Gibbagobba said:
If that's an outright ban, then I don't really agree with that. I don't know what his intentions are, but the way I would imagine it is that there are many controversial points surrounding gender dysphoria and the treatments used for it.
Pray tell, what controversial points about gender dysphoria and it's treatment?
Would this be controversial because certain types of scientifically illiterate people find it controversial due to said scientific illiteracy, or the fact that the medical consensus of ethical treatment involves giving people access to resources and medication that certain scientifically illiterate people don't like
in general?
After all, for a scientifically literate person they'd point to the fact that HRT and gender affirming surgery when sought is better at treating gender dysphoria than Tylenol is at treating a headache. That it's one of the most successful complex medical regimen at treating a complex medical condition.
Treating depression with the latest drugs and psychotherapy still yields far poorer results. And yet I doubt people can call antidepressants and proven psychotherapy 'controversial'. If anything, psychotherapy like CBT or IPT is considered the miracle treatment for roughly 90% of depressive disorders, as well as latent anxiety disorder stressors that might be at the root ofcyclical low moods or the reinforcement of low moods.
If a transgender individual is not in a totally stable state of mind, or requires drugs or hormones on a regular basis to properly function in life, I can't see them as being fit for the military, which requires peak physical and mental condition from everyone involved.
Why? Care to elabourate? It's less obstructive than asthmatics, yet they let asthmatics into the army.
The biggest ticket of what they want from things like general infantry groups is things like being accepting of the near permanent taste of vomit in your mouth from acid reflux from ceaseless physical activity, and the capacity of
ignoring it. That is not something
normal brains deal with, nor something that you can simply
tough it out.
There is no 'template' for a soldier because soldiers aren't born, they're
made. Any
good training program understands this fully.
Moreover the military has never wanted ordinary, they've always wanted
extraordinary. To put it bluntly, your ordinary person will not
kill another human being. They will not
continue to follow orders when sufficiently endangered. They will not
meaningfully involve themselves in combat even if it would contribute to their total capacity to survive.
They realized full well even back to Napoleon's days that
ordinary people are a liability. Your ordinary human is
skittish and unpredictable. Regardless of their personal fitness or their mental state.
A good military doesn't remove abnormal people, they
keep the abnormal people. It's ordinary people they want to dispose themselves of. The
abnormals are precisely the people who they want
the most, trans or otherwise. Plenty of
physically fit,
psychologically sound people will drop out of the military. They will quickly realize that they are not up to task themselves.
Assuming a relatively
tough, a relatively
extensive selection process of soldiery, plenty of 'ordinary people' will be found wanting. Yet, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation, a few people will shine and become desirable soldiers.
This is especially noticeable given that trans people are by capita two to three times more representative in the U.S. military than their cisgender counterparts. And the big reason why there seems an inordinate number of trans people that seemingly come out after time served, is precisely because of the transphobic attitudes that were expressed within the armed services to begin with while serving.
Yet all of them passed the psych screenings and physical tests while serving, despite as such.
I can attest to that well enough. When I was in the army, plenty of LGBTQ people. Whether closeted or otherwise. Also back then given the still ridiculously high LGBTQ youth homelessness rate, many of us had nowhere else to go. Which brings on itself an unusually high determination to succeed and often a history of personal hardship that is well suited to dealing with the training regimen.
Ordinary people with ordinary brains and ordinary reasons for wanting to potentially risk themselves make for shitty soldiers.