Supreme Court lets military transgender ban go into effect

boing
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It means that they don’t know what they are talking about.
The term ‘Transgender’ is relatively new. The term ‘Gender Dysphoria’ comes from Dr. Harry Benjamin, who dedicated his life to work for those affected by it. When inspected more closely, the difference is more than striking.

Allow me to elaborate on that in a concise fashion.

Following are words in the common language that incorporate ‘Trans-’:
Trans-mission, Trans-ponder, Trans-Atlantic, Trans-gression and Trans-former - to name just a few more utilized ones. They all have in common a transient state - like in ‘transmission’, connecting two ends of anything, be it either energy, matter, or places. (I am just looking at a ‘Transfer Bag’ that I used on my latest air travel…)
The important part is the permanence in all these words. A ‘Transmission’ is transferring energy from the engine to the differential. It always does that. It is not changing from a standard to an automatic gearbox.
Therefore, ‘Transgender’ is solely reflecting of the time it takes to adjust physical appearance to the non-physical gender. The way it is now used is guaranteeing abuse, since a person is ‘Transgender’ forever.
Although a large number has an issue with that, a Transgender person is only that until she, or he has arrived at gender congruence. I will be a woman, or a man - following any treatment to achieve that congruence.

The term ‘gender dysphoria’ has been retired among the medical society. As is very much obvious when one understands what the word ‘dysphoria’ means. The discomfort with one’s at birth assigned gender and the ‘feeling at home’ with the opposing gender. For the same reason, ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ is no longer used, but by people who will not accept that gender is not as simple as being proven by primary sexual organs.

In conclusion, there are NO ‘Transgender’ people - unless they perceive themselves to be that. A ‘male to female’ will be a woman and a ‘female to male’ will be a man. Throughout my life, and especially since 2016, the worst discriminators are religious fanatics. It matters not which deity they proclaim to be associated with. For some inexplicable reasons though, Christians, Muslims and Jewish followers have the biggest problem with gender adjusting people.
All in spite of proof, that folks who could be called ‘Transgender’ in ancient times, were not pressed into choosing, but lived out both components as they were present.

What is left now, is to really maintain a high level of compassion for those who can only hate. Living through the ‘Transgender’ phase is a path that will make it clear who Your friends are and who really loves You. While I have greatest respect for all those who walk this difficult path, I am at a total loss as to why any ‘Transgender’ woman, or man would want to join any armed forces. It may not appear to be so, but there is a deeper connection between the discrimination of ‘Transgender’ folks and militarism. IF anything, those who do service have to decide about whom they are willing to have next to them in the battle field. Not some people who have never left their office in Washington D.C.

Edited for language and use of the term ‘diaspora’ where ‘dysphoria’ was meant.

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It’s dysphoria. The opposite of euphoria.

As in “the conflict between my physical body and who I feel I am makes me feel dysphoric”

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the “gender diaspora” is also an interesting concept though :thinking:

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Thank You very much. While I meant that, I used the other. Should I edit the reply to reflect that? It is kind of embarrassing to have used the wrong term. But I meant dysphoria.

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It’s up to you, but you would have to change the whole section on diaspora. Gender Dysphoria is easiest to describe as “my body feels wrong”, although through personal experience I’d say it comes nowhere close to describing the negative feelings.

I wasn’t offended, just a little confused.

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It’ll diasp alright, squirt it with some of that fluid.

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I am very grateful for Your helping me out. I changed the entire paragraph to reflect that. May I be forgiven for this glitch. I am experiencing greater distress than usual today. But I may have used diaspora when I wanted to say dysphoria before. It just dawned on me. Is that dyslexic in some way? Because I should know much better, since I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria ten years ago. What a faux pas! :sob:

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I think we all knew what you meant, and I’m not gonna lie - I got a laugh out of that typo.

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Masha’s Rule 3, once again.

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Even the RAND corporation, the military’s own think tank says Trump and company are full of shit here

Anyone who claims there was a reasonable and rational purpose behind this is a liar.

The only legal defense available here is if the feckless dolts in SCOTUS’ conservative wing just say, “He’s the commander in chief, he is supposed to know better about such policies than we do”.

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I think the legal defense is just that gender identity / gender expression aren’t protected under the law. The military can’t say you have to be white to join or that you have to be a man to join, but it can demand that everyone in the military express a certain gender identity. Your boss can fire you for being trans in most states. It’s not illegal because they refuse to make it illegal.

Legal and right are only in alignment when lawmakers make them align.

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But in this case the Military has expressly stated: WE DON’T FLIPPING CARE. They have said they will not turn away any potential service person who is willing and able to serve. And that transgender is not a reason to be unfit for service.

Point blank, I suspect when they switched from don’t ask don’t tell to open is fine…they realized that unit cohesiveness and operational readiness were just fine.

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The operational readiness thing is a PR smokescreen, but I don’t think it is necessary for their legal case in front of this supreme court.

In terms of the law I think they could have just said, “We are banning transgender people because we think they are icky.” There is no protection for transgender people in the law. If protection for transgender people should be read into “all men are created equal” this is not a court that would do it.

Even if it was I think conservative judges largely don’t like to get reality involved in their ivory-tower-esque legal debates. They don’t want to weigh evidence that there is or is not an effect on readiness. That kind of weighing of harms done against outcomes, in their mind, is a political job, not a legal one. Or at least that’s the philosophical position that allows them to deny realities that are inconvenient to them.

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I don’t disagree, but I think the issue here is the Military itself is not on the POTUS’ side on this one.

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Except for the fact that the administration is deliberately harming people here and their careers with nothing to justify it.

We already have precedent where “rational basis” for government actions is considered non-existent where laws are written to deliberately harm others out of animus/malice (Romer v. Evans). Its one thing for a class of people not to be protected by the laws/policy, its quite another to be actively attacked by them.

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Where government actions run into personal rights, there is still a need for a rational basis behind them at a bare minimum. A plausible excuse besides “we hate those kinds of people”. Discrimination by the government has to be justified in one form or another. “We think they are icky” won’t cut it any more than “we hate teh trans”.

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Fair enough. I imagine this court would be able to split hairs about the notion of harming someone vs. choosing not to help them (military service not being a right, etc.).

I’m not a constitutional scholar and I know a lot more about Canadian law than American. i would never expect this to fly in Canadian law but that’s because our court isn’t shy about looking at a non-exhaustive list that says, “race, religion, age, marital status, …” and saying, “clearly gender identity is the same kind of thing.”

But if the US military said that they weren’t going to let anyone with shoe size less than 7 in, would there be a valid constitutional case? Because right now I don’t think transgender people are any more protected than that under US law.

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There are several thousands of trans people already serving. They would be harmed by being discharged from duty for such reasons.

The right to serve if qualified is one already established by existing laws and precedent with the swift end of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” by the federal courts.

Not without some kind of outside authority about how it would affect readiness. Remember for segregation of the military, bigots relied on junk science about the ability of troops of color to fight. (Ignoring that our European allies had used racial minorities as combat troops for at least a century and our own history of doing so in the Civil War and WWI)

If the measure is purely malicious in nature, it will not fly. The conservatives on the Supreme Court will avoid addressing such issues and focus on an alleged authority of the president to exercise discretionary power over the military. Essentially “Donny knows best, so we mere judges should stay out of it”. There is no way conservatives can win this on the merits. They have to basically dodge the issue entirely.

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Yeah, this is why people talk about adverse effects of policy on racial groups rather than racial intent. But the very idea that judges should look at adverse effects has been made into a battleground by people who want to roll back rights.

Okay, I think this was really the point I was trying to make. This is the thrust of the argument made by conservatives about the judiciary in general. With conservatives controlling the majority of the court, it strikes me that this is the law, no matter how awful that is. Conservatives have been fighting to get the executive unfettered and unlimited power for decades. Hopefully one day a different court will see things differently, or congress will actually do its job.

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