quote:

Originally posted by NapoleonSolo:
During my time in Army aviation as a Medivac crew chief. . . .

Thank you for your service. I was trained as a frontline medic during Vietnam, but was a reservist, never activated. All my training cadre were Vietnam combat veterans. I didn't appreciate such things then as much as I do now. So thank you.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:

Based on a diagnosis from the DSM IV sexual identity.( Wether he served honorable or not is irrelevant.) Something is wrong with people who believe they are a different sex.

And in my opinion they shouldn’t serve because it is a real medically diagnosed disease.

The pshrinks are up to the DSM V.

I have a view of this issue that few, if any of the other members have, since my only child is transgender (female to male).

While I do not understand the inner turmoil that brought this about, if my child wants to serve in the military, and can make the grade for people of the same gender (i.e., in my child's case, the requirements for men) mentally and physically, who the fuck cares?

Our military has bigger enough problems to worry about, like the damage done by two never ending ground wars in Asia costing us billions a day to support drug-trafficking terrorist groups masquerading as legitimate governments.

That said, personally, I'd rather see my child apply to the National Clandestine Service than the military.

quote:

Originally posted by NapoleonSolo:
No way should anyone who isn't crystal clear on who they are be allowed anywhere near those who must trust their team with their lives.

What makes you think transgendered people aren't crystal clear about who they are?

When I learned my child was transgendered I had one question: Does this make life easier? I was told it does, because for the first time, she was not lying about who she is.

Transgender meets the physiological definition of delusional. As such, they should not be allowed to join the military or, receive a medical discharge if they’ve already joined. If they want to serve this country, there are other opportunities.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
Transgender meets the physiological definition of delusional. As such, they should not be allowed to join the military or, receive a medical discharge if they’ve already joined. If they want to serve this country, there are other opportunities.

I agree. DNA says one gender, the mind says a different gender. There are many types of mental illness, we don't know all of the roots. Combat conditions can intensify such.

I do have a serious question regarding these individuals in the military and this is a problem that will need to be addressed...

What happens when it is urine/drug test time? Who will monitor the males who are claiming to be females but have not had the surgery?

OR... Who will monitor the women who are claiming to be males but have not had the surgery?


Also it is not about one freakin' individual or a select few. That is what a lot of these law makers never and these people who are protesting and fighting to allow the special interest groups to serve. It is about a team.

I am not talking about sitting in a FOB or a base and never leave the wire type MOS. I am talking about small fire team(s) or who live at an outpost or go on patrols around the clock. These teams eat, sleep, work out together and have to gel.

If they don't gel because 1 out of the 12 are different they blame it on the other 11. It doesn't matter that all 11 have went on numerous deployments, trained, like the same baseball team, apple pie and Coors Light.

Now it just matters about the 1 individual..

^^^^^^^
And I believe what you described will hinder their effectiveness in combat conditions.

^^^

That’s the goal, not an unintended consequence.

the downward spiral continues

more social experimentation at the expense of combat readiness

as mentioned above -- the leftists are all about 'ME' ... the military is about SACRIFICE -- putting your personal wants / desires second to accomplish the mission

but this is about tearing down institutions that are considered right / conservative.

like churches, Boy Scouts, sports, etc more of the same. it's by design.

----------------------------

So glad I completed my career in the military and retired from the greatest social experiment in America.

quote:

Originally posted by NapoleonSolo:
Mental illness. Plain and simple. During my time in Army aviation as a Medivac crew chief, I never wanted anyone near my helicopter that wasn't 100% there. Had a good friend who did the avionics for our choppers. Walked out on the flight line to mine one day and he was smoking pot in it. Although we were really tight, that was the end of his military career. I could not let someone put us in mortal danger with a "F" up when we needed it the most. No way should anyone who isn't crystal clear on who they are be allowed anywhere near those who must trust their team with their lives. Absolutely not. It is insane to think that someone who can't decide who they are be anywhere near the danger zone.

This ^^^^^^^^^

Transgenders have a nearly 50% attempted suicide rate. How can anybody be idiotic enough to let these people near lethal weapons????

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:


What makes you think transgendered people aren't crystal clear about who they are?

My youngest brother who was my half brother but was just one of us the four of us together was Gay. I know how that happened and it wasn't genetics but a absolutely horrible father who didn't take care of his son. While trans people are a different issue, they most certainly are a mess. I have had many Gay friends and one who is trans at the moment. While I have not had a child that was, I am certainly not without some understanding of those issues.

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by NapoleonSolo:
During my time in Army aviation as a Medivac crew chief. . . .

Thank you for your service.

Thank you very much. It was my honor to have served and especially what I was able to do while in the Army.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
I’m not a doctor but I do know if you can’t figure out if you are a boy (outie) or a girl (innie) you probably shouldn’t be handling weapons....

Beck didn't have a lot left to prove.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Beck

Is that the coward who threatened to beat Ben Shapiro to a pulp if he (Shapiro) referred to him (transvestite) one more time as a man?

Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.

For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.

A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.

Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.

The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.

At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits. As a result, we stopped offering that form of treatment in the 1970s. Our efforts, though, had little influence on the emergence of this new idea about sex, or upon the expansion of the number of “transgendered” among young and old.

Olympic Athlete Turned “Pin-Up” Girl

This history may clarify some aspects of the latest high-profile transgender claimant. Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion, is turning away from his titular identity as one of the “world’s greatest male athletes.” Jenner announced recently that he “identifies as a woman” and, with medical and surgical help, is busy reconstructing his physique.

I have not met or examined Jenner, but his behavior resembles that of some of the transgender males we have studied over the years. These men wanted to display themselves in sexy ways, wearing provocative female garb. More often than not, while claiming to be a woman in a man’s body, they declared themselves to be “lesbians” (attracted to other women). The photograph of the posed, corseted, breast-boosted Bruce Jenner (a man in his mid-sixties, but flaunting himself as if a “pin-up” girl in her twenties or thirties) on the cover of Vanity Fair suggests that he may fit the behavioral mold that Ray Blanchard has dubbed an expression of “autogynephilia”—from gynephilia (attracted to women) and auto (in the form of oneself).

The Emperor’s New Clothes

But the meme—that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time—marches on through our society. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension.

I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what’s real. I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla—enhanced now by Bruce Jenner’s celebrity and Annie Leibovitz’s photography—stand many victims. Think, for example, of the parents whom no one—not doctors, schools, nor even churches—will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald. These youngsters now far outnumber the Bruce Jenner type of transgender. Although they may be encouraged by his public reception, these children generally come to their ideas about their sex not through erotic interests but through a variety of youthful psychosocial conflicts and concerns.

First, though, let us address the basic assumption of the contemporary parade: the idea that exchange of one’s sex is possible. It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.

When “the tumult and shouting dies,” it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.

How to Treat Gender Dysphoria

So how should we make sense of this matter today? As with any mental phenomenon, what’s crucial is noting its fundamental characteristic and then identifying the many ways in which that characteristic can manifest itself.

The central issue with all transgender subjects is one of assumption—the assumption that one’s sexual nature is misaligned with one’s biological sex. This problematic assumption comes about in several different ways, and these distinctions in its generation determine how to manage and treat it.

Based on the photographic evidence one might guess Bruce Jenner falls into the group of men who come to their disordered assumption through being sexually aroused by the image of themselves as women. He could have been treated for this misaligned arousal with psychotherapy and medication. Instead, he found his way to surgeons who worked him over as he wished. Others have already commented on his stereotypic caricature of women as decorative “babes” (“I look forward to wearing nail polish until it chips off,” he said to Diane Sawyer)—a view that understandably infuriates feminists—and his odd sense that only feelings, not facts, matter here.

For his sake, however, I do hope that he receives regular, attentive follow-up care, as his psychological serenity in the future is doubtful. Future men with similar feelings and intentions should be treated for those feelings rather than being encouraged to undergo bodily changes. Group therapies are now available for them.

Most young boys and girls who come seeking sex-reassignment are utterly different from Jenner. They have no erotic interest driving their quest. Rather, they come with psychosocial issues—conflicts over the prospects, expectations, and roles that they sense are attached to their given sex—and presume that sex-reassignment will ease or resolve them.

The grim fact is that most of these youngsters do not find therapists willing to assess and guide them in ways that permit them to work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions. Rather, they and their families find only “gender counselors” who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions.

Those with Gender Dysphoria Need Evidence-Based Care

There are several reasons for this absence of coherence in our mental health system. Important among them is the fact that both the state and federal governments are actively seeking to block any treatments that can be construed as challenging the assumptions and choices of transgendered youngsters. “As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Obama.

In two states, a doctor who would look into the psychological history of a transgendered boy or girl in search of a resolvable conflict could lose his or her license to practice medicine. By contrast, such a physician would not be penalized if he or she started such a patient on hormones that would block puberty and might stunt growth.

What is needed now is public clamor for coherent science—biological and therapeutic science—examining the real effects of these efforts to “support” transgendering. Although much is made of a rare “intersex” individual, no evidence supports the claim that people such as Bruce Jenner have a biological source for their transgender assumptions. Plenty of evidence demonstrates that with him and most others, transgendering is a psychological rather than a biological matter.

In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.

The larger issue is the meme itself. The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.

But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.

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