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Hi there!\u00a0 Jane the Actuary asked some of us to fill in for her during a much-needed vacation, so I volunteered myself as tribute to write on a social issue. For anonymity purposes, I\u2019m going by \u201cJane the Foster,\u201d a reference to Marvel Comics\u2019 lady version of Thor. I am neither a lady nor a Thor in real life\u2014I just thought it would be apt to keep the \u201cJane\u201d tradition going around here. My daughter is a fan of the character, anyway.<\/p>\n
But speaking of cross-gender warriors, today\u2019s topic will be \u201ctransgendered people in the military.\u201d If I\u2019ve learned anything in the last 48 hours, it\u2019s this: despite less than one percent of Americans having any military service, everyone with a keyboard and a social media account suddenly has a perfectly-formed opinion on who should and shouldn\u2019t be serving in the military.\u00a0 Seriously. Social media has been the most frustrating source of discussion on this hot topic, as people with absolutely no idea<\/em> what they\u2019re talking about are chiming in with opinions on fitness to serve, judicial review, Presidential authority, and a host of other things that are, well, wrong. Maybe what we need to do is clear up a few things before we seriously engage in discussion on this.<\/p>\n Look, let\u2019s start first with a matter of perspective: opinions run hot on this issue. For better or worse, opinions and emotions aren\u2019t fact and reason. You and everyone else has an idea of how you want this issue to turn out, but your conclusions are never a starting point in a logical discussion. They\u2019re an endpoint. If you want to persuade someone, walk them through your argument and back it up with law, facts, and citations. I\u2019m talking to everyone<\/em> here. For purposes of this topic, I don\u2019t care if your trans-friendly or traditionalist; Catholic or atheist; military or civilian; gay or straight.<\/p>\n So first of all, be honest in where you\u2019re coming from.\u00a0 If you\u2019re pro-transgender rights, or transgender yourself, you\u2014tell me if I\u2019m wrong\u2013probably want to be accepted and validated by society, and you think that any rule which per-se excludes the transgendered is further evidence of a primitive, closed-minded bigotry that\u2019s keeping you down. Even if you would never go near the military yourself (maybe you hate war; maybe you think the U.S. military is full of rapists and monsters), you can\u2019t understand why everyone else doesn\u2019t think like you. Therefore, your default assumption is going to be that any opposition to transgender military service is wrong<\/em> and your arguments are going to move in that direction.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a traditionalist\u2014probably an ardent Catholic or non-Catholic Christian, you think that transgenderism is a violation of the natural order. Men are men, women are women, and there\u2019s both scientific and theological reasons you hold this position. And in the last twenty years, you\u2019ve seen the world upended with new language and rapidly changing understandings of what used to be a very simple gender polarity. Suddenly, women can have penises and men can have babies, and you are told<\/em> that you must accept this regardless of your opinions. You\u2019ve been told that women with penises must be allowed to use mutual showers and restrooms with you, and that you may be a bigot<\/a> if you\u2019re heterosexual but not attracted to women with male parts. Therefore, your default assumption is going to be that any support for transgender military service is wrong<\/em> and your arguments are also going to move in that direction.<\/p>\n The paradox of the military is that it exists neither for right-leaning America nor left-leaning America. It exists for America, period, a country which\u2014last I checked\u2014has a First Amendment which allows people to express all types of beliefs and opinions without fear of recrimination. The military \u201csupports and defends the Constitution,\u201d meaning that it\u2019s\u2014by nature\u2014apolitical. Speaking as a veteran, I can tell you that many people in the military don\u2019t like taking sides between categorically split sides of America. It\u2019s a little sad when the service becomes caught in a tug of war between polar ends of thought. The military is here for both of them.<\/p>\n So anyway, with some healthy perspective in mind, let\u2019s talk through the issue. About a year ago, the Department of Defense, under the Obama administration, formally opened the door<\/a> for transgender people to openly serve and even receive transgender-related treatment in the process. The military began a year-long implementation process to figure out how<\/em> to do this. Look, change in the military doesn\u2019t happen overnight, no matter how much you think<\/em> it should happen overnight. When the military finally declared that it was ending the women-in-combat bar<\/a> in 2013, it still determined that it needed to determine how<\/em> to integrate women into positions they\u2019d never been in before. Job standards had to be established, berthing and bathing requirements had to be considered, and most of all, women\u2019s safety<\/em> of all things had to be established. The military is constantly worried about sexual assault, so you simultaneously have to allow women into a high-testosterone environment and<\/em> figure out how to make sure they\u2019re respected in a high-testosterone environment.<\/p>\n So, the transgender issue isn\u2019t exactly a clean \u201clet\u2019s do this\u201d decision either. If a transperson wants to go\u2014pardon the expression\u2014whole hog on a transition, it\u2019s going to take time and money, and the military is simply not an environment where that\u2019s a primary concern. People who have personal matters that disrupt their primary obligation\u2014killing people and breaking things\u2014are not exactly \u201call in\u201d with the service. Consider: I\u2019ve had a female military co-worker who was tasked to deploy for a year to the Middle East. Before she went, she became pregnant. I don\u2019t know<\/em> that she got pregnant to get out of the assignment, and I\u2019m going to charitably assume that she didn\u2019t. But that\u2019s nine months of pregnancy and a few months of maternity leave where she suddenly couldn\u2019t take that assignment, and somebody had to go in her place. This is allowed, but believe me, the system gets pissed<\/em> when this happens. So yeah, a troop who presents as male and suddenly starts demanding new pronouns, new uniforms, and a few months off for surgery, is going to be disruptive. We could<\/em> allow it the way we allow pregnancy, but there\u2019s a cost, and the decision to integrate is not as simple as you\u2019d like.<\/p>\n So, having said all that: as of Wednesday the 26th<\/sup>, President Trump\u2014via Twitter\u2014announced that transpeople couldn\u2019t serve \u201cin any capacity\u201d<\/a> despite over a year of DoD telling them they could. From the inside, I can tell you that this is confusing and perplexing. I could probably write about this at length, but here\u2019s a few things to chew on.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Is an \u201corder by Tweet\u201d unlawful? No, probably not inherently so. Military orders can be verbal, written, or e-mailed. A lawful military order is one that\u2019s heard, understood, and has a valid military purpose. I suppose that if the President tells Private Smith to be on post at 0600 via Tweet, that\u2019s lawful. On the other hand, this is a considerably complex issue\u2014capturing a military order of this magnitude in 140 characters is\u2014understandably\u2014going to raise questions. And if it leaves a lot of ambiguity, then it\u2019s not really a valid order.\u00a0 At best, it\u2019s a signal of a shift in policy, and the \u201corder\u201d will be clarified later.<\/p>\n When the military had a \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u201d policy, that was infinitely cleaner. If you openly identified as homosexual, committed a homosexual act, or engaged in a same-sex marriage, you were separated. That was easy. If we take seriously the notion that gender is a spectrum and transgenderism is a lot of things, then it\u2019s going to be much, much more difficult to cleanly identify who\u2019s barred and who isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>When I was on active duty, I developed some superficial medical conditions. They didn\u2019t interfere with duty and I passed my annual fit test just fine, so nobody cared. But when I switched to the reserve, it was like I was a stranger coming off the street, illnesses included. I had a heck of a fight with the reserve trying to convince them that I was healthy enough to serve in spite of my conditions\u2026despite the fact that I\u2019d been on active duty with no health problems.<\/p>\n What this means for the transgendered is that there\u2019s a difference between trans-people who want<\/em> to join and trans-people who have already<\/em> joined. (Not everyone knows that they\u2019re trans right away\u2014many people figure this out later in life<\/a>.)\u00a0 There\u2019s a colorable case to be made against letting trans people into the military, because the military would be inheriting their psychological and medical issues. There\u2019s a harder case with people already in, where the military has invested time and treasure into building those people up. Yes, there\u2019s still cost, if we\u2019re going to be paying for later-in-life trans-related issues, but the case against existing trans members just isn\u2019t as clean as taking on new ones.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>So Congress could, tomorrow, pass a law which requires the military to admit the transgendered. (Don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell was repealed by Congress, not the courts.) Or it might not.<\/p>\n The Courts are also an open-ended question. On the one hand, they have the power to strike down something that\u2019s unlawfully discriminatory. Emphasis on \u201cunlawful\u201d\u2014it might be \u201cdiscriminatory\u201d to deny service to people in wheelchairs, but there\u2019s probably a good reason to not send people in wheelchairs onto the battlefield and a court wouldn\u2019t touch that rule. But if the military decided to ban all Muslims, that probably wouldn\u2019t fly. (Food for thought: should Catholics be barred from the military because they have allegiance to the Holy See, a foreign nation? Well, fortunately, they\u2019re not\u2014the military understands that our allegiance is to the Church, not the nationality.)<\/p>\n Transgenderism is going to be a tough argument for the courts on both sides. On the anti-side, the military is in the best position to judge who\u2019s suitable for military service and who isn\u2019t. If military service were a simple matter of \u201chere\u2019s a warm body,\u201d then anyone could come in. But the courts recognize that the military is an insular, specialized society that does things the ordinary layperson doesn\u2019t. A judge looking at the military in the abstract may not fully comprehend what service entails and whether a particular mental issue is going to interfere with that.<\/p>\n On the pro-side: trans people aren\u2019t cookie-cutter. Some trans people are clinically distressed and a threat to themselves and others<\/a>. (But so are any type of person!) Other trans people can and have faithfully served their country<\/a>, and you\u2019d never know gender identity was a service-limiting issue. A blanket rule keeping people out will unnecessarily keep the right<\/em> people out, just as much as a blanket rule letting them in might bring in the wrong folks. To put it in military terms: this policy might be calling for napalm where a court could clearly see that a surgical strike would do. Plus, it\u2019s pretty hard to argue with a straight face that DoD needs<\/em> to exclude trans members where, just a week ago, we officially said the opposite. I would not<\/em> want to be the attorney who defends the new policy in court.<\/p>\n I am fine with justice qua<\/em> justice, and if we were booting, say, black troops on the sole basis that they were black, that would be wrong and everyone should oppose that. If the case can be made that it is fundamentally<\/em> unjust to exclude transgendered people on the basis of being trans, then they should be allowed to serve.<\/p>\n However, there is legally no right<\/em> to serve in the military on an individual level. It may be a specific trans person\u2019s lifelong dream to wear the uniform and defend the flag, but the uniform and the flag are much bigger than one person. A member who is making a case for admission to the military purely about themselves<\/em> is kind of missing the point that there is no \u201cI\u201d in \u201cteam.\u201d<\/p>\n When I tried to transfer to the Reserve, there was a good possibility that it wouldn\u2019t have happened because of my medical issues. Everyone who assisted me agreed that the presumptive denial that I was getting was, on the surface, stupid, because I\u2019d served for over a decade already in good health. I was very, very angry and disappointed when I was initially denied. At the same time, I didn\u2019t have a lot of room to argue against it on any basis other than that I didn\u2019t like the result. In my mind, the call was wrong\u2026but it wasn\u2019t my call.\u00a0 I thank God I finally made it in, but it wasn\u2019t my call.<\/p>\n The point is: this issue has upset everybody on both sides of the aisle. But it\u2019s tremendously more complicated than \u201clet them serve\u201d or \u201ckeep them out.\u201d A simple solution is not coming tomorrow, and if you think you\u2019ve got this all figured out because of some anecdotal stories you\u2019ve read on Huffington Post or National Review\u2026well, you probably don\u2019t.<\/p>\n Good luck to everyone involved, and try to keep an open mind. And, for better or worse, God bless America.<\/p>\n Jane the Actuary here, getting ready for a final day at the beach. \u00a0Thanks, Jane the Foster for a much better post on the topic than I could have written!<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image: \u00a0Staff Sgt. Ashleigh Buch, an instructor with the 338th Combat Training Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., looks out over the city of Omaha from her apartment Oct. 20, 2016. Buch is the first openly serving transgender Airman to be recommended for a return to flying duties. (U.S. Air Force photo\/Senior Airman Rachel Hammes) ; http:\/\/www.offutt.af.mil\/News\/Features\/Display\/Article\/998356\/transgender-airman-flies-high-with-new-af-policy\/<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi there!\u00a0 Jane the Actuary asked some of us to fill in for her during a much-needed vacation, so I volunteered myself as tribute to write on a social issue. For anonymity purposes, I\u2019m going by \u201cJane the Foster,\u201d a reference to Marvel Comics\u2019 lady version of Thor. I am neither a lady nor a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":7029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[697,698,149],"class_list":["post-7028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-military","tag-transg","tag-transgender"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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