Trump - No transgender individuals in the military

[thaiboxerken]

Can you think of one that explains the observed facts better than penis guns? I just can't take this administration seriously. I'd say 'take them seriously any more' except that I never have.

Yes. He hates transgender people.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Yes. He hates transgender people.

There you go trying to be the voice of reason in the face of absurdity. I think you're giving trump far more credit for coherent thinking than he deserves. I don't think he loves or hates anyone, except that he loves/hates himself. It's all about getting the positive feedback he needs to feel like he's not a failure. I've seen the same behavior from abused children. He plays to the audience he's in front of. Put him in front of an audience of transgendered folks today, and he'll be the greatest friend they've ever had, promise the sky, until tomorrow's rally for the alt-right, where he'll say something else and not even realize the contradiction. Every realistic source I've found ties this new tweetstorm to budget talks, so most likely he was throwing a bone to the friends of the moment in the budget committee. Tomorrow he'll throw his attention somewhere else, depending on his friend/audience of that moment.

Since I can't predict or process this through logic, I prefer to process this through ridicule, thus penis-cannons. I also think that ridicule is the one language that an abused manchild might listen to. He desperately wants approval, and the only weapon I've got is to vocally withhold it.

 

[The_Animus]

I don't totally agree with the first paragraph and agree with the second paragraph. There should be requirements to do the job not necessarily for example to be a soldier as there are many ways to serve. For example, I wouldn't have a problem with a paraplegic serving if it benefits the nation and not too many accommodations were required.

I meant more for combat roles. Non-combat would have different requirements for different jobs and if a paraplegic meets the requirements to do the job that should be fine.

 

[alfaniner]

All groups composed exclusively of only straight, white (Christian, of course), males always work and live together in perfect harmony.

Everybody knows this.

Like... Republicans?

 

[BobTheCoward]

No one is arguing that.

We are talking the same requirement for the same job. If two people are attempting to get job a, then in an ideal situation both of those people should be required to do the same thing.

If that means some people get cut more than others, so be it, it's about building a fighting force. So on the flip side if someone meets these requirements, there is no logical reason they should be banned.

The comparison between a radar tech and a navy seal makes no sense, as they are two different jobs. If someone cannot make the cut to be a seal of course they may be able to be a tech, but if two people are attempting to pass the requirements for tech (or seal) then no other factors should be considered other than their ability to do the job.

Please explain how anything else makes one iota of sense for a fighting force.

An 18 year old and a 26 year old do not have the same requirements for the radar job.

 

[Ziggurat]

By whose standards, the military's, or yours?

Do you feel that they are less competent to establish the standards of fitness they require than you are?

You still aren't paying attention. My previous post made no claim, none whatsoever, as to what the standard should be. But the military hasn't instituted different standards for men and women because of some great expertise in fitness (which, BTW, they don't actually have either). They have done it for the sake of political correctness, so that sufficient numbers of women join the force.

There is more than one job in the military, and no one seems to have any problem with the different standards required of different jobs when there is no gender component.

No ****, Sherlock. And I'm explicitly not talking about different standards for different jobs, which is eminently logical. I'm explicitly talking about different standards for the same job.

Do you think that all members of the service should be required to satisfy the same standards. that radar techs be qualified for SEALs?

The only reason to even ask this question is if you still aren't paying attention to what I'm saying. Let's see how long you can keep it up.

 

[Ziggurat]

Only if the standards are entirely explicit task completion tests, rather than functioning to some degree as proxies for general fitness.

"General fitness" is meaningless. There is no such thing. The tests are proxies, but they are proxies for much more specific things (pushups and pullups are proxies for general upper body strength, for example). And the different standards in the tests directly translate to different capabilities for those things.

Is there a study which shows straight white guys don't disrupt military efficiency or are we just happy to work in that assumption absent evidence that they do cause a problem?

Happy or not, we don't really have a choice. We couldn't meet force size requirements without straight white guys.

 

[Meadmaker]

Is there a study which shows straight white guys don't disrupt military efficiency or are we just happy to work in that assumption absent evidence that they do cause a problem?

I think there was a study conducted in Normandy some time around the middle of the last century.

 

[jimbob]

This is awesome. I only wish he'd reverse allowing homosexuals, nonwhites and women* to serve as well.

*Obviously there are probably some appropriate roles far from combat for women, maybe.

During my time in the military, I had the opportunity to see how much better an almost entirely white male unit functions than any other kind.

No sane society would even need to have a discussion about whether transsexuals can serve.

Were you an avowed racist then, or were you still a Marxist?



From a different thread

<snip>

Dyed in the wool is a term which designates someone as ideologically unmovable and tends to indicate someone who is, root and stem, that way and always has been. I was a hard core Marxist progressive and racial egalitarian until a few years ago. I don't think I qualify.

 

[Meadmaker]

The serious thought behind my last post:

Seriously, all male armies have been the norm throughout history, and there's a reason, and it's pretty bloody obvious why. It is only with the changes wrought by modern electronics that we can even seriously talk about women being a part of the armed forces in combat roles.

 

[quadraginta]

The serious thought behind my last post:

Seriously, all male armies have been the norm throughout history, and there's a reason, and it's pretty bloody obvious why.

If by "all" you mean "predominantly", and by "armies" you mean front line combat troops, then there is room for tentative, limited, partial agreement.

It is only with the changes wrought by modern electronics that we can even seriously talk about women being a part of the armed forces in combat roles.

For limited definitions of combat roles.

The women who operated the ambulance services and drove through bombs and rockets to pull wounded out of the rubble during the Blitz didn't get credit for being in combat, but only a fool would claim that they weren't. And that sort of thing was not an anomaly.

Claiming that modern electronics is somehow the distinguishing factor enabling women in the military is even less serious.

All through the history of warfare the support troops are far more numerous and arguably more important than the minority who actual exchange blows.

And the reason you are looking for that women's participation wasn't even greater than the significant, largely uncredited, and unacknowledged part that they did play had less to do with their capabilities and more to do with the subservient and restricted role they were forced into by the societies they were in.

So not only do they not need to be in combat specialties to be able to make major contributions to any military force, they can and have proven they they are more than sufficiently capable in those roles as well.

That the cultures they were in neglected to take advantage of that was more of a negative reflection on those cultures than on the women's capabilities.

 

[snoop_doxie]

In addition, on the military side, they need properly formatted, properly authenticated orders originating from proper, secure channels within the chain of command. When it's your fellow service personnel on the line, even margins, sizes, and fonts can be clues to forgery.

Twitter is not a secure military channel.

LOL

I went to a course when I was in the Army.

It was all about the very rigid formatting, margins, size, fonts,
secure channels (I was in communications) with proper addresses.

Memorandums, Operational Orders, Field Training Exercises.
If it is not right, it does not happen.



/end trip down memory lane.

 

[Ranb]

This is an extremely small sample size that even taken at face value does not translate to questions of military readiness.....

That's why I qualified that statement with my lack of experience.

Well, they certainly sound like bitches.

Your irony is unfunny and makes me cringe. I prefer the straight Cain to the one who tries to be funny.

 

[Meadmaker]

If by "all" you mean "predominantly", and by "armies" you mean front line combat troops, then there is room for tentative, limited, partial agreement.

Until the invention of long range artillery, combat troops were, by definition, front line combat troops. Wherever there was combat, that was the front line.

For limited definitions of combat roles.

The women who operated the ambulance services and drove through bombs and rockets to pull wounded out of the rubble during the Blitz didn't get credit for being in combat, but only a fool would claim that they weren't. And that sort of thing was not an anomaly.

Claiming that modern electronics is somehow the distinguishing factor enabling women in the military is even less serious.

All through the history of warfare the support troops are far more numerous and arguably more important than the minority who actual exchange blows.

And the reason you are looking for that women's participation wasn't even greater than the significant, largely uncredited, and unacknowledged part that they did play had less to do with their capabilities and more to do with the subservient and restricted role they were forced into by the societies they were in.

So not only do they not need to be in combat specialties to be able to make major contributions to any military force, they can and have proven they they are more than sufficiently capable in those roles as well.

That the cultures they were in neglected to take advantage of that was more of a negative reflection on those cultures than on the women's capabilities.

The military has changed, and strength, speed, and endurance aren't the defining characteristics of a good soldier that they once were. The "front line" doesn't exist the way it once did. There can be a soldier directing weapons against the enemy from an air conditioned office half a world away.

These changes have made it so that it is sensible to talk about whether women could conceivably be profitably employed in the military. Today's soldier doesn't have to be ready to engage in a bayonet charge after a 20 mile march. Because of that, we should be looking at whether the military should incorporate women in a wide variety of roles. Similarly with transgenders. The world has changed, and we should revisit assumptions.

Nevertheless, posts like yours make me worried about the push for change in the makeup of the military. It has the feel of saying that the only reason women were excluded in the past was some sort of discrimination against women, not reflecting their true capablilites.

No, that's not it. Really. Regardless of whatever woman may have once dressed as a man to join the Continental Army, or served as captain of an Irish pirate ship, or led barbarians against the Roman legions, realistically, women didn't belong in the military in those days. The fact that so many people question the wisdom of the ancients in having all male armies makes me wonder. Are they so blind to the differences between men and women that they will continue to overlook those very real differences that are still important in the modern world?

 

[quadraginta]

Until the invention of long range artillery, combat troops were, by definition, front line combat troops. Wherever there was combat, that was the front line.

And these operated with no support personnel. There were no logistics teams, no other needs which were not supplied exclusively by the same people that were actually in combat?

The military has changed, and strength, speed, and endurance aren't the defining characteristics of a good soldier that they once were. The "front line" doesn't exist the way it once did. There can be a soldier directing weapons against the enemy from an air conditioned office half a world away.

There have always been places in any organization which deserves the name "army" for people who were not front line troops.

These changes have made it so that it is sensible to talk about whether women could conceivably be profitably employed in the military. Today's soldier doesn't have to be ready to engage in a bayonet charge after a 20 mile march. Because of that, we should be looking at whether the military should incorporate women in a wide variety of roles. Similarly with transgenders. The world has changed, and we should revisit assumptions.

Nevertheless, posts like yours make me worried about the push for change in the makeup of the military. It has the feel of saying that the only reason women were excluded in the past was some sort of discrimination against women, not reflecting their true capablilites.

No, that's not it. Really. Regardless of whatever woman may have once dressed as a man to join the Continental Army, or served as captain of an Irish pirate ship, or led barbarians against the Roman legions, realistically, women didn't belong in the military in those days. The fact that so many people question the wisdom of the ancients in having all male armies makes me wonder. Are they so blind to the differences between men and women that they will continue to overlook those very real differences that are still important in the modern world?

The only reason that there weren't more women in earlier armies, aside from social prejudices, was that the term "army" was often conveniently defined in such a way to exclude the support services which women were doing anyway.

And this was no accident. The idea that women might be in the army was that much of anathema.

You seem not to credit the strength of this social prohibition. Maybe it would help to recall that even in the enlightened western society of the U.S. people had trouble accepting that women should even be allowed to vote until comparatively recently. My grandmother graduated from Boston University the year before the 19th Amendment was ratified.

Maybe you should review the sort of logic which people like Phyllis Schlafly used to cut the legs out from under the ERA in the 1970s.

It has never been necessary for everyone in an army (as I specified, any organization deserving of the name) to be in the tip-top physical peak of condition which you seem to be describing. Even many of the men who were serving as combat troops didn't always measure up to such standards.

But everyone didn't need to be combat troops.

 

[rwguinn]

"The wisdom if the ancients" often resembles nothing less than ignorance of reality...

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[d4m10n]

...all male armies have been the norm throughout history, and there's a reason, and it's pretty bloody obvious why. It is only with the changes wrought by modern electronics that we can even seriously talk about women being a part of the armed forces in combat roles.

Is there some reason why a woman couldn't be an excellent tank operator prior to the advent modern electronics? Swift boat driver? Sopwith camel pilot?

 

[Mikemcc]

31 years of service - 29 of them with women allowed to serve in combat arms, 26 of them with homosexuals allowed to openly serve. Combat effectiveness has not suffered.

I've seen what happens when the values of a military unit do not match those of society- you get the Canadian Airborne Regiment and the Somalia Incident.

In the early 90s I saw the transition where many more women entered traditionally male roles in the UK military. It seemed to split into three camps - the utterly useless and couldn't be trusted in trade, those that pandered to their sexuality to succeed, and he 20% that could be respected to reliably conform to the job.

Thankfully, over the years I think the emphasis has changed, there are far more in the third camp, depressingly there are still a significant number in the second camp. The first has been pretty ruthlessly eliminated, tolerance for baggage is virtually zero, irrespective of gender.

 

[Mikemcc]

Is there some reason why a woman couldn't be an excellent tank operator prior to the advent modern electronics? Swift boat driver? Sopwith camel pilot?

Track bashing is pretty damned arduous task, as is armoured replen. Lifting the food, ammo and fuel for a tank, by hand is a painfully hard and long task.

Then there is the whole daily routine, washing together, toilet routines while buttoned up, etc.

There are reasons why military service is referred to as a brotherhood, it goes beyond the sexuality, and screws up the terminology involved. Combat soldiers in all arms have to forgo an element of privacy due to local restrictions.

For instance, female combat medics in the British Army regularly patrolled with infantry patrols in Afghanistan and performed admirably, even giving their lives (. UK female medics have won the Military Medal, in the US, the Silver Star.

 

[Meadmaker]

Is there some reason why a woman couldn't be an excellent tank operator prior to the advent modern electronics? Swift boat driver? Sopwith camel pilot?

It is possible that sopwith camel pilot was not physically demanding. The others definitely were.