Transgender recruits will be allowed to enlist in the military beginning Jan. 1, the Pentagon said Monday, as President Donald Trump's ordered ban suffered more legal setbacks.
The new policy reflects the difficult hurdles the federal government would have to cross to enforce Trump's demand earlier this year to bar transgender individuals from the military.
[...] Potential transgender recruits will have to overcome a lengthy and strict set of physical, medical and mental conditions that make it possible, though difficult, for them to join the armed services.
Maj. David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, says the enlistment of transgender recruits will start Jan. 1 and go on amid the legal battles.
Pentagon to allow transgender people to enlist in military
(Score: 0, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 14 2017, @03:47PM (2 children)
Would have loved this when I was in. Could've identified as a female and gave those horny ladies in basic some deep dickin'. Showered with 'em too.
(Score: 3, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:06PM
Hell with the naked chicks. I could have taken the lower PT standards!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @05:02PM
They won't sign you up for gender transition surgery more than once, Eth! And the sutures might give way, if you over exert.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @03:49PM (3 children)
As long as the military isn't using public money to provide non-necessary medical procedures to soldiers, this shouldn't be a problem.
Not that the military isn't wasting public money on tons of other stuff they shouldn't be like gay bombs, combat vehicles to pad the budget and make friends with small US police stations, foreign aid to Israel, and arms for ISI-I mean rebels.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:10PM
https://www.va.gov/HEALTH/NewsFeatures/2017/January/Transgender-Vets-the-VA-and-Respect.asp [va.gov]
https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/18/13677206/va-transgender-veterans-gender-confirmation-surgeries-ban [theverge.com]
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/trgh.2016.0006 [liebertpub.com]
The VA has offered hormone therapy since 2011, AFAICT.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:13PM (1 child)
FTFY
The military, generally speaking, does what it is told to do WRT budgeting, policy and execution. They really try to do the best they can, within the bounds of the mandates congress exercises over them. The problem is congress; they put the military to very poor use, basically as a driving engine to feed the military service and sundries enterprises.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 14 2017, @06:34PM
I'm glad you said "generally speaking". We do have examples to the contrary.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by idiot_king on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:06PM (12 children)
I'm not sure why the pseudo-left cares so much about this empty victory. The Pentagon and US Military, as well as the CIA and NSA, are the capitalist tentacles that (try to) crush any non-capitalist enemy in its way. This is just encouraging our allies to fight for the capitalist enemy's causes and in the long run will hurt us. This is more a victory for the capitalist backbone of the corrupt US capitalist machine than for anyone.
(Score: 1, Troll) by takyon on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)
It's a trick to get transgender people sent to die in Asia and Africa.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Friday December 15 2017, @12:18AM
I thought the trick was to see how many times you could get the word capitalist into one rambling post.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by idiot_king on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:12PM
Unless of course that knowledge of combat can help us after our trans* allies leave the military...
Just a thought >:)
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:45PM (6 children)
That is the point. Poz the military so it isn't a threat. The history of the 20th Century is best understood as a civil war between the Blue portion of the USG, centered in the State Dept and the Red side in the War / Defense Dept. The shooting parts of the war have of course been conducted elsewhere, often involving proxies. And the lesson delivered has been, over and over, that there is no victory American arms can secure that the State Dept can't turn to ash at the negotiating table. But now they tire of the fight and since Clinton have been simply seizing control of the DoD and infesting it with their SJW kind, The military had a lot of fail in it so it has taken generations to show real results but it is well hollowed out now.
Trannies will do wonders for the Blue program. Degrade moral and unit cohesion, divert resources to lawfare, "gender reassignment", additional diversity training, etc.; a hundred trannies can probably end up doing a billion dollars of economic damage while causing untold chaos.
The correct answer would be for Trump to simply say NO. Since it is obvious he will win the court case in the end, here and on the immigration suits, to simply say his government shall ignore the, obviously political and borderline seditious, lower courts. Since admitting trannies is a bell that would be hard to unring, there is no point opening up a brief window and then being forced to deal with the results.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday December 14 2017, @05:57PM (4 children)
Enduring victory requires that the enemy stop being your enemy. The ways we have to do this are to make them a) dead, b) our slaves, or c) our friends. The American people lost their stomach for option A some time around the Vietnam War, and attempting option B tends to lead to more wars (Germany into WW2, Saddam into the Gulf War...).
So the State Dept tries hard to do option C. It doesn’t always work, but you can’t judge that in a vacuum. You have to compare it to the relative (lack of) success trying the other options.
Also, unless you don’t believe that the Constitution places necessary limits on presidential authority, it is anything but “obvious” that Trump will win any lawsuit, let alone lawsuits that have thus far been resolved by lower courts rather quickly due mainly to his apparent incompetence at playing this legal game.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @09:59PM (1 child)
Option a) still working last time I checked. Wait, let me check again... yep, still working.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday December 15 2017, @03:01PM
Option A is genocide and is now considered a war crime.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @09:00AM (1 child)
Option C was a huge success with Germany and Japan. But I don't recall it being tried since. Probably because it was damn expensive (and the US car industry never recovered from it).
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday December 15 2017, @03:08PM
It's being tried in Iraq, to middling success. Unlike Germany and Japan, Iraq is in the middle of an unstable region going through power struggles. And unlike Germany and Japan, Iraq is ethnically diverse.
We're trying to be friends with Afghanistan too, but perhaps wisely our leaders don't seem willing to fully commit to it while Iraq is still struggling. Afghanistan is sure to have the same problems, but worse. As they say, it is where empires go to die.
We are friends with the relatively stable Saudi Arabia and Israel. Don't ask me why that makes sense since those two are enemies and they're both incompatible with America's secular humanist values. But I know that Evangelicals obsessed with causing Armageddon (it's somehow always about 40 years in the future) have something to do with it.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 14 2017, @10:12PM
Just wondering, J-Mo, did you date a transwoman who turned out to be only partly-operated on or something? Did you have an overbearing mother and a weak father? Did a girl, maybe an older cousin or something, abuse you when you were very young? You seem to hate women, cisgender or otherwise.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday December 14 2017, @05:44PM
Name checks out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Thursday December 14 2017, @06:02PM
The left cares about this because the military is already the single largest employer of trans people in America. Because the prescribed treatment is a dramatic change in one’s relation to society, transgender individuals, who are much more likely to experience rejection and poverty, benefit greatly from a highly structured environment that dramatically changes their peer group.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:12PM (5 children)
There is a 45% suicide rate. Surgery doesn't change it.
If somebody is suicidal, should we be giving them weapons? Should we let them fly planes? NO. Just NO.
(and these are REAL assault rifles, with selective fire, not just black scary plinkers)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:28PM
Yes, but you fail to understand why they are letting these people in. After years of study, they realized that suicide bombers are excellent form of anti-morale weaponry. These new transgender recruits will form the pilot suicide-bomber squads. We give them vests, and tell them to run into the enemy and end their own suffering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @08:33PM (2 children)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20461468 [nih.gov]
https://thinkprogress.org/no-high-suicide-rates-do-not-demonstrate-that-transgender-people-are-mentally-ill-5074c09a5827/ [thinkprogress.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @09:35PM (1 child)
Maybe some of them feel better after surgery. That doesn't make the suicide rate go away.
Maybe blaming the cruelty of society is correct. (doubt it) That doesn't make the suicide rate go away.
If you give a weapon to a person with a 45% suicide risk, and he kills himself, might you be charged with involuntary manslaughter?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:16PM
Yes it does.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-015-1867-2 [biomedcentral.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday December 14 2017, @10:38PM
Civilians who are suicidal or mentally ill are allowed (maybe even encouraged) to get weapons.
There seems to be a strong resistance to the very notion that firearms should not be made available to mentally ill people.
So why should it be different in the military than in civilian life?
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Please remember this holiday season that firearms make excellent gifts for the entire family. Family packs available at participating retailers. Check out the new Starter Guns sized just right for the little ones. Please use firearms responsibly when drinking. The NRA offers discounts to those who can show proof of mental impairment or illness.
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(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:14PM (3 children)
They'd get a $250,000 worth of surgery at military expense, then spend the whole term of enlistment recovering.
The whole point of joining is usually to get free surgery.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @10:02PM (2 children)
No the whole point is to destroy Western society by eroding the family structure in order that radical Islam can impose Marxism on rural America. Duh!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 14 2017, @10:42PM (1 child)
Maybe I have some misconceptions. I'll readily admit that I might. But does radical Islam tolerate or allow transgender people to actually live?
If transgender people can't get their surgery paid for by joining the military, then what are they going to do? Especially since we don't have universal basic income yet. /s Oh, nevermind. Don't even reply to that. Forget I said it.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:15AM
Iran has an unusually large amount of transition surgery. It's done all the time. See, a religious leader determined that it was a legit disease, but being homo does get you killed. Therefore, if two guys want to get married, one of them just transitions and then everything is 100% legal and accepted.
Outside observers strongly suspect that many of those who transition would rather have not, but that would have meant hiding or dying.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 14 2017, @06:31PM (3 children)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlFCMdBgTpE&list=PLmUMhnYbkDafuZS7EnJ61UrT-EgLoVjbS [youtube.com]
Take me down to transgender city
where the chicks have dicks
and the boys have titties
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday December 14 2017, @06:44PM
Sounds like someone have been to Thailand.
(Score: 1) by DannyB on Thursday December 14 2017, @10:44PM (1 child)
Hey, if the Boy Scouts are not accepting Girls to join,
It seems only fair that the Girl Scouts should accept Boys into their organization.
How many boys would rather be in Girl Scouts?
Probably not very many.
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(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday December 15 2017, @01:47PM
Are the cookies better on the girl side?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday December 14 2017, @07:13PM
It is what it is. But I do wonder what this might or will do to unit cohesion. I expect the argument to heat up somewhat again. They are still debating and examining what adding women does to the/a fighting unit. The results are everything and everywhere from everything is fine (ie it has done no harm) to that it's a complete mess. They have made experiments with all female, all male and various mixed groups and find that the all male groups preform better. But that could just be that they are stronger or more experienced soldiers.
Then there are experiences from other countries with a more mixed setup where it seems all fine:ish, that said perhaps it would or could be better if it was just all one gender?
The fear is usually described such as the women become an issue for the men, the urge to protect them become stronger then the needs or loyalty for the group. The physical issues, females being inferior to most men, are allowed to pass. They are given slack that a male would not be given. Singling them out as weak, special or worthy of an exception -- as in you are no longer equal. That said the strongest man of a unit usually gets to carry the heavy stuff (say Hi to the Machinegun) and not the weakest man in the unit. That said there have been or there have been found a role for women in combat in various third world situation, turns out that women don't like or are not allowed to interact with men in some parts of the world so then it helps to have women around that you can send to talk to them.
That said I'm against that this usually turns into a 'it's the mans fault'-issue. Men should adapt to make women feel welcome etc. As far as I'm concerned it should always be the other way around, the minority adapts to the majority and not any other way around. You wanna play in a mans world? Great. Be a man and don't bitch about it. It's hard to see someone as your "equal" when they clearly are not and is getting special treatment that you are not, or for someone where the bar isn't set on the same level.
The issue has clearly been around for a bit, from if you were going to have negroes in the white mans army, to women, then gay men, gay women and I guess now the issue have come to men/women that want to be women/men for some reason.
https://www.npr.org/2013/05/15/184042652/women-in-combat-obstacles-remain-as-exclusion-policy-ends [npr.org]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/01/would-transgender-troops-harm-military-effectiveness-heres-what-the-research-says/ [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/08/01/unit_cohesion_is_a_fake_rationale_for_the_transgender_military_ban.html [slate.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @07:39PM (1 child)
Please either 1) adapt to the group, shut up, and do your job; or 2) take your uniqueness elsewhere.
Yes, I am uncomfortable with your inability to ascertain whether you are a man or a woman and act accordingly.
No, I am not the one with a problem.
No, it is not the military's job to fix and accept you. It is the military's job to kill people and break things when deemed necessary for our national interests.
Can't get on board with that? Please see option 2), and let the real men and women take care of the grown-up business.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:27PM
For all of those that are concerned about transgenders entering or re-entering the U.S. military, you have nothing to worry about. We're doing EXTREME VETTING. And we're fighting very hard in the courts. Very hard. Believe me, our military is going to be PERFECTO. MAGA! 🇺🇸