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http://taskandpurpose.com/active-duty...
If you want to go along with people who want to pretend to live in their dream world, that's your choice. To me, they need serious psychological counseling and a re-examination of their premises to help them deal with reality.
This country is not Sparta.
It is pretty clear to me from that that you think that women who serve are butch lesbians trying to be men. And they may be, but that does not mean that they cannot serve honorably no matter what their MOIS. My command unit is small, but I know one woman like that, buzz cut and all. She's a good soldier and I would serve with her any time. I accept her as she is because her work speaks for her.
Your experience with the National Guard must have been before GWAT: the Global War Against Terrorism 2001-Present.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/20...
http://taskandpurpose.com/citizen-sol...
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003...
Do your own googling to find National Guard in active combat.
One of my National Guard officers who did two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan speaks up for the State Defense Forces (Texas State Guard). "Were you ever deployed?" (yes) "Do you remember how the Big Green treated you?" (yeah) "That's how you are disrespecting the State Guard." In fact, in my office of eight only the two of us in the TXSG are not combat veterans. All of the NG are.
The Public Health Service carry naval officer ranks.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration carry naval officer and enlisted ranks.
They just do not carry weapons.
They are nonetheless military organizations of the federal government.
You are on-target with the fact that only 3% (maximum) of the US population ever served in the military. That is the core of my post here in the Gulch, asking, "Do You Know Your Military?"
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
Just like A is A, B is B and G is G.
0 is also 0 but I didn't do that.
This issue did not arise until long after her death in 1982.
https://www.army.mil/article/182626/i...
In my task force we have people with eye glasses and hearing aids. We have people who "denied their genetically determined eyesight" and got the military to pay for expensive surgery to correct their vision.
You are a pretty smart guy, Doctor. Sleep on this problem...
To me, this comes down to individuals. You have to take each person as you find them. Judge each person according to the content of their character.
The Uniformed Public Health Service does not report to the Pentagon or the DoD... it's under the US Surgeon General, it reports to Health & Human Services.
NOAA? Yeah, not military. It reports to the US Department of Commerce.
I very clearly stated that women do serve honorably and in combat, the issue is whether or not the DoD has the time to deal with psychological issues like gender dysphoria, anorexia, or bulimia, and the answer is a universal "no". Only 3% serve, many, many are disqualified or don't desire to. Being confused about the biology of ones' body is but one of many reasons, in addition to "flat feet" or prior back injuries.
This is all very complicated and deserves investigation based on reality and guided by reason.
I have said here several times that sex is genetic and gender is social. Even so, sex exists on a spectrum. It is not binary XY XX. We know XYY and XXY. And we also know that while chromosomes carry genes, genes may be expressed or not. The analogy I have is to the public library. The building contains the books. The political institution control the building and its uses and functions, but the content of the books, etc., is a totally different context. So, too, with genes and chromosomes.
Epigenetics suggests much that mere chromosome-counting cannot address.
The problem with binary thinking is that it can lead to false stereotypes, such as that a real man must have a hairy chest and that a real woman must have a soprano voice.
No one is attempting to "condition children into ... a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation." Some people are just born that way, in the middle this way or that. In fact, as with height, weight, eye color, and much else, I think that we all exhibit points along spectrums in whatever parameter or dimension you can measure.
And that assumes that measurement is really possible.
Everything you said about sex, also applies to race. Should we let white children grow up acting like negroes? Do you naturally recoil in disgust when you see a colored child acting white? Gender is the new race.
A hundred years ago, all of biological science (it seemed) was 100% certain that races exist, that they have different potentials, different attributes, etc. That you could measure on a scale how Caucasian the Alpine person was versus the Nordic or Celtic?
Your rant against anyone who wants to serve in a "very testosterone heavy culture" ignores the fact that women do serve, serve in combat, and serve with distinction. Your sleight against them weakens whatever point of fact it was that you thought you had in support of your assertions.
The salient point is that people who change their sexual identity or their gender are not (necessarily) mentally ill, any more than are other people. The situations are not related.
You probably mean the DSM: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. (The other is the ICD the International Classification of Diseases maintained by the World Health Organization.) Those both also classified homosexuality as a disease or disorder.
See https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...
"Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) only removed homosexuality from its ICD classification with the publication of ICD-10 in 1992, although ICD-10 still carries the construct of "ego-dystonic sexual orientation"."
You have to take that all with a grain of salt, you know. The WHO is a UN agency.
I went back in read it because the first time I skimmed the end, thinking it was just expounding on motivation #1. I now see the article is more about the phenomenon of gender identity than President Trump's motivations. It's patently obvious to me he wasn't going through the federal budget looking for a place to save a few million dollars or for practices that affect readiness. It's his usual political attention-seeking stunt.
You point out that the second half of the article is about gender identity itself. I struggle to understand it. It seems to me we've swung back toward accepting gender roles. It seems like my parents' generation told us there were no such things as toys, activities, or jobs just for boys or girls. Now it seems like we've gone back to gender roles, and if your interests are things associated with the opposite sex, you're trans-gender, instead of just a boy who happens to be into dolls and dancing or whatever. People with gender identity issues should be free to explore it. My kids know people who are trans-gender. I don't fully get it. Sometimes people who are 20 even make me uncomfortable because I cannot tell if they identify as male or female. I think some people fee this discomfort much stronger and are inclined to get fired up about this issue. To me, it's more of a reminder that I'm over 40.
[Sarcasm]Maybe the president is looking into the issue of cleft plate surgery. After that he will examining of keeping service members who develop high blood pressure before age 30.[/Sarcasm]
I think there's nothing real about this. We're trying to have a normal, intelligent discussion about something that is not real. I don't think there was ever a real problem. I don't the president is taking action to change anything.
1. It's a response to an actual issue in the military or difficulty having open discussion about gender. - I am almost sure it solves no military issues, does not foster open discourse about gender, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with real issues.
2. Kicking over a hornets' nest to get attention and possibly distract attention from something else. - I think it's the kicking over a hornets' nest for its own sake, not to distract from something else. You suggest it's to distract from the Russia investigation. My gut feeling is President Trump didn't do anything wrong with regard to Russia, and the investigation will find no wrongdoing, except maybe technicalities. "Russia" is like "Benghazi" was for Republicans. Democrats just say the name as if it were an epithet and naming a location somehow condemns the president. "Can you believe how crooked President Trump is? I mean, Russia!!" I suspect President Trump is innocent and could just let his critics carry on, which would show they don't have any actual policy ideas. He kicks over hornets nests because stirring up trouble to get attention is main skill in life. He's thinking up something right now that you and I can't think of that will get people all fired up. We could try to come up with something attention-seeking to do, but he's a master and will find something with a higher outrage-to-importance ratio than anything anyone else can.
3. Opposition to post-modernism - I think President Trump is the ugly end-result of post-modernism. I don't think he opposes it. I think he's an exemplar.
"When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”
Adolf Hitler
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