Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/01/vets-slam-trans-ban.html
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To say nothing of the financial burden to the taxpayers! Why, if you added up all the money the US military spends every year on transition-related services you might be able to fund three or four Presidential golf weekends.
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Maybe if we stopped calling these human beings “Trans” and just take them at their word when they declare a gender, this wouldn’t be such a big deal. Instead we consign them to limbo. They’re not in between genders. They are what they are.
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I work for a sub agency for the DoD, and am transgender. I had so many coworkers make a point to come over and share supportive news articles, or come over and share their outrage. Even our conservative crew were up in arms. Might be because I’ve been there a while, and am a transgender guy. Even so, it was nice to see.
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The way I look at it is this:
Are people in current job doing their job with a reasonable degree of competency? Ifso stop making a fuss over it.
If not. Well… maybe you can go into reality televisioh fuckballs that’s how we got saddled with Trump in the first place.
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How do you propose we discuss issues like these without pointing out the traits that make these issues substantive?
While it would be wonderful if we lived in a world where everybody was considered based solely on their merits rather than any other factors, that’s not the society we live in today, and I doubt we’ll ever get there.
I’m a hetero cis-gender male and there’s much I certainly do not or cannot understand about the transgender experience. However, and I’m happy to be corrected here if I’m wrong, I would assume that being a trans person is an important enough part of one’s identity and life experience that this distinction matters enough that it cannot simply be hand-waved away.
(ETA: But I get your overall point and it’s certainly a noble thing to work toward.)
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I am just impatient for this world.
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I know that feel.
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And it’s not just retired brass – here’s the (for now) Coast Guard chief showing the rest of the services how to stand up to the Bully-in-Chief:
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This was a total “wag the dog” move, only he ejaculated prematurely and tweeted it before what ever next scandal was to come out.
I didn’t know any transgendered were severing currently in the military, and it didn’t seem to be a big deal until this. As long as they can do their job, who cares? It’s a shit job, someone has to do it.
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That image is billboard worthy.
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The way I see it (which may be hopelessly naive) “trans” can be either interpreted in a dynamic sense as in transitioning from one gender (likely societally or externally imposed/assigned and therefore likely invalid) to another more personally assumed and appropriate gender, but perhaps more usefully describes a state of being of a gender that simply exists in a continuum of genders. Nevertheless, a different term may be more appropriate as the dynamic sense is perhaps a more common (but perhaps normally incorrect) interpretation when describing gender.
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This clown is just pandering to an ever diminishing crowd.
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Because that’s a good part of the root of the issue, the fact that such should be considered an “issue” in the first place! A trans person should be able to shout it from the rooftops with the only reaction from passers by being to wonder why this person is yelling, not the fact that they’re yelling about being trans. Consider a drunken college student beating his chest and shouting “I’m a man!”, nobody should give a shit, it should just be.
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That about sums it up for me. Where’s that freakin age of aquarius anyway!
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I agree and in case it wasn’t clear, by “issues” I’m referring to issues of discrimination.
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But but but… What if the scary trans soldiers have to crap in the same bathrooms as non-trans soldiers!!!
Won’t someone think of the children!!!
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I know this is a joke, but you’re actually over-estimating. Transition-related services are estimated, from what I’ve read, to be no more than five million a year. Trump’s cheaper golf trips are likely in excess of three million. Trump takes some incredibly expensive golf vacations, too. On one of his courses, he apparently cut down all the trees along the nearby river so that golfers would have a view. Now when he goes there, the Secret Service have to close off the entire area, both sides of the river, because it’s too exposed. (Obama deliberately did most of his golfing on military bases precisely because security costs weren’t an issue.) So it’s quite likely there are single golfing trips that equal or exceed the Military’s trans-specific medical expenses for a year.
Amazing what expenses he concerns himself with.
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I don’t even know what to make of Trump’s tweets. They aren’t a “proposed” ban, they were a statement that there is a ban when there is not. They are a falsehood. The falsehood calls the future of transgender members of the military into question and causes them and their units to live in a state of uncertainty, but it wasn’t a policy or a proposal.
It was just an asshole talking shit despite there being real world consequences to his shit-talking.
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