RE: Former Green Beret Response to Kristen Beck (Transgender Former SEAL)

[blakemiles84]

I keep hearing this 15k number but it sounds WAY too conflated. Source?

I found this -- https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1530.html

There Are an Estimated 1,320–6,630 Transgender Service Members in the Active Component, but Not All Will Seek Gender Transition–Related Treatment

As far as the RAND study, I haven't read it completely, yet but consider this one of many experience-based challenges to that study... which was paid for by an administration that had the policy enacted before this study was even completed (report was commissioned in 2015).

Snippet from the report:

Similarly, when considering the impact on readiness, we found that using either
the prevalence-based approach or the utilization-based approach yielded an estimate of
less than 0.0015 percent of total labor-years likely to be affected by a change in policy.
This is much smaller than the current lost labor-years due to medical care in the Army
alone.
Even if transgender personnel serve in the military at twice the rate of their prevalence
in the general population and we use the upper-bound rates of health care utilization,
the total proportion of the force that is transgender and would seek treatment
would be less than 0.1 percent, with fewer than 130 AC surgical cases per year even
at the highest utilization rates. Given this, true usage rates from civilian case studies
imply only 30 treatments in the AC, suggesting that the total number of individuals
seeking treatment may be substantially smaller than 0.1 percent of the total force.
Thus, we estimate the impact on readiness to be negligible.

Summation: We should do this because there's really not that many of them so although there would be a detrimental impact, the number is so small no one will notice or care.

This is a very dumb reason to justify a situation that could have an impact on lives. This isn't like letting a demographic of people into a book club.

Comments

[daut44]

I've seen a few different stats linked, a UCLA Law School study claimed the number 15500, RAND study estimates ~4k, who knows what the real number is. But the actual number, however small it is, is besides the point.

Here is what I'm concerned about:

1. General Mattis, the secretary of defense, has been looking into this and said that it would require 6 more months of weighing the pros and cons, yet Trump went ahead and made this decision on twitter without notifying Mattis or the Joint Chiefs. Of course they made sure not to contradict him, but they will not change any policy until they receive a formal order.
2. The extra cost per transgendered military employee is roughly $1000. Given the RAND statistics, this is an extra $4M a year in costs, which is less than 15% of what the president has spent on personal trips to Mar-a-Lago in 7 months as president. This is a very small price to pay to avoid discriminating against the entire LGBTQ community as well as their cisgendered advocates.
3. This is the same argument that has been made every time a new group wants to join the military: "it is distracting and prevents us from readiness having to deal with ____ joining the military". You can insert a wide variety of groups into the _____ from the last couple hundred years.
4. The military is a huge sector with many varied jobs. Not everyone in the military is in special forces or a SEAL.
5. Transgendered people who are currently in the military have to worry about a dishonorable discharge that could prevent them from ever working for the government again.
6. There are possibly other solutions besides outright banning transgendered from the military, like out of pocket pay to lower the costs. I don't really know the legality of this approach, but it's worth mentioning.
7. It's worth hearing stories of ex and current military people who are transgendered about this. The daily show smartly decided to not just poke fun or say fuck you to trump and did a segment interviewing two transgendered officers last night: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/07/27/the_daily_show_interviews_transgender_veterans_about_trump_s_ban_video.html

All in all, this is a somewhat complicated issue, because in the end it does cost more ($1000 avg) to allow a transgendered person to join the army than a cisgendered person, but it's still discrimination, and the method by which it was announced could not have been more unprofessional or impulsive. If Mattis and other Generals had deliberated for 6 months and reluctantly came to a conclusion similar to Trump's it would be one thing, but they did not. This needs to be fleshed out and discussed, not made rashly for obvious political reasons.