The Department of Defense bans transgender people from serving and routinely discharges service members who start hormone therapy.
That’s a shame, for some reason I figured that would have changed when they ended “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
Baby steps.
Might be less about gender/sexuality*, and more about how the DoD handles anyone who is on longstanding-medications. To be medically fit for service, the DoD wants you to be able to be shipped anywhere in the world, overnight, with 6-12 months of whatever you may need. Including medications. (exceptions sometimes made for well-ranked individuals).
If it is implausible (because of expiry) or unfeasible (because of logistics - for example: meds that must be kept in the fridge) for a soldier to put those meds in a deployment bag, or if the medication requires monitoring (like any med that requires lab tests / blood work) and dosage adjustment, then that person is typically considered medically unfit and discharged.
*or, it might be.
Kind of hard to talk about baby steps when you’re getting your face smashed in.
What body parts a person has is irrelevent to their identity. Denying anyone their self identity is an oppresive act.
You are denying Chelsea Manning her self identity.
I hate that gender identity has become politicised in such a way that it is seen OK to destroy lives for the purposes of point scoring. I know who I am, you know who you are and Chelsea Manning knows who she is. Nothing else is important.
This is perfectly stated. I wish I understood why it is so hard for people to understand this. It seems perfectly clear to me. Chelsea is Chelsea, and I don’t really understand it is so hard for some to accept that (not just about her, but other transgendered people). What’s more perplexing to me, is that so many of the people who can’t accept that buy whole heartedly into the rugged individualism ideology. So, it’s only “individualism” when it buys into a particular set of binary assumptions about how people should be in this world? In other words, they only want everyone to conform to their ideas about how the world works.
Thank you for gently asking people not to be awful. You’re much better at this than I am.
"In other words, they only want everyone to conform to their ideas about how the world works. "
None of us are so special that we can step outside of societies boundaries, then legitimately blame it on society that it’s boundaries no longer include us. Yes, given time, those boundaries will probably change to include us again, but we have to endure the wait. That is how the world works.
Those boundaries are where we set them. Lots of people have made the change to treat transgender people as a regular part of society; here it’s as easy as referring to them by their chosen gender. It’s not like “he” and “she” were ever actually markers for genetic sex in opposition to social gender, but it would still be a simple change if they had been.
You can find this recommended all over the place. Standing against that, arguing that we should make people wait longer to be included when there is no cause for it, is what would make you awful. Please reconsider; it’s so easy in this case.
Mod note: Continuing to argue over pronoun use will result in your comments being deleted.
Yes, let’s hear more from the proverb perspective
What if proverb was more than just pronouns’d
“Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them.”
“Chelsea” is just a label. I could call myself “Bacon”, and no doubt, some Islamic hard-liner would object.
But the bottom line is, Manning will get no treatment for any condition not medically indicated. And Gender-reassignment Therapy/Surgery is not medically indicated, as far as the military is concerned. . . .
Not sure what that has to do with how she views herself?
And the military is wrong on this count, because best practices guidelines at this point are that hormone therapy and surgical interventions ARE appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria if desired by the patient/client.
Medically indicated for the Military is very different from medically indicated in the civilian world.
By military standards, gender dysphoria is a psychological malady which is incompatible with military service. Heck, most psych maladies that require ANY medication are also indicators for medical discharge. In the civilian world, most are easily treated with meds. At the end of a long logistics line, those meds may be sporadically available, if at all. Imagine a long deployment, and a patrol deep in enemy territory. Would you REALLY want one of your squadmates to go off their meds, ESPECIALLY when many psych meds have rather nasty withdrawal symptoms. . .
And yet discharge is not an option because the military is holding Chelsea in prison. So, denying her medically-appropriate treatment is cruel and unusual punishment. If she needed daily insulin for diabetes, or daily anti-retrovirals for HIV (which presumably would also be “incompatible with military service”), it would be inconceivable to say “sorry; you wouldn’t get those in the field so you can’t get them in military prison.”
burp
