Trump strikes another blow for bigots everywhere.

"After consultation with my Generals and military experts..."

Either he's going completely against them, or they wanted the ban reinstated.

There doesn't seem to be any valid reason for banning transgender people from the military.

But this issue puzzles me. Apart from people who are physically of indeterminate or dual sex, why would any adult who has had a normal puberty, let alone had a family, want to go to the drastic lengths of changing sex and why is it on the rise (at least in the US)?

Gender reassignment surgery is on the rise in the US
The high cost of being transgender

meanwhile check out this handsome vlogger "coming out" to his insanely adorable little brother (no pedo stuff please )
Trump's World is such a mean nasty ugly place.

Jo wrote:

There doesn't seem to be any valid reason for banning transgender people from the military.


Did you not think he gave a couple of very good reasons? The US armed forces are a warfighting force. They're not a platform for fringe social issues. Operationally, that's an unnecessary distraction which could cost lives and limbs. It could also cost money, as President Trump pointed out: the US military is liable for surgery and ongoing medical costs. Then there's the question of mental stability of people who believe that part of their body doesn't belong to them and want it cut off.

I don't believe transgenderism is a genuine medical condition, except in a small number of rare cases involving developmental dismorphia. The great majority fall into three categories.

1) People for whom it is a kink. They like dressing up and acting as the opposite sex and it turns them on, and they want to take it further. Great, whatever, just don't do it at public expense and don't campaign for laws that criminalise me for using the wrong (right) pronoun.

2) People who are simply gay, but ashamed to accept it for cultural, religious or other reasons. So they invent a bogus medical condition to avoid confronting their true nature and reconciling with themselves.

3) The severely mentally ill. I see no difference between the committed surgery-pursuing transsexuals and the lunatic who believes his hand doesn't really belong to him and tries to cut it off. The latter would be recognised as insane and treated according to his real needs, not his self-diagnosed delusion. I think it is profoundly unethical for doctors to indulge this kind of mental disorder in so-called transgender people seeking surgery. Instead of chopping off perfectly healthy, functioning body parts, the medical professionals should be giving these people the help they really need.

Randall wrote:
Then there's the question of mental stability of people who believe that part of their body doesn't belong to them and want it cut off.
That thought did cross my mind but I don't know enough about it to know whether it is a mental illness. Homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness. I was also thinking along the lines of 2) and 3).

Regarding cost, the Washington Post brought up this comparison (of all the things to choose, they chose Viagra, wonder why!)
The military spends five times as much on Viagra as it would on transgender troops’ medical care

I did post this in the Tipsheet the other day, but thought it had a place here too.

Beautiful new track by Alison Moyet, she said this about it:

'This song celebrates a place where a person can be who they were meant to be. It celebrates solidarity when it comes to individualism. It holds hands and calls time on silence, stillness, fear. It celebrates beautiful girls born boys. Stronger boys for being born girls. Freedom to identify where best we fit.'

The fact that many still think transgender people are either a) closeted gay folk b) people out for a kinky kick or c) mentally ill is just reflective of the fact that transgender people are still largely invisible in society, in much the way that gay people were until really very recently. And therefore people don't know where to pigeonhole them.

Until very recently, people who were not gay came up with theories about what being gay meant, that it was a perversion and an illness. These days most people know gay people and realise this is not the case.

The more trans people are seen as normal members of society, the more that perception will naturally go away.

If you have literally just 2 minutes to spare, just watch a short extract from the below programme 26m26s to 28m35 seconds. It may change what you think.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0578x02/p...n-series-1-episode-1

david wrote:
The fact that many still think transgender people are either a) closeted gay folk b) people out for a kinky kick or c) mentally ill is just reflective of the fact that transgender people are still largely invisible in society, in much the way that gay people were until really very recently. And therefore people don't know where to pigeonhole them.


a) and b) are valid alternative explanations for the phenomenon. Regarding c) anyone who has no physical intersex disorder and whose every cell has chromosomes of one sex, but genuinely insists he or she is the other sex is mentally ill. Just as if I genuinely believed that I were a fish, despite the absence of fins and the ability to breathe underwater, I'd be mentally ill too.

I, for one, have no wish to pigeon hole people, although people can be categorised according to shared characteristics. If you're gay, be gay, be yourself. No need to pretend that you're really a girl as an excuse to have sex with other men. If living as the opposite sex appeals to your sexuality, great go for it. It's nothing new. But personal feelings don't trump scientifically established facts, or other people's freedom of expression. And if people have delusions about their bodies and identity, let's help them get better. Inventing a condition around their madness and indulging it is unlikely to lead to a happy life, as the sky-high suicide rate among so-called transgender people suggests. We wouldn't play along with lunatics who insist, all evidence to the contrary, that they're Napoleon or from an alien planet. Doing the same with transgenders-in-earnest is similarly ridiculous.

ridiculous prejudicial claptrap replies here.

Gender reassignment is only the rise because medicine has now made it possible.

Transgender persons have lived and thrived in societies for 1000s of years- Tahiti & the Pacific Islands are an example as are the American Indians who treated "third sex" people with dignity as have societies throughout the aeons.

One fact always forgotten by the gormless who blather idiotic statements repeated by the ignorant who parrot stupid claims that allowing transgender people to enlist is some sort of social experiment (and what a horrible, nasty and patronizing insult) is that in all wars in history which either were terrible mistakes like Iraq or others that saved us from tyranny like WW2, gay, lesbian and transgender people have fought and died in their 1000s.

The US military has at least 17000 transgender persons who have been quietly serving with dignity and those who now criticize never gave them a single thought until the ghastly Trump said "jump !" and like fools they screamed "how high?"

just pathetic.

hedda wrote:
ridiculous prejudicial claptrap replies here.


It's known as 'science.'

If you have a Y chromosome in your cells, you are a male. If you don't, you're a female. Current medical technology cannot change that. Extensive cosmetic surgery can change someone's appearance, but not whether they have a Y chromosome or not. You might not like it, you might feel very strongly that you have the wrong chromosomes, but that won't change the presence or absence of a Y chromosome either.

Transgenderism is not a condition supported by any medical evidence, except in a small number of cases of developmental disorders. What you, Hedda, and most others are really talking about is gender-related behaviour. Even those androgynous Tahitians have either a Y chromosome or none, but they might behave a bit differently from their friends. Nothing wrong with that: there's a wide range of human behaviour. Some of the behaviour causes problems for other humans. Gender related examples include changing room use and physical performance standards in the military or police. And here's a good one... If a man who says he's a woman rapes someone, he cannot be prosecuted in the UK because rape can only be committed by a man. Imagine the incongruity if he was prosecuted anyway, in flagrant violation of his transgender rights, and then sent to a women's prison. For a crime that cannot be committed by a woman... What a spiffing wheeze.

Two further points about WW2. East Germans, Hungarians , Poles and other Eastern Europeans might be surprised to learn that it saved them from tyranny. Secondly, I question how many transgender people, according to our modern concept of it, even existed then. A man who insisted he was a woman would quickly find himself in prison for conscription dodging or committed to a mental hospital. Did women really pass themselves off as men so they could join up and fight, like Bob in Blackadder? No, of course not. The army does actually check if you're a man or a woman when you join up... Ok maybe there were some spare-time cross dressers, but they still either had a Y chromosome or not.

Randall wrote:



a) and b) are valid alternative explanations for the phenomenon. Regarding c) anyone who has no physical intersex disorder and whose every cell has chromosomes of one sex, but genuinely insists he or she is the other sex is mentally ill. Just as if I genuinely believed that I were a fish, despite the absence of fins and the ability to breathe underwater, I'd be mentally ill too.

I, for one, have no wish to pigeon hole people, although people can be categorised according to shared characteristics. If you're gay, be gay, be yourself. No need to pretend that you're really a girl as an excuse to have sex with other men. If living as the opposite sex appeals to your sexuality, great go for it. It's nothing new. But personal feelings don't trump scientifically established facts, or other people's freedom of expression. And if people have delusions about their bodies and identity, let's help them get better. Inventing a condition around their madness and indulging it is unlikely to lead to a happy life, as the sky-high suicide rate among so-called transgender people suggests. We wouldn't play along with lunatics who insist, all evidence to the contrary, that they're Napoleon or from an alien planet. Doing the same with transgenders-in-earnest is similarly ridiculous.

david wrote:
If you have literally just 2 minutes to spare, just watch a short extract from the below programme 26m26s to 28m35 seconds. It may change what you think.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0578x02/p...n-series-1-episode-1

The BBC have excluded me from watching this recommendation not because I am transgender, which I am not but because I am outside the UK.
( I want to hear what is said as I do try always to be open minded. Success in been open minded may well be be in doubt, of course. Like the person who says "You never listen" which could be true buy may also be translated as "you never do what I want you to do.")

So exclusion and inclusion are in every aspect of life often for reasonable reasons. So in this army case, whatever Trump's motives and thinking are(I do not see he can provide good solid argument for the right or wrong decisions he puts forward ) he, Trump has provided a workable solution for the military to a major problem. There are plenty of different reasons people are excluded from the army, it's life.

Randall's logic does appear to be backed up by good solid evidence. And as with many things a certain amount of acceptance is needed by the individual to consider what he/she can do/acheive and what he/she can not acheive.
Randall I like what you have put forward, not currently pc but both bold and straightforward as always.

Even I am currently faced with my own dilemna, I would like to be physically younger than I am currently and thus trying to find ways of both accepting my current age and yet at the same time to a

hedda wrote:
Gender reassignment is only the rise because medicine has now made it possible.
According to the above article on the 20% rise between 2015 and 2016, it's plastic surgeons that are carrying out gender reassignment surgery. If a lot of money can be made from it (costs article above) and if people like Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon(s) are involved, one has to wonder how ethically it's done. Breast enhancements and nose jobs didn't used to be possible either but one would have thought that gender reassignment would be a bit further up the scale in terms of medical necessity.

Randall wrote:
Did women really pass themselves off as men so they could join up and fight, like Bob in Blackadder?
They apparently did in the American Civil War.

A history lesson for Trump: Transgender soldiers served in the Civil War

"Leonard’s own expertise is the Civil War, a time when the ranks were filled with hundreds of women who cut their hair, put on pants and took up arms on both sides of the War Between the States."

But I wonder if these women were really "transgender" (= "denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex" (Oxford dictionaries)) or were posing as men in order to pursue activities and take advantage of opportunities normally closed to women.

Research shows that it's unlikely that transgender people harm unit cohesion or fighting power.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/...m_term=.9ff82d290838