Trump Plans to Kick Trans Troops Out of Military On Day One
Here we go again.
The Times of London (“Donald Trump to kick transgender troops out of US military“):
Donald Trump is planning an executive order that would lead to the removal of all transgender members of the US military, defence sources say.
The order could come on his first day back in the White House, January 20. There are believed to be about 15,000 active service personnel who are transgender. They would be medically discharged, which would determine that they were unfit to serve.
It would also lead to a ban on trans people joining the military and would come at a time when almost all branches of the American armed forces are failing to meet recruitment targets.
Trump, 78, has railed against “woke” practices in the military, saying that some high-ranking officers are often more interested in diversity, equity and inclusion than planning to fight.
The ban is expected to be wider ranging than a similar order made during his first term in office, when Trump prevented transgender people joining the armed forces, but allowed those already serving to keep their jobs. President Biden rescinded the order, but this time even those with decades of service will be removed from their posts, according to several sources.
“These people will be forced out at a time when the military can’t recruit enough people,” a source familiar with Trump’s plans said. “Only the Marine Corps is hitting its numbers for recruitment and some people who will be affected are in very senior positions.”
According to the Pentagon, privacy policies make it difficult to measure the number of active duty trans people, but about 2,200 service members had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021, when Trump’s first ban was lifted. There are about 1.3 million active duty personnel in the military.
There are believed to be thousands of other personnel who identify as transgender.
Reporting on this is scant with The Independent (“Trump reportedly plans to kick trans troops out of the military within days of inauguration“) and various other British sources and The Daily Beast (“Trump Reportedly Plans to Banish Transgender Troops From the U.S. Military“) are the only outlets I see covering the story.
The Times report focuses on the readiness implications:
“Should a trans ban be implemented from day one of the Trump administration it would undermine the readiness of the military and create an even greater recruitment and retention crisis, not to mention signalling vulnerability to America’s adversaries,” said Rachel Branaman, executive director of Modern Military Association of America, which campaigns on behalf of LGBTQ+ military personnel and veterans.
“Abruptly discharging 15,000-plus service members, especially given that the military’s recruiting targets fell short by 41,000 recruits last year, adds administrative burdens to war fighting units, harms unit cohesion, and aggravates critical skill gaps,” she said. “There would be a significant financial cost, as well as a loss of experience and leadership that will take possibly 20 years and billions of dollars to replace.”
But the 15,000 number is almost certainly vastly overstated. Additionally, to the extent the fight over “woke” issues is contributing to the recruiting and retention problem, it may actually be a wash given that the enlistment base in particular is typically disproportionately Southern and rural.
More important, it seems to me, is the breaking of faith with those who have chosen to serve and made life decisions accordingly. Those quoted, though, still put the focus on the talent loss:
Trans people already serving in the military say that as well as causing them significant personal hardship, a new ban would be disastrous for the armed forces.
“There are very few members of my career field with this experience, and in the event of a large-scale contingency, it would be difficult to replace the level of experience that I bring to the table,” said a serving US Air Force non-commissioned officer, who preferred not to give their name.
Paulo Batista, a transgender analyst in the US navy, said that a ban would not only put a premature end to his career, it would also cause upheaval across the forces.
“I have four years left on my contract,” he said. “But you take 15,000 of us out — there’s more but that’s the number that is always mentioned — that’s 15,000 leadership positions, every one of us play a vital role.
“There are junior enlisted personnel to high-end officers. You pull one of us out, that means others have to cover. These jobs could take months or even years to fill.”
Batista dismissed another argument made by those opposed to trans people serving in the military: that the Pentagon had to cover spiralling costs of gender dysphoria treatment.
“There is no money being spent, it’s just continued care,” he said. “People enlisting are just slightly hormone deficient, but the bigger picture is how many other people are going to be affected. Kicking out the 15,000 would affect the whole fleet, the whole battalion. It’s everyone.”
The legality of this potential move is not clear to me. The ACLU filed a lawsuit back in 2017 when Trump first banned trans troops from enlisting, but the case (Stone vs. Trump) became moot when Biden rescinded the order. One would think Supreme Court rulings that treat anti-trans discrimination as simple sex discrimination under Title IX would settle the issue, but the courts have tended to give enormous leeway to the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services.
Given both the huge emphasis on the trans issue during the campaign and the nomination of Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon, this news hardly comes as a shock. But the legal status of transgender adults needs to be settled quickly.
I’ve been trying to decide when we stopped being a serious nation. It definitely happened before 2016, when Trump first got elected. I feel it’s been going on for decades, at least.
Donald Trump hates the military and the people in it because they are excellent examples of sacrificing oneself for a greater cause.
As he famously said, “I don’t get it, what’s in it for them?”
This is a foreign concept to a man who is ridiculously selfish and obsessed with his image. .
What is your basis for this statement? 15,000 would be 1% of the military which is not an outrageous estimate of the prevalence of trans people within society.
Considering trans is a category which includes people have medically transitioned and people who have not, what exactly is the criteria for medically unfit?
No doubt “you can grab them by the pussy” Trump will oversee and personally participate in the identification of all these troops.
No reason to think Trump hates trans people any more than he hates any other group of people who don’t support him. But his advisors certainly do hate trans people. The whole point for them is to remove them as much as possible from the public sphere, and make their life as tough as possible. The cruelty is the point. My holiday wish for them (he and his advisors) is to rot in hell, but not before a long and debilitating illness.
@Tony W:
How any vet could vote for Trump escapes me.
This will take the same arc as the COVID vaccine–it will be blocked and Trump will get to claim he tried but the Deep State prevailed.
Medical Readiness is well-defined. There are people serving that require more Medical accommodations that Trans members. If the goalpost move–this opens more non-Trans members up to Medical disqualification.
This Country never improves until it’s ugly side is brought into continuousness. It wasn’t until White people saw dogs sicced on black children that they understood what Jim Crow was.
It’s a hard pill to swallow, but Trump will need success to activate the poison pill. If no one gets hurt–the fuckery will continue.
If you listen to sports talk radio it seems like every other commercial is for testosterone replacement/enhancement. Would having a “low T” prescription trigger an investigation into a service member to determine whether they should be deemed medically unfit for the military? Just like Nancy Mace’s proposed federal bathroom ban, who’s going to enforce this – the Federal Crotch Police? Is it too early for a shot of tequila?
@Jim Brown 32:
Sad, but true.
There seems to be a meme among certain commenters (Twitter & YouTube) that Boeing’s troubles can be attributed to “going woke” and DEI hiring strategies. Whenever there is news about the disastrous safety record and terrible business executive decisions that have tanked the company, you can rely on a subset of comments blaming DEI hiring and wokeness. Yet there is no reporting or info to suggest that any of Boeing’s troubles can be attributed to those ‘faults’. The just the perception among a certain population that if something’s gone wrong, then “wokeness” and DEI programs must be a cause.
But the root cause is stupid management. Stupid management can implement DEI stupidly. And I’d suggest that stupid implementation in one area is a predictor of stupid implementation in other areas.
One thing I’m not clear on: will the booted troops lose their benefits? Because that would indeed be a massive disservice to them.
Adopting anti-trans positions, like populism in general, is performative. It’s about selling people on you so that you can do the stuff you really want but which might not be so popular. See also, Nancy Mace.
@Charley in Cleveland: High testosterone levels are associated with violence, poorer impulse control, cancer, cardiovascular disease …
@Hal_10000:
Well, if they had planned on serving to retirement, they will lose that, which is both a massive unplanned change to their lives and a massive loss of money–we’re talking upwards of a million dollars for someone who retires at age 40 and lives to be 80. They would also lose access to all the other post-retirement benefits, like Tricare, base access, access to the commissary and exchange, etc.
@Jim Brown 32:
100% this. And this is going to happen A LOT as unqualified folks take over departments and try to push through policy that conflicts with legal and other existing frameworks and policies. The same thing happened in 2016.
Sure, the President is entitled to whoever he can get through the Senate–but they can’t just burn down the house or change the law on their own.
@Jim Brown 32: Yeah. I think of this as, “It has to get worse before it gets better”.
I mean, the other day, Kevin Drum posted a complaint about a bolt that costs 45 bucks. That may be silliness, or it may be that a bolt like that has some very special requirements, and if we replace it with an off-the-shelf bolt from a hardware store, airplanes will start falling out of the sky.
Of course, it was drawn from military procurement, so it puts a liberal like me in the position of defending military spending and military readiness. Just like the OP. It’s a strange place to be.
@Argon:
That seems to be the go to demonization for just about everything. it was brought out during the spate of near misses some months ago, too.
It’s not reducing starting pay, eliminating defined benefits pensions, or buying back shares for over $65 billion.
It is possible that you are aware of this, but in case you’re not. There are a significant amount of trans women who enter the military for 2 reasons: 1. to prove/fix their “manliness” and, 2. to kill themselves. I narrowly avoided option 2 myself.
It may be in recent years we’ve allowed those people to find themselves and serve their country in healthier ways. But that 15k number doesn’t sound absurd to me. Probably be higher.
Can you do me a favor and clarify what you mean by this? I would honestly like to understand your position better. I need to understand the position of men like you better. Also, why just adults? Do you think we are born like this or choose to be like this? Again, it would honestly be so helpful to understand.
And same questions for @Jim Brown 32: if you would be so kind as to answer. I am honestly seeking enlightenment. That’s why I am explore asking you both.
As with so much of Trumpism, it is performative vice signaling.
He is declaring that trans people are the hated Outgroup and unworthy of respect or fair treatment.
Whether trans service people are actually removed is a secondary consideration. The insult and cruelty is the point.
@Mikey: Less impactful than when your or my generation served because of the Blended Retirement System. Before it was 20+ or bust for retirement. Now members accrue and walk away with a pro-rated 401k based on years of service if they don’t make 20+years.
Fewer members were already interested in getting 20+ . Blender retirement maker even fewer members interested. Very few people make it to 20 or even want to anymore. There are good and bad to this but not a large factor here.
@Matt Bernius:
I keep seeing this sentiment, or it’s cousin c/o @Chip Daniels: :
and I don’t think we have the luxury of that sort of cynicism. For as long as I have been politically aware, since at least say 1993, I have watched the Republicans ratchet harder right each election. In the 90’s you could promise Republican voters all sorts of crap and not deliver and there would be minimal bitching. Then they started primarying people from the right, harder and harder each time till the GOP was more the party of Chip Roy and MTG and not Drs. Joyner and Taylor. Trump comes along and accelerates that all. Now they don’t want “performative vice” they want blood. They aren’t going to let the senate or the courts stand in their way. 1/3 of the GOP is Christian Nationalist true believers, 1/3 is scammy techbro masculinists, and the 1/3 to rule them all is Trump. He has made it exceptionally clear that he is going to get his way, updated hourly, no matter what. When they tell us who they are, we have to believe them. They believe that they have been given a mandate from heaven to inflict their will on us. It’s going to be bad.
In a sane world, such discrimination would be facially illegal and laughed out of court.
Both the policy discussed here, and denial of gender-affirming care are easily dismissible as violations of the 14th Amendment equal protection. They don’t even pass the “rational basis” scrutiny, let alone strict scrutiny (Although I am not a lawyer, I’ve read some judicial opinions on this).
HOWEVER, we have seen a judiciary that seems willing to make up its own rules and ignore precedent to get the outcome it wants. This is so far away from “just calling balls and strikes” I would like to make Chief Justice Roberts, who I once thought of as sincere in saying those words, write them on paper a thousand times, and eat every one of those words while I watch.
Assuming that it will go nowhere is a luxury that Beth, Stormy, Sarah, Joanna, Rita, Misha, Diane and Gregory (all of these are trans people I know) cannot afford.
As it turns out, it is also a luxury that anybody who cares about military readiness and how much damage Pete Hegseth’s ideas would do to readiness also cannot afford. We need to gear up and get ready for a fight. Both for the people we love and the country we love. There’s no ducking this issue and leaving it to the courts.
Interestingly enough, I expect to find a few allies among conservatives. Because there are, in fact, some very pro-trans people who are also conservative and pro-military. I feel it is very important to not push them away.
@Matt Bernius:
One word: SCOTUS.
@Chip Daniels:
As @Beth already mentioned, I don’t think that is the full story.
Inflicting cruelty is one way of establishing and maintaining (and making visible!) social hierarchies.
I suspect that this is indeed the main point of the anti-trans crusade. But the greater the cruelty, the clearer the hierarchy.
While performative cruelty may already satisfy a part of the desire to return to some imagined past of sexual purity, cruelty that imposes tangible harms upon the trans community will satisfy even more.
I would not be sanguine.
@Beth: As a career military professional, my goals were to create and sustain a warfighting team, that, should deterrence and diplomacy fails, were ready to destroy the enemies of the United States.
Inclusiveness is a key factor in team building. I didn’t get to pick who the Air Force put on my team. If they were physically ready and medically qualified we found a way to have good order and discipline while making modest accomodations for everyones differences. I have seen many people who can’t comprehend Transgenderism extend themselves to a teammate in service to a common goal. That being, the mission, and the comraderie required to overcome the obstacles in getting the mission completed. I say this, having had the challenge of having a transgender Airmen in my care. A great Airmen that my team and I had to find the way to keep the unit morale high and fight ignorance and find accomodations for both the Member and the unit members who were uncomfortable. In a military setting you don’t get to write off everyone else’s feelings, even if wrong, for the sake of accommodating one person.
Philosophically, I have no idea what causes Transgenderism and how people find themselves in that space. Nor should I try–because the answers will probably be wrong and lacking. We know there are 2 forces that shapes us into what we are: Nature and nurture. I’m sure some combination of the 2 are why you are what you are–and I am what I am. I think the ‘why’ is irrelevant to the solutions about how the common space of society is shared. What I CAN do–is simply be a good human, which transcends the gender of a person in 98% of interactions.
Beyond settling legal status, we’ll eventually have to settle what’s societies obligation to affirm the gender of individuals? That will determine how the common space is ordered. Before, sex and gender were broadly considered the same. Now, and rightfully so, they are not considered the same. One is testable, whether it’s 2 or more–we have the tools to say what ones sex is. Gender is an acquired identity that can and does differ by culture and time period. Where in the public space is sex more applicable to gender and vice versa? Where should none be a considered–yet are now? I’ve said for decades that equal does not mean the same–nor should it. But because collective society is dumb–we keep taking dumb turns with the national ethos of equality. Which leads to the cycle of progress and backlash across all disadvantaged demographics in America.
@Jim Brown 32: Sure, they won’t walk away with nothing, but it still won’t compare to doing the full 20 if they intended to serve until retirement.
China’s shipbuilding capacity is 230x that of the US. Most of the developed world is building high-speed rail; our transportation infrastructure is a joke. Millions could lose health insurance coverage in 2026 if Obamacare subsides are not renewed.
But Republicans are preoccupied with harassing trans patriots who served our country in the military, unlike draft-dodging Trump and his children. Clownery.
@Argon: Yup I’ve seen this all over the place. Woke/DEI has become meaningless as it’s applied to anything anyone doesn’t like. Kind of reminds me of how liberal was used in the past. Video game comes out and is bad? WOKE DEI!!! Movie is bad? WOKE DEI!! Prices too high? WOKE DEI!!! Woke up with a rash? WOKE DEI!!! I can point out in detail how greed is the real issue and they’ll just keep going NO IT”S WOKE DEI!! Then I get called anti-capitalism and other stupid names.
I’ve even run into people in Europe who blame WOKE DEI for all their ails…
Then there’s the subsection of people who use DEI as a replacement for the N word.
@Jim Brown 32:
Thank you for this. This give me a lot to think about and I appreciate it. If I can be bold and take up a little bit more of you time, can I explore a couple of bits? This are honest, serious questions. My experience of you here is of a bold, thoughtful person willing to fight hard and not take a lot of shit (if any).
1. What was it like for you personally to have that Airman under your care?
2. Stupid question time, what would it take for you to stop using the term “transgenderism”? I ask because this seems like stupid pointless language policing, and I guess to a certain extent it is/will be. It’s a term that my community doesn’t use basically at all, AND critically, is used by the hard right and the sort of people that want to harm both you and I. It’s basically used to say that trans people don’t exist and our experience is a political ideology that is mean to harm people.
3.
I like this. Funny story. I am coming to grips with just how abusive my childhood was (wildly). It shows up in so many of the ways I interact with people. I suspect that very early on, I’m fairly confident that I acted very “girly” and/or “queer” and my family attempted to punish that out of me. I am starting to think what saved me from being a horrific person was my trans-ness constantly pulling on me to get out. It’s something I’m thinking about a lot now.
@drj:
Let me clarify-“Performative” doesn’t mean “inconsequential” in fact, the opposite.
Declaring trans people to be Unpersons is the permission given to bullies and thugs all up and down the chain to inflict cruelty and violence against trans people.
We’ve seen this before with drag queens, where Sunday drag brunches would be attacked violently by Proud Boys.
That was a direct result of the angry eliminationist rhetoric which ostensibly was aimed elsewhere. The idea is to isolate these people and normalize the idea that they aren’t fully equal.
@Chip Daniels: Eliminationist rhetoric is really flexible. People who hear eliminationist rhetoric about some target they don’t want eliminated switch to another target they do. It’s an action belief, not an object one.
@Beth: 1. It was educational. Personally, I liked the Airman. Hard worker and liked by her peers before and mostly after the transition. She first started with multiple suicidal ideations and would blame it on stress at home with a wife and newborn. After a year of that–we learned the real issue and treatment–which stopped the spectre of suicide. I did not want anyone in my charge killing themselves, especially with a wife and newborn. The hard part was brokering agreement with everyone who was now uncomfortable–men, women, and of course the Airman. The Airman didn’t want to be in the men’s bathroom with men, the men were weirded out by the Airman, and the women were weirded out. The military transition paperwork process is slow, which gives people time to think and evaluate. Over time, the populations of weirded out people decreased to noisy minorities. I think we could have had more people to be open-minded–but the Airman decided to go to War over pronoun usage–despite assuring me they would give people grace. It made their experience in the late transition phase less than it could have been. Not bad–but not ideal. Why? Because a non-significant portion of the focus of the unit became about affirming the Airmen’s gender. Keep in mind, other people’s military experience is also diminished when their personal issues require alot of their leadership’s time and focus. Culturally, your leadership and peers get lukewarm on you when that happens.
I was glad when the Airman got orders to a new Base because I think transitioning in a unit where you were male but are now female is too much of a distraction. Better to show up to a new unit as a trans female.
2. I speak to be understood by my audience–what is the current term dujour for transgenderism?
3. I wish you the best in the quest for self-awareness. In Jim Browns world view it’s the only journey world taking. The journey that allows you to experience the reality that the good, bad,and ugly you see in others are sitting right in oneself–hidden under a veil of self-pity, vanity, and self conceit.
@Modulo Myself:
The military has specific medical requirements for entry to service and a different set for retention once in the service, including for trans people.
The military still operates on the basis of a sex/gender binary – you are coded as either male or female upon entry and are required to meet all the standards and restrictions of that designation (physical training, grooming, uniform, etc).
Trans people can join and serve in their self-identified gender, assuming they meet the medical standards and have proof of legal identity of the self-identified gender. On the medical side, a history of hormone use, medical transition, or a gender dysphoria diagnosis is – according to current rules – disqualifying unless the person has been stable for at least 18 months with no prospect for further complications.
The specifics are listed in DODI 6130.03 “Medical Standards For Military Service”
Presumably, the Trump administration would change this so that gender dysphoria and previous gender reassignment surgery and HRT become disqualifying in all cases.
Similarly, once a person joins the military, certain medical conditions may develop that could be a basis for a medical discharge – others can be managed with the servicemember retained and allowed to continue to serve. So a person who joins the military and later gets diagnosed with gender dysphoria has some options spelled out in DODI 1300.28 “In Service Transition for Transgender Service Members”.
The Trump administration would likely rescind this and make gender dysphoria a medical condition incompatible with further military service, resulting in a medical discharge for anyone so diagnosed.
I agree with Jim Brown and Matt Bernius that such changes will likely be litigated, especially by existing service members who would have the rug pulled out from under them and suddenly be disqualified from service.
Let’s not forget the felon was happy to let hundreds of thousands of his voters and supporters die, because promoting the COVID vaccines his so-called administration funded would have maybe helped Biden a little politically.
@Matt:
Well, I’m not going to argue that all “inclusive characters and storylines” have been perfectly crafted. Quite a few movies and series that drive that as a predominant message are sh1te. Which is to say, sh1te writers and producers produce sh1te. There are really good movies & series out there which incorporate a more diverse set of characters and aren’t sh1te. Again, it’s not wokeness or ‘diversity’ that makes a movie terrible, it’s the quality of the storytelling. Before there was woke & DEI, we had sh1ty movies.
@Beth: @Jim Brown 32: This is great stuff. From both of you.
Re: transgenderism
“this seems like stupid pointless language policing” – but then we see it’s a reaction. I’ve run afoul of this myself, and while I consider that some -ism words don’t describe ideologies at all, I really don’t want to give trans people a worse time in life than they already have. If you use this word, it can easily sound to a trans person like you are denying their reality. I don’t think @JimBrown32 was doing this, though.
“I speak to be understood by my audience”. If only more people took that attitude. Seriously, I really appreciate that.
I am not aware of any single word that denotes the phenomenon of people transitioning from a gender indicated by their body morphology to one conforming to some internal dictum. I tend to look for alternate ways to frame this. Something like, “people who have transitioned” or “the trans experience” or “when people transition” and stuff like that. “gender dysphoria” is the medical umbrella for the condition that a person experiences well before their transition, and possible during, and which they get relief from after transitioning.
One more place to stick in my oar. There is a pretty strong element of Nature in being trans. That’s the conclusion I first ran across in Martin Seligman’s “What You Can Change, and What You Can’t”. Being trans was the last chapter in the book, presented as the thing that basically people never, never change their mind about. No treatment, therapy, or work will change a thing.
I don’t know the detail, I don’t think anyone knows how it works in detail. I have a theory about where to look, though. An XY fetus goes through two surges of testosterone in utero during its development into a recognizable human. The first such surge differentiates gonads, and triggers the development of the T receptors that do things like grow body hair, etc. The second stage, last I checked, was mysterious. It affects brain tissue, and that’s about all we know.
So. Something unusual could happen at this stage, and we could see people being trans as a result. There could be related to the “ghost limb” phenomenon, which shows how humans have a model of their body in their brain. What happens if those models don’t match? Might it be gender dysphoria?
Again, I don’t know. This just seems like a good place to look, and an interesting possibility.
@Jim Brown 32:
1. I’ll keep the numbers for ease. Thank you very much for this. I appreciate it. I can understand why the newborn was a stressor for her (above and beyond new parent stuff). I see it a lot and it was true for me that being confronted with your child really does a number on the stuff you’re trying to hide from yourself. Sometimes you can keep it down, but mostly you can’t. And that goes for all of it, not just trans stuff.
As for going to war over pronouns, I get it. There are never any winners with that, except for maybe actual bigots who want to provoke people into conflict. But those people are actually very rare. On the other hand, it get so grating. As part of my general being and by explicit choice I give people more grace than some of them deserve and even I get snappy or go to war at times. I’ve also seen how it affects other people. I was on a call with Verizon trying to fix a phone problem and the person on the other end was very pointed with their “Mr. Beth’s” and obviously going out of their way to be ignorant. My partner finally snapped and started yelling at the person. I was almost in tears at that point but figured it wouldn’t do me any good. She got us much better service after screaming at them though.
2. I am completely unaware of “transgenderism” as a term ever being du jour. According to Julia Serrano it used to float around in the community, but I was completely unaware of it. That being said, I think this is the important part:
https://juliaserano.medium.com/the-history-of-the-word-transgenderism-55fd9bbf65cc
Serrano says that we shouldn’t try and eliminate the word and would probably strenuously disagree with me here. I don’t think the word should be use to refer to trans people, or trans activism. At the very least, I would hope you (and everyone else) would understand why that word is being used.
3. I wish more people would put in the actual work of doing this. It sucks and its hard, but it’s real and will make your life better in unimaginable ways. But it is hard and it is work. It’s much easier to just blame someone else and something something profit.
@Jay L Gischer:
Full cards on the table/showing my work, I agree with you. I don’t think that’s what he was doing at all. After a while you get a sense about where people are with things. I wish I had a better idea of where @JimBrown32 (and Dr. Joyner, who I’ve also seen using that term) get it from. But that would only be helpful to understand how to push back, not whether or not pushing back is a good idea at a given time.
I’ve heard this theory before. Honestly its as good as any we have right now. Figuring it out would take a lot of stupid basic science and people don’t want to pay for that. That’s how we get drs treating Women like smaller, more irrational, men. I’m on a Community Board for a major hospital her in Chicago and it is so frustrating what I am learning.
Words fail us totally when it comes to this and unfortunately the trans community gets stuck with stuff that doesn’t really fit. Like, the whole born in the wrong body stuff. It’s nonsense and I’m sure those trans people knew it was nonsense, but they didn’t have any better way of explaining it.
I liken it to someone screaming in your face, from the moment you wake up till the moment you pass out. 24/7 nonstop screaming that never lessens, and sometimes gets way louder. The only cure seems to be to begin the work of accepting yourself and transition. For me the screaming got noticeably quieter 3 days after I started taking estrogen. I finally noticed it stopped completely after my bottom surgery. If it wasn’t for the TERFs, Republicans, and other sundry buttholes, I probably wouldn’t think about my gender at all. I’d just be another boring middle aged white woman.
I think that’s what kills me the most about all of this. If the Republicans get their way and eliminate all legal recognition of us, we won’t suddenly disappear. Trans people have always been here, we’ve just had to suffer more. Why do people have to suffer? what good does it do the world?
@Beth: Fair points and appreciate your viewpoint. I used the word “transgenderism” as a one-word euphemism to roll-up the concept of gender dysphoria and our medical and social approaches to accomodation.
What (if any) is a less loaded term within the community?
@Jim Brown 32:
Honestly, I wish I knew a better term. I think you’re always safe with trans, transgender, transgender people/activism. I would be nice if there was a less loaded term to efficiently roll it all up, but I suspect that might not be possible.
Like, we don’t talk about “gayism” or “homosexualism” or any broad but also discrete human experience like that. I’ll admit I’ve been wrestling with this idea all day and I can’t figure out a different group that we would talk like this about. I’m sure this is a blind spot of mine and would welcome anyone pointing that out.
Also, and I offer this up as a bit of dark levity. I’ve been referring a lot of trans people stuff just as “the transes”. It feels like a verbal turd though, the slur would sound better, but be more terrible. I use it with my partner and friends a lot. “Oh, the transes are going nuts again…” “oh the transes went to a sex party at the murder room.*” ect.
*Actual thing I said to my partner. I’m sure she never expected to fully understand what that sentence meant, but here she is.