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Trans people I know are very sure about themselves. More than some cis people in fact. I will let RAND Corporation rebut the rest of your speculation.[1]
The effect on force readiness is an important consideration in any military policy change. Many types of medical treatments can lead to lost labor and leave personnel temporarily unable to deploy. Given the small estimated number of transgender personnel and the even smaller number who would seek gender transition–related treatment in a given year, the study found that the readiness impact of transition-related treatment would lead to a loss of less than 0.0015 percent of total available labor-years in the active component. Even using the highest estimates, less than 0.1 percent of the force would seek gender transition–related treatment that would affect their ability to deploy. As a point of comparison, in the Army alone, approximately 50,000 active-component personnel were ineligible to deploy in 2015 for various legal, medical, or administrative reasons—a number amounting to around 14 percent of the active component.
A key concern in allowing transgender personnel to serve openly is how this may affect unit cohesion. The underlying assumption is that if service members discover that a member of their unit is transgender, this could inhibit bonding within the unit, which, in turn, would reduce operational readiness. Similar concerns were raised in debates over whether to allow gay and lesbian personnel to serve openly, as well as over whether to allow women to serve in ground combat positions. However, evidence from foreign militaries and the U.S. military has indicated no significant impact on unit cohesion or operational readiness as a result of allowing transgender and gay and lesbian personnel to serve openly or allowing women to serve in ground combat positions.
[1] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/R...
This is a sensible middle-ground approach for the rest of society too. Just treat it like a minority religious belief, then the issue is solved fairly without stepping on anyone's rights.
If both Republicans and Democrats agreed to this approach and put this issue to bed, they could get on with wrangling over much more important problems of governance.
Why is this a talking point? Gender affirming surgeries are extremely rare. Very few trans people go through with them. And even when they do, recovery times are in the order of days or weeks which has little to no impact on the efficacy of the fighting force.
The main things trans people want are:
1. That people treat them with basic human dignity and respect.
2. Access to gender affirming medications. It ultimately doesn't really matter who pays for them because they cost nothing. They are quite literally some of the cheapest medications on the market. Estradiol without insurance costs like 10-20USD for a 3 month supply. Testosterone about the same or less. Androgen blockers cost like 1-5USD for a 3 month supply. You could not find cheaper medications and most pharmacies won't even run insurance for them because they are so cheap. The reason the military "needs" to pay for them is because they need to run the medication through their logistics network so that it is accessible where it is needed.
The cost is irrelevant. What matters is that the medication can get delivered to ships and bases in a timely manner. And that is why the military pays for it.
And the reason they should have interest in doing it is because the overwhelming majority of trans people in the military are people who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria while in the military. The military treats that gender dysphoria so that they can continue to be effective members of the fighting force.
These are people who are already in the military and want to continue to be in the military and do their jobs effectively. A few pills a day or an injection every few days or weeks is generally effective at treating gender dysphoria with accommodations such as social transition further treating it while doing nothing to diminish the efficacy of the fighting force.
Not treating or accommodating them means they either leave the military (which is a problem because the military has a critical shortage of senior personnel due to horrific retention issues) or they perform their duties in a diminished capacity. There's no reason to harm the fighting force's efficacy and/or retention over a treatment that has essentially zero cost and no impact on operational readiness (compared to all the other long term treatments they allow which do impact operational readiness).
Unless you're proposing making the military- and the rest of society- radically gender neutral, than as soon as a person interacts with a driver's license, passport, social media account, or bathroom, they will have to adopt a gender identity . Why should a third party's "gender beliefs" about a person be elevated above their own?
(I also can't see a justification for denying hormone replacement therapy treatment- it's cheap and ridiculously beneficial for mental health. But, for the same reasons, I advocate its availability over-the-counter.)
Being an objective measurement of material biological state, sex isn't the same type of thing as a gender identity belief, which is indeed self-declared like a religion is.
>Everyone should be judged on merit and merit alone, not whether they have the right skin color, sex organs/preferences, disabilities, or illnesses.
But now you are taking your preconceived notion of what every trans person must think and disqualifying the entire group from the military before they have an opportunity to prove whether or not they meet the requirements.
Not very merit-based of you.