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Standoff Between the President and the Military on Transgenderism
A few weeks ago, President Trump again threw the country into a tizzy by declaring a ban on transgender people in the military. Everyone was surprised, including James Mattis, Secretary of Defense. A number of factors seemed to contribute to Trump’s decision, including contradictory ones. I’d like to explore some of those here, and also explain the reasons why his decision may actually benefit not only the military, but this nation.
In studying the background for Trump’s decision, President Obama in 2011 repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy but was silent regarding transgender members of the armed forces. Following that decision, however, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that transgender people could openly serve in the military. He said:
We have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines — real patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit.
Implicit in his comments are the desires of individuals rather than the needs of the military.
Looking at these factors has raised a number of questions regarding the reasons for and impact of approving the acceptance of transgender members of the military.
First, although he had not consulted Defense Secretary Mattis, the President had consulted generals and military experts before he made his decision. I also believe that Trump’s not telling Mattis might have been purposeful: Gen. Mattis won’t be branded with supporting this decision, although he may need to answer for it later.
The second factor is that when Obama had Secretary Carter announce the acceptance of transgenderism, we have no way of knowing whether the military thought this was a smart decision or not. The military, after all, is subject to the decisions of the Commander-in-Chief, and officers may have assumed that the potential blowback for resisting wasn’t worth contesting a decision that was likely inevitable.
A third factor is that we have no idea how military personnel in general are responding to this decision. The military is not in the habit of consulting its personnel on these matters, nor should it be. The media report that personnel support the decision, but that is a meaningless assessment that has never been verified.
A fourth factor might be pushback from the military against Trump. Although he has spoken positively about the military, Pentagon officials expressed concerns that his decision might open them to lawsuits. Trump’s announcing the ban through Twitter rather than through the normal procedures probably didn’t sit well either.
Fifth, Secretary Carter had also ordered the 2016 Rand Report which estimated that the maximum cost of healthcare for transgender troops would be $8.4 million a year, less than 1 percent of annual spending on active duty health care. I would suggest that the resistance to approving the funding is more about moral concerns than just a political or legislative one.
Sixth, there are a number of reasons why originally pushing through the approval of transgender people in the military was a bad idea. David French, in his article in National Review shared reasons for reviewing the original transgender approval. Since a degree of mental well being is important for those in the military, he cites the statistics from the US Transgender Survey of 2015 (PDF):
Fifty-three percent (53%) of USTS respondents aged 18 to 25 reported experiencing current serious psychological distress [compared to 10% of the general population] … Forty percent (40%) of respondents have attempted suicide at some point in their life, compared to 4.6% in the U.S. population. Forty-eight percent (48%) of respondents have seriously thought about killing themselves in the past year, compared to 4% of the U.S. population, and 82% have had serious thoughts about killing themselves at some point in their life … 29% of respondents reported illicit drug use, marijuana consumption, and/or nonmedical prescription drug use in the past month, nearly three times the rate in the U.S. population (10%)
He reminds us that transgender people may feel more accepted if they are part of the military, but he also points out that, particularly in the field, physical strength matters:
Here’s some basic science: Testosterone also causes development of a heavier and stronger skeleton in males and has a specific effect on shaping the male pelvis, adding greater strength for load-bearing tasks and enabling more efficient locomotion. It increases the size and function of their hearts and lungs and consequently males have 40% greater aerobic capacity, and higher endurance compared with females. Women’s smaller hearts require more blood to be pumped each minute at a given level of exertion because they have less hemoglobin in their blood to carry oxygen. These differences will put women at a distinct disadvantage in newly opened infantry jobs, where they will be expected to carry 100-pound packs routinely, or in armor jobs, where they will have to load 35-pound rounds again and again. Women in these roles will have to constantly work at a higher percentage of their maximal capacity to achieve the same performance as men. No training system can close the gap. That is absolutely right, and as political pressure increases, we will fling disproportionately unfit soldiers into the most stressful of jobs. But it’s not just individuals who suffer. The mission suffers. The nation suffers.
There is also growing evidence that the science of transgenderism is incomplete. The reasons people identify as transgender can range from ambivalence about their sexuality, to early pressures from people in their lives to acknowledge that since they like to participate in non-traditional activities (girls who like to wear overalls and roughhouse, and boys who like to dance), they are meant to live as the opposite gender. The list of ambiguities and inconsistencies of transgenderism is a long one.
We now wait to see if President Trump goes through the formal channels to enact the ban.
So we have on our hands another progressive agenda item with incomplete data being forced, not only on society, but on our men and women in the military, where lives are at risk. To comfort or satisfy the individual desires of a very small group, we once again bow to the god of political correctness. I’ll close with a quote by David French:
So, please, stop talking about individual rights. Stop talking about individual goals. The military has to make hard choices on the basis of odds, probabilities, and centuries of hard-earned experience. Our national existence — ultimately, our very civilization — depends on getting those answers right. And if there’s one thing that any person learns in war, “fairness” has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome. The battlefield is the most unjust place on earth.
[David French and Andrew Walker, author of God and the Transgender Debate discuss the transgender issue on Ricochet’s Liberty Files podcast.]
Published in Military
If it’s punching down then they shouldn’t be in the military.
“I’m convinced that transgenders have a mental disorder for which I would very much encourage them to get help.”
That is a rough sell to transgender folk, especially if you are asking them to respect your values. There are certainly issues to discuss. Like is reassignment surgery really good for an individual? Certainly conflicting data on that. But how would you differentiate the view you hold currently on trans issue versus views on homosexuality in the 1960’s? There was of course a large body of evidence medical, physiological and cultural that homosexuality is a mental illness or criminal.
So I think we are on a similar path of discovery, its not that trans issues are new but that we can talk about it openly now, so we have all kinds of data coming in. But I would suggest we have to cautious of the old prejudices that exist. While there is certainly concerns of skewing data the other way too.
Please elaborate.
Or sometime its just calling out a bigot. Yes I am liberal that pays money to a conservative podcast network, hold on a second my eyes are rolling around on the floor.
Punching down indicates the punchee is not an equal to the puncher.
We are indeed, Mitchell. My concern on transgender is that the research is still relatively new and contradictory. Look at all the discoveries that come in regarding medical treatments nowadays; we are doing things now that would not have made sense years ago. Surgically altering one’s body is a huge step to take when there may be other issues going on. And I don’t know if the time will come when we can be certain that there are better ways to deal with these conflicts.
I presented four things that are reasons for changing force structure. Your refutation of one of them was that we can train our way out of any problem. Training costs time and money, time and money that then can’t be used for other purposes. Assuming everything else is a wash, you are expending more to stay in the same place. Engineers have a word for that: they call it “wrong.”
The only thing I wrote about transexuals is that I. Don’t. Care. Tolerance is not kow-towing to the desires of another — that is called “surrender.” (Didn’t they cover this in military training?) Tolerance is the art of Not Giving a Damn. I didn’t care yesterday. I don’t care now. I won’t care tomorrow.
Certainly, why a great amount of trans people don’t get reassignment surgery. A large amount of them feel better with hormone therapy. In the future you may find a more receptive audience if you don’t say they are mentally ill. Because mind you whats really happening is research is questioning the orthodoxy that trans is a mental illness.
What I find delicious is when people use biological determinism as an argument for trans people, then turn around and deny there is biological determined characteristics of the sexes. My own view is that this is a complicated multidimensional spectrum akin to how math use to be viewed as only having a positive x axis then added a y, then negative numbers, imaginary units and so forth. These concepts were not always intuitive but they always existed and explain much of our reality.
You did I thought they were reasonable. I didn’t really have to refute them, remember Trump is changing the policy. I also suggested that only proper policy was one that assess the individual for the particular task, do you refute that principle? I assert that is more less the current US standard. There are already trans members.
Hypothetical: 1946 do you request that same litmus test be applied to racial integration?
Please of all the thing to haggle over this is the issue for you? How about the F35s canceling that be a major money saver, or redundant pointless pork barrel bases and facilities. Reform of the procurement process, a lot of things to pick off before this.
Sorry if I made it sound like you were the bigot. Not my intention. That was for the uncouth term someone else used and for them only.
What is the problem with saying that gender dysphoria is a mental illness? It is either a very serious birth defect that affects the sex organs and/or the adrenal system, or else it is a mental illness. If the person’s sexual plumbing is healthy but the person genuinely believes they are the opposite sex than the body they inhabit, then there is a serious mental problem.
Conservatives generally prefer clarity to obfuscation. If we cannot talk about it because it makes some persons feel offended, then we can never reach any consensus regarding appropriate policy.
(We learned not long ago that there is a common medical term that applies but which is forbidden for use at Ricochet when discussing transgenderism. This does not serve to advance a conversation if we wish the conversation to be productive.)
I have read quite a bit of what passes for recent research. Most of it is driven by a viewpoint, on one side or the other. The real actual science is very thin, plagued with shortcomings such as small sample sizes, selection bias, and other methodological issues. No major public policy changes should be undertaken on the basis of such a supremely uncertain understanding.
What I find delicious is when people describe the history of mathematics. René Descartes developed the x and y axes (both positive and negative) in 1637. (Fermat had been working on the same kind of thing, but he hadn’t published it to the degree that Descartes had, partly because he was dead. Descartes was apparently unaware of what Fermat had produced.) Imaginary number are older than the Cartesian coordinate system, maybe as far back as Hero of Alexandria. The concepts, in any case, did not always exist. Someone had to devise them. Mathematics, to put it bluntly, only exists in our heads. It is an entirely artificial, human-devised means of looking at the world. Don’t get too worked up over the “natural” numbers either. Gödel proved that for every formal numeric system, there are unprovable theorems that are nonetheless true. (There’s your Zen right there, Susan. :) )
In any case, “research” indicating much of anything is a bit of an issue, especially when it is psychological research. Back in 2011, someone decided to check to see just how well the research was being conducted and reported. An effort was made to closely reproduce the reported results of 100 studies. The good news is that some of the results were reproduced. The bad news is that for every reproducible study there was almost two studies that could not be reproduced. Engineers have a word for that too. They call it “crap.” (Engineers discriminate a lot like that.)
Wow. Great stuff, Percival. And it’s late for me. I’ll pick up on all your comments tomorrow. I have target practice, so it may be light. This has been very productive for me. See you in the a.m.
I concur. Additional from my view there is very little need for any public policy changes, this primarily a cultural shift that needs to occur.
Learn something new everyday. I have a vague understanding of the math duels of the time.
Agreed, better way to say it was the concepts where created to explain a phenomenon that always existed or had the potential.
Which in some ways may be more appropriate for the trans debate then any side wants to admit.
I generally agree with notion that much of psychology is suspect.
I am very skeptical of cultural shifts. We have had several cultural shifts in this young century, and I believe they are all doing more harm than good.
To quote the great Wolfgang Pauli, that’s not even wrong.
You shouldn’t base policy on that which is incapable of being falsified (e.g. Warming, Global).
Well if that is the case you are guilty of it too. I assert that a person should be judged individually, something you haven’t deemed to respond to yet. You assert that a person should be judged by a general category. I asked if such generalizations by category ought to be expanded to other groups? No one has responded.
Additionally do you think freedom of the press, religion, right to bare arms are falsifiable concepts?
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-flying-spaghetti-monster
We are talking about transgender persons, right? That is a group that is so small that they do not form a “general category.” They do, however, fall into the larger category of ‘persons with serious health issues,” many of whom are not accepted for military service.
I tend to be sympathetic to gay and trans people, because I’ve known so many of them personally. I had a trans friend in my 20s, before anyone talked about it or even knew about it. These people are very unhappy, and though I feel for them, I don’t think the military is the proper venue for social issues to be worked out. The fact that there are several thousand of them in the military merely means that they joined for the purpose of having their surgeries paid for. By the taxpayers. I think it’s wrong.
Is there any evidence of that? My understanding is the vast majority do not undergo sex reassignment surgery. It seems a very odd route to take as there appears there is no guarantee the military will provide such funding.
Another theory is many of these people enter the military out of a genuine feeling of service. But there is likely an element of proving hyper masculinity which is likely applicable to cis straight men too.
Also anyone have an idea of the numbers like how many FtM or MtF?
I think it’s mostly MtF. I can’t remember who it was, but I saw someone on the news who is or was in the military, and this person said they suspect this is why so many join. As with all the rest of it, there’s no hard data. I’m sure there are some who join for the same reason others join, but it just doesn’t sit well with me for the taxpayer to pay for their surgeries (about $132,00 plus $1200 a month for hormones). In addition, their presence is a stupid distraction for all concerned. I am sorry but if you’re a man who thinks he’s a woman, there is something very wrong with you. I want you to get all the help you need and I want everyone to be nice to you, but I don’t want you in the armed services. There are plenty of people who want to serve but can’t for one reason or another, and you are one of them.
I’ll respond, Mitchell. It reminds me of something in Christianity (sorry, I’m Jewish) that says we should turn the other cheek. That does apply to our individual relationships. But it doesn’t apply to nations and our relationships with each other. I think that analogy works. When I deal with individuals on a personal level, I try to give them every freedom to be themselves. But if I were hiring people to work for me, I would have different expectations of the relationship. If some aspect of the individual prevents him or her from working well with the group, or could have that impact, I may very well not hire him or her.
Fascinating.
It isn’t Biological Determinism, which refers to human behavior (whether it’s innate or caused by social environment factors). The belief that you’re a different sex from what the inside of your underpants plainly tells you is a mental illness. If I said I think I’m a unicorn and you have to write legislation around me, I think you would have to say I’m mentally ill.
The only reason the Left has jumped all over this is that it has to do with sex. That’s what the Left loves because it has shock value, and their favorite thing is thinking they’re “Sticking it to The Man” and shocking the rubes in flyover country. The people affected by this bizarre disorder represent less than .01% of the general population. But the Left has recently discovered them as a new cause, and they added yet another alphabet letter to what used to be the Gay Community, then became the LG Community, then LGB, then LGBT, and so on.
They do this to artificially inflate their numbers so as to seem more powerful as a voting bloc. Suddenly trans people are all around us! They live next door to you! They’re your friends and neighbors! Actually, no they are not. Shoving them in front of cameras and bleating their heartrending stories on Yahoo so-called “News” will never change the fact that these unfortunate individuals are the tiniest of tiny percentages of the general population. And we are expected to change our traditional institutions and alter the rest of the world to accommodate them. The tail is wagging the dog. And stay out of the bathroom where my daughter is! Ya weirdo.
Which can only be determined on an individual basis. I hardly think you are suggesting you would discriminate based upon someone coming from a particular region, sect, race or gender.
There is a critical difference in acknowledging that people of certain groups are less likely to succeed in certain professions versus categorically banning them from those professions.
But the military has always banned people from serving based on their criteria of fitness to serve. They should continue doing it.