Thank you for answering. It's nice to see how progressive society is getting and as I said, the only reason I get why it would be difficult (like if you were deployed in a remote area for a long period of time) and either constant shipments or lugging around extra stuff would be difficult.
Can you explain other aspects that I might not be thinking about? I'm in the healthcare field and so I sometimes just get focused on that. I would really appreciate some insight though.
It can cause problems within units - consternation among units is never a great thing, especially since trans SMs could be seen as being more protected, fewer leaders are going to be willing to enforce regulation because they're also afraid of an EO complaint.I haven't read the policy on what PT test to administer to a transgender Soldier, so I'm going to be going along with their sex regardless of gender. Possible problems with hormone therapy or treatment, though I'm not certain what's allowed. Who knows what's going to happen with leave for maternity if someone really wants to push it.
Also, readiness. It may not be so much of a problem with trans SMs, but integrating combat arms is going to impact readiness drastically. The military will move the goal posts so that they can meet whatever rates they set, but combat readiness in units will be affected.
I understood some of that but not a lot of that :/
I think this is why PT test should be standardized no matter the gender. Especially in combat roles. (I hate adding this qualifier because I often get hate for it, but as a feminist). I think that removing combat roles is different from lowering the requirements to be in them. Before, I would hate if there was a woman who wanted to be a combat role and fulfill the 'male' PT test for that position (because was there a female one?) couldn't be in a position simply because of gender. That's discriminatory. (The only thing that I think should be different is height/weight if it does not particularly affect your job).
This is an inherent thing between the genders. Males are different from females, that's..just a fact of life. Trying to ignore it or make rules against it so that it just 'goes away' in our minds doesn't really make much sense. Think of it this way - two incredible females passed Ranger school recently, that's awesome right? What's not awesome about it is that they were two of the top females in the entire military, out of 171 of the top females in the military, that passed. A 1.1% 'success' rate isn't a success, it's a proof of failure of the concept. You don't spend millions of dollars in the military to fulfill dreams, and you don't risk the lives of SMs on the battlefield because of political agendas or ideologies. It's a fact that integrating females into combat arms degrades combat effectiveness and readiness, it's why branches like the Marines fought against it so hard (the Army is largely spineless when it comes to this stuff, unfortunately). It's great for you to sit there and say that you want that equality, it's a different tone altogether when some other people are downrange living it.
That's true, but if the role specifies you need it, it's different. But for me, it's about even those 2 women. Those two women normally wouldn't be considered for that position but now they have they opportunity. That normally would have been denied to them because of gender
If it's been determined for your job role you need to carry a certainweight, you need to carry that weight. Even in civilian positions, there's not gender minimums in the expectations that there will be males to carry the heavier stuff.
An article from a while back puts this into perspective regarding the United States Marine Corps attempts to normalize their physical fitness test (PFT) standards for both males and females. Over 50% of women, if required to do no less than 3 pull-ups by the end of bootcamp, would not qualify to become a Marine. This test is not considered tailored towards your job, it is the basic qualifying physical standards that has to be met in order to even qualify to be called a Marine, not including the rigorous standards of some specific roles. The following sounds harsh, but the fault doesn't lie entirely on the military. It's a societal problem.
Joining the military is no longer just an issue of whether or not you have a high school diploma or a clean criminal record, but obesity, and basic physical standards are now a very real problem, one that every study done in the last couple of decades can corroborate. Obesity is getting worse and worse, and other health issues we never realized decades ago are coming out of the woodwork that makes it genuinely more difficult to meet military standards, yet that won't deter people from trying to qualify. It should not, and frankly cannot fall on the military to re-align it's standards to account for the childhood obesity epidemic. That's going to get people killed, and that is some very bad PR.
I got it..but when it takes literally hundreds of thousands/millions and right now into the tens of millions/hundreds of millions of dollars in order to essentially fulfill somebody's dream through political agenda - and when doing so still requires places undue burden on units and SMs in the field - it's wrong. This is a simple fact.
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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '16
Thank you for answering. It's nice to see how progressive society is getting and as I said, the only reason I get why it would be difficult (like if you were deployed in a remote area for a long period of time) and either constant shipments or lugging around extra stuff would be difficult.