Pentagon to Allow Transgender Individuals to Enlist Despite Trump Objections

[treezy z]

No I don't agree it would hurt the military. All the article had in it was 8 people complaining about hurt feelings.

In current leftist cultural marxist terms sure I'm an evil white male bigot.

 

[JessFR]

He might not know that actually. People have boundless capacity for self delusion.

Very few people are truly aware of why they do what they do.

 

[swilow]

No I don't agree it would hurt the military. All the article had in it was 8 people complaining about hurt feelings.

I wonder why you refuse to actually read articles and then get annoyed when people call you out on bias? You're the one making this bed.

From the article:

Among those who felt most blindsided by the reversal were transgender veterans, who by some estimates number more than 130,000 in the U.S.

That's a fucking significant number, my friend.

 

[alasdairm]

^ indeed.

In current leftist cultural marxist terms sure I'm an evil white male bigot.

nobody here has said any such thing so why are you playing the victim?

you post articles you've clearly not read in support of claims which are inconsistent at best and simply wrong at worst.

alasdair

 

[spacejunk]

"Cultural marxism". Lol. A nonsensical conspiracy theory.

I guess that's something to lean on when it's clear that your perspective is simply informed by prejudice.

 

[tathra]

The military is supposed to be a lethal killing machine

no. the military is not supposed to be a lethal killing machine. even infantrymen, the guys on the front line who are the ones shooting and being shot at, our job description was not "to kill the enemy", but "to take and occupy territory". we're taught shoot to wound, not shoot to kill, because if you kill somebody you only take that one guy out of combat, but if you wound him, you take out him and at least 2 other people, one to carry the wounded and one to carry the wounded's gear.

there are many reasons why its preferable to not kill the enemy; as long as they're rendered unable to fight back, thats all thats needed. unnecessary killing is unnecessary, and there are a lot of rules and laws restricting when the use of lethal force is actually allowed, even downrange in combat zones.

Please explain how accepting transgenders helps the military (not how the military accepting transgenders helps transgenders.)

the burden of proof here is on you, to prove why transgenders should be discriminated against and treated differently from anyone else. accepting people benefits the military in pretty much every way; your premise here is that transgenders either arent people or are somehow inferior to "normal" people, which just plain isnt true.

 

[drug_mentor]

Transgender suicide rate 32%-50%. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/ The military is not the place for suicidal people (guns, bombs etc), if a population is that suicidal go with logic and don't have them in the military. The military is supposed to be a lethal killing machine, not summer camp for social justice pets.

As Alasdair has already pointed out, that is not the suicide rate. However, it is the attempted suicide rate, so you might maintain that this still reveals a significant mental health issue that bars transgender people. I don't think the point is very sensible, however. I assume that there is some kind of psychological testing that takes place before someone is admitted into the military, presumably these tests would be to stop people who shouldn't be in the army from joining. If no such testing takes place, it seems to me that you should be arguing for the implementation of said tests - surely, you recognise that plenty of non-transgender folks attempt suicide - if you are so worried about suicidal people entering the military then wouldn't testing be a more reasonable approach than discriminating against a tiny minority of the population? By your own statistic, half or more of the transgender population don't attempt suicide, why should these people be excluded? How does excluding mentally healthy people from participating in the military benefit the military?