Thursday, July 27, 2017

Captain Miss America

Any of you watch Captain America? Dude, that guy is awesome. A little upsetting to find out it's not an actual biography though. Here I was cheering for him and stuff. But, sadly, it's not real. Ok, well a couple parts are true.
As it turns out, there really was a World War 2. Trippy, right? I'm sure you guys already knew that though. There was a bad guy doing bad things. When his buddy attacked us we got active. Obviously, our military was heavily involved and folks were lining up to enlist in the military. 

Even though we were at war, a big big war, not everyone was able to grab a gun and go fight. See, this is the other part of the movie that was true. No no, really. They told some people they couldn't get in. It was "hey, thanks for your patriotic offer but it's gonna be a 'no' from us. You've got a medical condition that goes against our hiring policy". Or something like that. 
The list included things like flat feet (I guess the arch in the foot is important), asthma (I guess you've gotta breathe ok when fighting for your life), diabetes (because slipping into a diabetic coma when driving a tank might be bad), facial tattoos (maybe something to do with your decision making skills and how it reflects on your employer), and the list goes on. 

Hell, I'd planned on going in the military when I was a senior in high school. Only missed one question on the ASVAB according to my recruiter. He basically told me "just pick what you wanna do."  I wanted to be a pilot. He was all "well, anything but that. You wear glasses and you can't be a pilot if you need glasses going in. How about linguistics or something?"
Didn't matter because before I could finalize everything I found something that also disqualifies you, a felony. Yep. I screwed up and got arrested for a felony a week before I was to enlist. Crap. In the 60's they'd have given me the option of going to the military instead of jail. In 1990, not so much. 

Now though? Now a BUNCH of people are upset because they reverted to the rule of no "transgender" people in the military. "Progressives" are saying it as "hateful bigotry" to not let these folks in. For 100 years it's been ok to refuse to hire people with medical, legal or psychiatric issues and there's been no outrage. Yet here we are now. 

Now, the President met with military leaders and they all discussed this beforehand. It wasn't some sudden and random thing. Their primary reasoning? It's just not cost effective. Hmm. Let's take a quick looksee. 

The military budget increases by 2.4 million to 8.4 million annually by accommodating "trans" people. So not hiring them saves millions of dollars a year. I'm not sure if this includes the roughly 2 years they can't actually do the work they're getting paid for while they undergo surgeries at taxpayer expense. If not, I wonder what that cost is. 
Then there's the lifetime of maintenance required which, naturally, would also be at the taxpayer's expense. Ongoing hormone treatment and potential surgeries, have we considered that cost? 

Let's go just a tad deeper, shall we? With the WPATH Standards of Care. The most recent version, Version 7 of the Standards of Care, says that is strongly suggested that someone does see a qualified mental health professional if they are going to be starting medical transition. But, it does say it is also ok if the medical professional you are going to is trained in behavioral health and/or they work as part of a multiple disciplinary team, meaning there is probably someone there who would do an evaluation with you. 
Huh, well that's weird. I thought the military didn't hire people with a pre-existing need to see a mental health professional. In fact: 'Section 8 is a category of discharge from the United States military, used for a service member judged mentally unfit for service. It also came to mean any service member given such a discharge or behaving as if deserving such a discharge, as in the expression, "he's a Section 8".'

"But what about the special accommodations and allowances that can and must be made for 'trans' people in the military?" Well that's certainly an additional expense as well. Special "we care" type training that interferes with the job. Were they willing to make these allowances and accommodations for Steve Rogers all the times he got rejected? What about all the asthmatics? I'm hearing crickets.

See, ultimately, the military is a job. The can set guidelines for who they will hire. For financial reasons they chose to not hire 'trans' people. 'Trans' people already didn't meet the hiring criteria and the last manager/owner, Obama, made exceptions. The military is under new management and they decided to enforce the rules and quit making exceptions. Don't like it? Apply elsewhere. I hear Starbucks likes a good "progressive" cause. 

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