More Red Meat - Transgender Individuals Can't Enter Military Service

[lasthero]

I don't need to be a mental health professional to understand that a man who thinks he's a woman is not right in the head.

You're entitled to your completely uneducated opinion.

In the real world, though, we don't decide such things on the basis of common sense. We have professionals who decide what mental illnesses are, and they're of the opinion that transgenderism isn't one.

 

[mark46]

Why make it a blanket decision by the president then instead of the people in the military who judge psychological fitness?

I agree.


The military should make these decisions.

However, please note that President Obama made the first intervention with his executive order. Now Trump has made another, which does little other than to reverse the executive order by Obama.

Curiously, both orders ask the military to study the issue and make a recommendation. Trump, just didn't wait until Obama's ordered study was complete.

 

[Ygrene Imref]

Just got back from ROTC training. Most of us aren't liberals, most are still opposed to this, on account of how it's wrong, and it's stupid. In order to serve you have to pass tests
proving you're capable. Anybody who passes those tests, wants to serve their country, ought to be able to. Trump's fat butt never served a day, and I doubt any of his children will ever serve.

Trump's claimed that this was about saving money. That's a flat out stupid claim. There's a far bigger waste in dismissing folks who've been trained. It's a huge investment of time & funds, especially for folks like Kristin Beck who was a Navy Seal. The amount of training others to take their place exceeds far the cost of their medical expenses. And the cost of their medical expenses is actually pretty small.

America had done this unfortunate thing over many decades - training people with lots of tax money, then crossing them somehow only to have those same well-trained individuals (even with clearance sometimes) be the next "bogeyman" of power.

It has to be by design, because it continues to happen. It might be a counter-reconnaissance program that has never worked, so it turned into a real-time training program. In any case, this is a culture; it should stop but I doubt it will.

 

[variant]

Curiously, both orders ask the military to study the issue and make a recommendation. Trump, just didn't wait until Obama's ordered study was complete.

You don't have to wait for a recommendation when you are going to decide the same thing regardless.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

Common sense is actually a lack of qualification in many cases, as a lot of things in life are counter intuitive and thus go against it. Especially once you get into highly technical areas, such as psychiatric medicine and neuro- and clinical psychology.

Pseudo-intellectual sophistry does not establish, and never can establish, that black is white.

You're entitled to your completely uneducated opinion.

It's not an opinion. Stones are hard, water is wet, and unsupported objects fall toward the center of the earth. That is true no matter how many educated people say otherwise.

 

[dogs4thewin]

No, at this point you would require a constitutional amendment.

It would be best if that was included in amendment ten as that may be the best shot at getting the case overturned.

 

[Belk]

Soldiers are individuals, and way warrant reverence or denigration on a case by case basis. Who reveres the inmates in Ft. Leavenworth?

Unless they happen to be transgender in which case we will decide based on a single characteristic?

I don't need to be a mental health professional to understand that a man who thinks he's a woman is not right in the head. The only qualifications I need are common sense.

Yes, actually, you do. Just like you need to be a professional before you can determine the eligibility of anyone. That is why MEPS is staffed with professionals, not random people using "common sense" as their selection criteria.

 

[Belk]

It would be best if that was included in amendment ten as that may be the best shot at getting the case overturned.

The case has already been decided. While supreme court decisions have been reversed it is a fairly rare occurrence. On what basis do you think the supreme court would overturn it's previous decision?

 

[Audacious]

Pseudo-intellectual sophistry does not establish, and never can establish, that black is white.

What I was establishing was that appealing to common sense doesn't work when you're discussing complex issues such as mental health and transgendered people.

It's not an opinion. Stones are hard, water is wet, and unsupported objects fall toward the center of the earth. That is true no matter how many educated people say otherwise.

Maybe I'm odd, but I tend to think that educated people know more than me about things I'm uneducated in -- not less. I don't argue with my doctor when they tell me where my heart is.

 

[Allandavid]

I don't need to be a mental health professional to understand that a man who thinks he's a woman is not right in the head. The only qualifications I need are common sense.

Yes, you do. By law.

That's why we don't, for example, commit people to mental health institutions without first having a mental health professional examine them. It's why we don't allow defendants to proceeed on an 'insanity plea' without first having a mental health professional examine them.

We realised, some time ago, that your so-called "common sense" was often not very common, nor very sensible...

 

[lasthero]

Pseudo-intellectual sophistry does not establish, and never can establish, that black is white.



It's not an opinion. Stones are hard, water is wet, and unsupported objects fall toward the center of the earth. That is true no matter how many educated people say otherwise.

No, it is your opinion. You're free to hold it, but that's all it is.

Luckily for the rest of the world, we don't determine what is and isn't a mental illness by appealing to the common sense of random wackadoos on the internet.

Common sense told people that the world was flat and heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

The military isn't too keen about allowing in people with psychological conditions associated with high suicide rates either.

...it should be pointed out that the high suicide rate is largely due to peoples' treatment of them, not the gender dysphoria itself.

IE: a person gets treated like garbage for being transgender, and when it finally eats away at them and they do something drastic like self-harm, then those same people treating them like garbage try to use that self-harm as evidence of "why transgender people are mentally unstable".

Basically the people who are treating them poorly are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I don't need to be a mental health professional to understand that a man who thinks he's a woman is not right in the head. The only qualifications I need are common sense.

If I wanted to be snarky, couldn't I say something like:
"I don't need a mental health professional to understand that a grown adult who believes in virgin births, Noah's Ark, walking on water, turning staffs into serpents, or that the world is only 6,000 years old... isn't right in the head"

...you could essentially use that line of reasoning about anyone who believes in something you don't believe in.

That's why we have mental health professionals to evaluate people and determine whether or not they're stable or whether their ideas & beliefs create a liability for anyone else.

 

[friend of]

and yet you feel qualified to sit in judgement over an entire group of people's fitness without ever even meeting any of them.

Ah so you've merely decided off hand that you don't need qualifications to judge mental stability with regards to fitness to serve in the military.

Unless they happen to be transgender in which case we will decide based on a single characteristic?

Here is the problem.


Gender comprises a lifestyle. If you hadn’t noticed already, it’s a big deal. Remember that defensive saying, “it’s my lifestyle choice”? This was a popular saying that members of LGBT would reference when the subject of their proclivities came up because they felt a need to defend the workings of their entire life.

Transitioning into a member of the opposite sex will radically alter an entire lifestyle. There is no question. There exist proven trends in longitudinal analyses of sex-transitioning patients that mental health deterioration including self-harm and suicide is positively correlated with these cases, including a whole battery of mental health issues fixated around LGBT. To ignore these facts is to ignore hard psychiatric data.

This issue should not be dismissed as though the discussion pertained to that of a minor ancillary characteristic like a personality quark when undergoing the process will, inevitably, displace the foundations of an applicant’s psychological makeup at the very least.

 

[lasthero]

Gender comprises a lifestyle. If you hadn’t noticed already, it’s a big deal. Remember that defensive saying, “it’s my lifestyle choice”? This was a popular saying that members of LGBT would reference when the subject of their proclivities came up because they felt a need to defend the workings of their entire life.

Actually, no, I don't recall hearing that saying often. All the LGBT people I know, my brother included, think of it more as the way they are, and they don't have anymore of a choice about it than I do of being black.

There exist proven trends in longitudinal analyses of sex-transitioning patients that mental health deterioration including self-harm and suicide is positively correlated with these cases, including a whole battery of mental health issues fixated around LGBT. To ignore these facts is to ignore hard psychiatric data.

Is it really that hard to think that one of the most persecuted, maligned, oppressed groups of people in American today might also have some depression issues? 75% of LGBT individuals report verbal harassment in their lives, with one in seven reporting physical abuse, and that number is highest among transgenders. If you don't think there's some correlation there, you're the one ignoring things.

I'm fairly certain those same studies show that, in instances where individuals aren't treated poorly by their peers, those mental health issues vastly decrease.

 

[friend of]

...it should be pointed out that the high suicide rate is largely due to peoples' treatment of them, not the gender dysphoria itself.

IE: a person gets treated like garbage for being transgender, and when it finally eats away at them and they do something drastic like self-harm, then those same people treating them like garbage try to use that self-harm as evidence of "why transgender people are mentally unstable".

Basically the people who are treating them poorly are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Not entirely. If they've bucked normative tradition to the point where they pay thousands for surgery to radically alter their lifestyle, why would they suddenly feel so susceptible to bullying comments (likely a random from the internet) to the point where they would betray their lifelong intentions of transitioning and off themselves? Doesn't make sense.


It's more like the imbalances and stresses of forcing themselves to undergo hormonal therapy screws up the individuals natural production of NTs (ie. the production their bodies would naturally produce without interference of elective use of drugs) and this creates mental problems.

 

[lasthero]

If they've bucked normative tradition to the point where they pay thousands for surgery to radically alter their lifestyle, why would they suddenly feel so susceptible to bullying comments (likely a random from the internet) to the point where they would betray their lifelong intentions of transitioning and off themselves? Doesn't make sense.

The vast majority of transgender individuals don't have and don't want surgery.

In 2016, there was just over 3,000 surgeries in the US.
By contrast, there's an estimated 700,000 transgender individuals in the US.

That should tell you something.

 

[friend of]

Is it really that hard to think that one of the most persecuted, maligned, oppressed groups of people in American today might also have some depression issues? 75% of LGBT individuals report verbal harassment in their lives, with one in seven reporting physical abuse, and that number is highest among transgenders.

This is very anecdotal and I question such studies are anything more than fluff. It’s guaranteed that 98% of all people will, at some point in their lives, engage with verbal harassment. One in 4 people will be physically assaulted at one point in a 60-year life on average. This above post is partially contradicted by -

Actually, no, I don't recall hearing that saying often. All the LGBT people I know, my brother included, think of it more as the way they are, and they don't have anymore of a choice about it than I do of being black. If you don't think there's some correlation there, you're the one ignoring things.

You say it yourself, it’s their identity. Meaning they are more comfortable expressing the identity they believe to be internally. To the point they would rearrange themselves anatomically, which is an undeniably dramatic life alteration. Presenting with a counterargument that flips this around by stating that, after having undergone this change, someone is going to poke fun of them in a store one day and provoke a moment of clarity, realizing a dramatic mistake, that after investing potentially years of their time and contemplation and money and resources into such a transition, they will off themselves because certain people in society don’t accept them? When they knew full well such groups existed which do not accept them, but underwent the process in defiance of said groups, so as to live actualized and decided by their own terms? As if they hadn’t been acquainted with such abuses before?

No, there are biological underpinnings in these cases that present inexorable affects on the cognitive stability of any given patient. An extremely common reoccurring theme is regret on the patient’s part, that s/he underwent a process that altered the way his/her body functioned idiosyncratically, because their personal transition regimen, despite all best effort and expert advice, turned out to be incompatible with such medical interference in the long-term, from a physiological standpoint.


That’s the trend.

 

[friend of]

The vast majority of transgender individuals don't have and don't want surgery.

In 2016, there was just over 3,000 surgeries in the US.
By contrast, there's an estimated 700,000 transgender individuals in the US.

That should tell you something.

*sigh* The only thing it tells me is that Trump is saying "No" in order to be mean. I'm sorry but I must maintain my disagreement as outlined above.

 

[lasthero]

This is very anecdotal and I question such studies are anything more than fluff. It’s guaranteed that 98% of all people will, at some point in their lives, engage with verbal harassment.

I like how you question that study, then just make up a statistic up whole clothe.

We're not talking about someone calling you names every now and then, we're talking about repeated, constant abuse. Any study you find will bear this out - bullying is far higher among LGBT individuals.

You're the one being dismissive.

You want to dismiss statistics? Because I have more.

82% of LGBT students report bullying because of their orientation.
LGBT children in households that view their orientation in a negative light are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide.
44% feel unsafe at school because of their gender orientation.

Do you really not see how this sort of treatment can lead to higher suicide rates and mental health issues?

You say it yourself, it’s their identity. Meaning they are more comfortable expressing the identity they believe to be internally. To the point they would rearrange themselves anatomically, which is an undeniably dramatic life alteration. Presenting with a counterargument that flips this around by stating that, after having undergone this change, someone is going to poke fun of them in a store one day and provoke a moment of clarity, realizing a dramatic mistake, that after investing potentially years of their time and contemplation and money and resources into such a transition, they will off themselves because certain people in society don’t accept them? When they knew full well such groups existed which do not accept them, but underwent the process in defiance of said groups, so as to live actualized and decided by their own terms? As if they hadn’t been acquainted with such abuses before?

No, there are biological underpinnings in these cases that present inexorable affects on the cognitive stability of any given patient. An extremely common reoccurring theme is regret on the patient’s part, that s/he underwent a process that altered the way his/her body functioned idiosyncratically, because their personal transition regimen, despite all best effort and expert advice, turned out to be incompatible with such medical interference in the long-term, from a physiological standpoint.


That’s the trend.

Again, the vast majority of transgender individuals do not have and don't seek out the surgery, which rather strongly undercuts everything above.

You're blaming the rates on a process that most transgenders haven't undergone.