(January 22, 2019 at 2:29 pm)mlmooney89 Wrote: I am 100% for both military and transgender mind you. I have heard conflicting things about -why- they shouldn't be able to serve and I don't know how true it is. So in the American military you can be told no for medical issues and parental issues. IE if you have diabetes you can't join. If you are a single parent you can't join. This is for nearly the same reason. If deployed to no man's land in the middle of the night what are you going to do? Who are your kids going to and where are you going to stash your insulin? I've heard that transgender shouldn't/couldn't because they do need that steady dose of medicine to maintain it. If they get lost, shot down, end up somewhere away from medicine for so and so days/weeks what happens? This is where I am in uncharted grounds, if indeed the medicine stops will it hurt them or will it just mess with their bodies? Even asthma isn't allowed in the military for this reason. I would think that IF it did hurt them to be away from medical supplies then no they should play by the same medical rules everyone else plays by. If it doesn't hurt them physically then the military is playing that "if one can't join none can" and that's messed up.
The ability to serve should be the only measure.
I failed out of Air Force basic myself. The physical part was easy. What got me washed out was the mental aspect. From 5am to 10pm at night, I was constantly yelled at and made to feel like a piece of shit. Drill Instructors getting in my face yelling at me constantly. Physically I could have passed. But after a lifetime of living on a street full of nothing but guy bullies, and on top of having well intended but all be it wrong, authoritarian parents, whom had a "buck it up snowflake" attitude, I was doomed to fail when I enlisted. I had no idea a the time when I went in it was all just a mental test. I came out of that failure thinking worse of myself than I do now.
I look at it this way, if you can do the physical work and handle the mental stress, and on top of basically signing up for getting shot at and killed, you deserve the chance to do it, and you deserve the support of being whom you know you are.
I could care less who saves my bacon, male or female or transgender. I don't care if you are military or a police or fire or doctor or EMT. Not everyone can do those mentally tough jobs. But I say, if you get through that training you deserve the job regardless of gender, or sexual identity or sexuality.
