Biden reverses Trump’s ban on transgender people enlisting in the military

[sandysgeek]

https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/105926005-155847416656133625474345_d561cd20f7_k1.jpg?v=1558474216&w=1280&h=855


WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden signed an executive order Monday reversing former President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people enlisting in the U.S. military.

The repeal, a Biden campaign promise, allows the Pentagon to revoke regulations that limit how transgender troops can serve in the military.

Currently, transgender troops are allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military only if they were covered by the 2016 policy carried out by Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

In 2017, Trump tweeted that he would no longer allow “transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.” Trump’s first Defense Secretary, James Mattis, issued a compromise that grandfathered in some service members but required that new recruits serve in their original birth gender.

“President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity,” the White House said.

Biden’s Defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has backed the move.

“I support the president’s plan or plan to overturn the ban,” Austin told lawmakers last week at his Senate confirmation hearing.

“I truly believe that if you’re fit and you’re qualified to serve and you can maintain the standards, you should be allowed to serve. And you can expect that I will support that throughout,” Austin said. The Senate confirmed Austin on Friday.

Biden has nominated Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine to serve as assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. If confirmed by the Senate, Levine would be the first-ever Senate-confirmed transgender official in U.S. history.

 

[Escierto]

Yes it was a beautiful day for transgender and those who love them.

 

[Petereater]

Yes, and he also signed a executive order allowing birth males to play female sports a horrible decision for all birth females....
Not such a beautiful day for females, and those who love them.

 

[stickygirl]

Yes, and he also signed a executive order allowing birth males to play female sports a horrible decision for all birth females....
Not such a beautiful day for females, and those who love them.

If you want to start your own transphobic thread, try the GB . This is about military personnel and their right to serve their country and not about your bigotry.

 

[Petereater]

If you want to start your own transphobic thread, try the GB . This is about military personnel and their right to serve their country and not about your bigotry.

I’m hurt that you would through a label on me with out knowing the slightest thing about me. As a bisexual woman I believe that I’m with in the perimeters of this thread and should be able to post a comment on a “News Story” found in this thread. My comment is related to said “news story” in that it was about transgendered males, and executive orders signed by the new president. I will admit that I was less then clear about my comment, so let me clear a few things up. While I have absolutely no problem with transgendered males/females in the military, as long as they meet the requirements of the military, l have serious problems with allowing transgendered males to participate in female sports. As an athletic woman who fought very hard to get a “sports scholarship” to an “Ivy League” school long before title nine forced universities and colleges to include women in there scholarship programs, I feel I have a right to object to an executive order allowing transgendered males to participate in female sports. Transgendered males possess something that no “biological female” can ever possess, a Y-chromosome. As children the biological physical differences between males and females are pretty obvious, and boys and girls can compete on a pretty level playing field. As children mature into puberty the Y-chromosome possessed by the biological male changes the physical make up of his body by creating stronger muscles, increased lung capacity and many more changes giving him a physical advantage over a woman. A transgendered male can make many changes to her appearance including the introduction of hormones, and physical alterations to appease her desire to become female in appearance, and to be accepted by society as a female. What a transgendered male cannot get rid of is the Y-chromosome that gives her an advantage that no female with her 2 X-chromosomes can ever overcome. Moving all of societies objections to “males in the girls locker rooms” aside, an athletically trained transgendered male is most definitely physically stronger then the female athletes they are competing against. While you may not have a sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter, or even a mother who desires to compete in athletics, you can be sure somewhere out in this great big world there is a sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter or even a mother who will now be forced to compete in “female athletics” with transgendered males that possess a powerful, and unfair advantage over them.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I’m hurt that you would through a label on me with out knowing the slightest thing about me. As a bisexual woman I believe that I’m with in the perimeters of this thread and should be able to post a comment on a “News Story” found in this thread. My comment is related to said “news story” in that it was about transgendered males, and executive orders signed by the new president.

BTW: respectful terminology is "transgender", not "transgendered". And "transgender males" means female-to-male; I think what you're actually talking about here is transgender women.

I will admit that I was less then clear about my comment, so let me clear a few things up. While I have absolutely no problem with transgendered males/females in the military, as long as they meet the requirements of the military, l have serious problems with allowing transgendered males to participate in female sports. As an athletic woman who fought very hard to get a “sports scholarship” to an “Ivy League” school long before title nine forced universities and colleges to include women in there scholarship programs, I feel I have a right to object to an executive order allowing transgendered males to participate in female sports. Transgendered males possess something that no “biological female” can ever possess, a Y-chromosome. As children the biological physical differences between males and females are pretty obvious, and boys and girls can compete on a pretty level playing field. As children mature into puberty the Y-chromosome possessed by the biological male changes the physical make up of his body by creating stronger muscles, increased lung capacity and many more changes giving him a physical advantage over a woman. A transgendered male can make many changes to her appearance including the introduction of hormones, and physical alterations to appease her desire to become female in appearance, and to be accepted by society as a female. What a transgendered male cannot get rid of is the Y-chromosome that gives her an advantage that no female with her 2 X-chromosomes can ever overcome. Moving all of societies objections to “males in the girls locker rooms” aside, an athletically trained transgendered male is most definitely physically stronger then the female athletes they are competing against.

Several issues with this.

First, your premise is mistaken. Since 2003, the IOC's rules have allowed transgender women to compete in female events. In that time, more than ten thousand women have competed at the Olympics.

At that level of sport, even the tiniest performance advantage is critical. Even a 2% improvement in speed can make the difference between first place and last. If it were true that transgender women were "definitely physically stronger" than cisgender women, then by now Olympic sport should be dominated by trans women - maybe not all events, but certainly the power sports.

In that time, in the four Olympics since trans women were allowed to compete... no trans woman has ever won an Olympic medal. In fact, no trans woman has even made it onto a national team.

How can that possibly be so, if trans women have such a big advantage over cis women? Well, it can't. They don't.

Because the idea that performance is directly linked to "chromosomes" is inaccurate. What's much more important, in this context, is hormone levels. The ability to build and keep muscle is closely linked to testosterone levels. IOC rules require trans women athletes to suppress testosterone to female-typical levels, either by hormone treatments or by surgery, and as soon as you do that it gets much much harder to maintain that muscle. Every trans woman I know who's had surgery/hormone treatment has stories to tell about how she found herself struggling to lift things and open jars that would have been easy before.

Beyond that... sport never has been fair, genetically speaking. In most categories you don't make it to the top without a combination of super hard work and having the right genes.

Michael Phelps has hypermobile ankles that allow him to kick better than normal folk, and he produces much less lactic acid, giving him better endurance. Those traits, presumably genetic, give him a big advantage over other, equally hard-working athletes who don't have them. But nobody suggests that he should be banned from competing because of those advantages.

Long-distance running is dominated by athletes from Kenya - and not even Kenya in general, but a specific Kenyan tribe, the Kalenjin - because the Kalenjin are genetically predisposed to have a runner's physique and a high red blood cell count. Nobody argues that Kalenjin should be excluded from running against non-Kalenjin competitors.

Athletes like Isaiah Austin and Flo Hyman have/had a genetic condition known as Marfan syndrome which makes them exceptionally tall (Austin stands 7'1", Hyman was 6'5"), obviously a major advantage in sports like basketball and netball. Marfan's does have significant health risks, which can make it dangerous for these athletes to compete (Austin retired from competition for a couple of years before getting an okay to return, Hyman died from undiagnosed Marfan's) but nobody argues that it's unfair for these athletes to compete against people without Marfan's.

If we're content to let a six-foot-five cis woman (whose height is due to a genetic condition!) compete against other women, it seems hard to argue that letting a five-foot-nine trans woman into the competition suddenly makes the competition unfair in a way that it wasn't before.

tldr: basically every high-performing athlete is a very hard worker who also has some major genetic advantages, but people only care about those advantages when they come from the Y chromosome, because acknowledging the ones that come from the other 45 chromosomes on the human genome might force us to admit just how much of top-level sport is a genetic lottery.

But if we ignore all that as well, and pretended that sport was fair before trans women came along (it wasn't) and that trans women and girls have a big advantage (they don't), well, let me put it this way:

What if the proper purpose of sport is for people to get exercise, and have fun, and to interact with one another? What if sport just isn't a very sensible method for determining who gets a college scholarship and who doesn't? And what if using sport as a mechanism for awarding college scholarships gets in the way of the things that sport is actually good for?

(I want to be clear here that I'm not devaluing the work you put into winning your scholarship; it's the system I'm criticising, not the actions of an individual making the best of that system she encountered.)

The phenomenon of athletic scholarships is almost uniquely American. Most other countries don't have them, or they don't place anywhere near the same kind of social importance on them that the USA does. Perhaps there's a reason for that. Perhaps being able to run or wrestle or hit a ball isn't actually very relevant to whether somebody should be supported in studying engineering or history or whatever?

While you may not have a sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter, or even a mother who desires to compete in athletics, you can be sure somewhere out in this great big world there is a sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter or even a mother who will now be forced to compete in “female athletics” with transgendered males that possess a powerful, and unfair advantage over them.

I went to a single-sex school. I was one of the smallest kids in my year, and my reactions are slow, so no matter how hard I tried I was never going to win. Because the emphasis was on winning, I hated sport - who wouldn't hate a game that's rigged against you? - and it took me decades to get to a healthier attitude towards exercise.

Trans people didn't create that problem. The system was already broken for 99% of kids, long before trans people became part of the picture. They didn't break it, they just made its brokenness more obvious.

If you put the emphasis on winning - which is what inevitably happens when you make the stakes so high - sport's always going to be broken. You can kick all the trans kids out, and you're still going to end up with kids competing against classmates who have huge genetic advantages over them.

Or, you can put the emphasis on showing up and exercising and maybe on participating on a team, and then it doesn't even matter if some kids have a physical advantage over others, because there's not so much riding on it. And then maybe kids like me would actually end up having a healthy relationship with sport and exercise, instead of wanting to escape it the moment they could?

Incidentally, if you are tempted to invoke the “males in the girls locker rooms” line of argument, you might want to be aware that these are the exact same arguments that were being used against gay/bi men and women just a few years back. All the tropes about predatory trans people in locker rooms and bathrooms are just recycled homophobia/biphobia: https://twitter.com/ImplausibleGrrl/status/1100719714387484672

 

[stickygirl]

I’m hurt that you would through a label on me with out knowing the slightest thing about me. As a bisexual woman I believe that I’m with in the perimeters of this thread and should be able to post a comment on a “News Story” found in this thread. My comment is related to said “news story” in that it was about transgendered males, and executive orders signed by the new president. I will admit that I was less then clear about my comment, so let me clear a few things up. While I have absolutely no problem with transgendered males/females in the military, as long as they meet the requirements of the military, l have serious problems with allowing transgendered males to participate in female sports. As an athletic woman who fought very hard to get a “sports scholarship” to an “Ivy League” school long before title nine forced universities and colleges to include women in there scholarship programs, I feel I have a right to object to an executive order allowing transgendered males to participate in female sports. Transgendered males possess something that no “biological female” can ever possess, a Y-chromosome. As children the biological physical differences between males and females are pretty obvious, and boys and girls can compete on a pretty level playing field. As children mature into puberty the Y-chromosome possessed by the biological male changes the physical make up of his body by creating stronger muscles, increased lung capacity and many more changes giving him a physical advantage over a woman. A transgendered male can make many changes to her appearance including the introduction of hormones, and physical alterations to appease her desire to become female in appearance, and to be accepted by society as a female. What a transgendered male cannot get rid of is the Y-chromosome that gives her an advantage that no female with her 2 X-chromosomes can ever overcome. Moving all of societies objections to “males in the girls locker rooms” aside, an athletically trained transgendered male is most definitely physically stronger then the female athletes they are competing against. While you may not have a sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter, or even a mother who desires to compete in athletics, you can be sure somewhere out in this great big world there is a sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter or even a mother who will now be forced to compete in “female athletics” with transgendered males that possess a powerful, and unfair advantage over them.

Yup, pretty much what I expected and even your reply was full of transphobic and inaccurate terms.

You're correct though, a bisexual woman should know: if you had gay or lesbian children they would benefit from the same legislation. You're gay son couldn't be bullied for being sensitive, other parents couldn't demand your lesbian daughter be forbidden from sharing the same changing room as other girls. The thing is bigotry doesn't come naturally - it has to be taught to children and schools is where they learn it.

So when do transgender kids become accepted in schools? By your standard never. Does the legislation demand that the trans children come last or first in competitions, or does it say they should be allowed to take part in sports without being alienated, called names and shunned by parents? When does that happen?

You should read up on the latest guidance from the sports and medical research. You've cited Y chromosomes but have ignored female athletes who have congenital adrenal hyperplasia or women who have unusually high testosterone levels for other genetic reasons. Should we ban intersex kids - line them up for a genital inspection? ( You'll be aware there are more intersex kids than transgender ones, right? Oh..) Should we exclude Ethiopians and Kenyans from distance running or black people from sprint events? Maybe claim that white people have a natural advantage in the pool?

It was recommended for Olympic competitions, trans women should have undergone testosterone suppressing treatment for two years prior to competing assuming the athlete transitioned as an adult after puberty. Anyone who transitioned medically before or during puberty will have no benefit.

For every instance you roll out there is a solution: the advantages for trans women in national and international sports have been studied and the IOC has produced guidance and continues to search for solutions that are fair. None of that has anything to do with schools sports where, as the law now states, there should be no discrimination for LGBTI kids in any area of education.

Carpet bans as you suggest are discriminatory, unfair and dehumanising.