their bodies, not their mind?The arguments that I have heard from the
quacksdoctors sound like pure BS to me.Third, consider an argument that appears frequently,
that gender is something assigned at birth by the delivering doctor.
No, it is not assigned, it is recognized,
per some of the biological factors listed above.
Yet the MSM keeps publishing the “assigned” misstatement,
without pointing out the error.
Col. sir,
「好男不當兵，好鐵不打釘」。
“Fine men moldeth not soldiers, just as fine steel maketh not nails.”
‘Twas not Sun-tzu who quoth.
It haileth from the Song [dynasty] – with its myopic over-emphasis of civil bureaucratic vein over Martial Virtù.
A malthusian exponential growth, coupled with shortage in the imperial granaries and unforeseen cas fortuit, caused a great many in various provinces to seek refuge in major cities.
In order to placate hoi polloi, these starving ones were allocated in rank-and-file, to have their fill of military surplus.
‘Tis an alternative to dying from hunger that was not favourably looked upon.
Said drafted ones were tattooed on their faces like petty criminals (with a single character “犯”) to prevent desertion.
This ugly practice was continued right past the fall of the Song till post-[Mongol] Yuan.
The taboo of having fine young gents enlist in the various arms was pervasive even in the early days of the [Chinese] Republic.
That famed author, Lu Hsün (Lu Xun) himself as a youth faced severe ostracism from his own next-of-kin for receiving instruction from a Naval institution – and altered his name upon the demands of his own mother due to his family not desiring such “shameful association”.
This reminded me of something that challenged my worldview as a young pup when as a student my natural resources class visited various forestry operations in the field. One old timer who worked for the Forest Service mentioned that morale was always lower when women were on the crew. We students squirmed and shuffled.
Sir,
I beg to differ.
‘Tis true the hordes of genghiz were indeed of various ethnic composition.
Tho Historian I am not, I am however certain individual units (foot, archers, cavalry, etc.) were of uniform ethnic – even stalin realized that to send soviet troop to die unarmed ‘gainst the Kraut, ’twas best for esprit de corps if said expendables were from the same region or formed according to similar racial composite.
Even soviet snipers were sôlely male or femme contingents, yes?
I think this is a prevalent fantasy among the Anglo-Americans – the Female Warrior.
I find it rather peculiar, why such a desire for such unattainable thing? What gives in the Anglo-American culture?
Do you know whence it comes from?
That is why the T’ang state failed and the Sung succumbed to the Mongols; we now would never know if the Sung developments could have resulted in an analogue of Western European advances.
Wonder Woman…?
If a child is born deaf, would you call it normal?
If one is born without certain enzymes that makes one prone to suicide in adulthood, would you think that normal?
We have and ideal.
You got it.
All hail to Linda Carter.
Thank you.
Babak
De nada. pl
https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-the-women-problem-again/
This author appears to consider femme a vile distraction…
YT
I do not. pl
1664RM
Welcome aboard Sergeant Major. Is that correct? pl
UK policy has already changed:
“The United Kingdom lifted the ban on transgender personnel in 2000 following a European Court of Human Rights ruling that the country’s policy violated the right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights (Frank, 2010). The policy change was implemented with guidance to commanders, as well as a code of social conduct that allowed commanders to address inappropriate behavior toward trans- gender personnel by appealing to broader principles of tolerance and diversity and to guard operational effectiveness (Yerke and Mitchell, 2013). In 2009, the British Armed Forces released the “Policy for Recruitment and Management of Transsexual Person- nel in the Armed Forces” to offer clearer guidance to commanders on how gender transition–related issues should be addressed (Yerke and Mitchell, 2013). While trans- gender personnel are able to serve openly, under the current policy, they can be excluded from sports that organize around gender to ensure the safety of the individual or other participants. The British Army also provides its official policy on transgender person- nel on its website:
‘The Army welcomes transgender personnel and ensures that all who apply to join are considered for service subject to meeting the same mental and physical entry standard as any other candidate. If you have completed transition you will be treated as an individual of your acquired gender. Transgender soldiers serve throughout the Army playing their part in the country’s security. There is a formal network that operates in the Army to ensure that transgender soldiers can find advice and support with issues that affect their daily lives’. (British Army, undated)”
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1500/RR1530/RAND_RR1530.pdf
Seargent Major,
RE: post modern snowflake
Said author laments further.
https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-britons-strike-home/
So have others [on the other side of the Atlantic].
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266877/lefts-betrayal-terrorisms-victims-mark-tapson
Sir, [notwithstanding the checquer’d past of Pax Britanicca] you and your fellow cohorts may take Comfort in knowing that Albion still has Friends aplenty beyond her shores…