Source: Mises.org
The costumed bureaucrats at the Pentagon we call “generals” have spent much of the last decade enthusiastically assisting three different administrations in “affirming” military employees who “transition” or consider themselves transgender. Openly identifying as transgender has been permitted in the US military since 2016 under the Obama administration. The Trump administration did not reverse this policy but took steps to limit the number of employees undergoing sex-change surgeries and other active efforts at “transitioning.” Since 2021, however, the Pentagon has returned to the earlier Obama-era policy of paying for surgeries, hormone usage, and related treatments requested by military employees. From 2007 to 2009, more than $3 million has been spent on surgeries, with and additional $12 million spent on related procedures.
The Pentagon in recent years has fallen all over itself to pander to LGBT interest groups, as can be seen in this military recruitment video titled “Emma,” and in the fact that the Navy promoted as “non-binary” drag queen as the face of one of the Navy’s recruitment drives.
Given that the Pentagon has made it clear it is devoted to affirming these life choices among potential recruits, it would be reasonable to assume that the Pentagon rejects the idea that one’s “assigned sex” at birth has any objective meaning at all. After all, truly affirming the transgender ideology requires rejecting the notion that “men are men” or “women are women.”
That assumption would be wrong. When it comes to the military draft—which is presently inactive and called the “selective service program”—the military absolutely insists that “men are men.” In other words, the military wants to make sure no man can get out of the forced military service by claiming to be a woman. Thus, the Selective Service System (SSS) makes it quite clear that “the registration requirement on gender assigned at birth and not on gender identity or on gender reassignment.” In other words, maintaining the interests of the empire trumps transgenderism. …