Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Jersey Girl wrote:How DO transgender members of the armed forces effect "readiness or lethality"?
Where is Cam when you need his input and expertise?
Hrm. The only thing that stands out to me as a man who affected the Army's readiness to its own detriment for 20 years is the potential medical expenses and time issues for medical recovery for transition treatment. You also get into a grey area during the transition process where you would have to figure out when to apply gender standards to the transitioning Soldier. Other than that you just have the typical who can ____/shower/shave where and who would feel like Water Dog and PP and how to mitigate that.
Back in the 90's the Gay thing was a huge deal for the military and people griped about it a lot. Now? Meh. Bigotry is pretty much not tolerated openly, and if you're going to be racist, sexist, homophobic you better do that ____ on the down low because it's 100% a career ending offense.
For as much as White people have loved to complain, historically, that Blacks, then women, then non-citizens, then Gays, and now Trans would affect our readiness it's amazing to me just how lethal and professional the active military is these days. This is literally a military that could wipe countries off the face of the earth if America had the political will to do so. So, as far as I know, our readiness will not and cannot be affected by transgendered types serving.
- Doc
Again. I was just an Enlisted guy who served time at the Company and BN/SQN level. I'm certainly not a policymaker, but did have opportunities to serve in multiple theaters under very different commands, some Joint, and I'm confident our readiness can't be degraded significantly by having trans people serve, other than the couple of things I mentioned above.
*edited for grammar because I'm distracted right now
- Doc