Military Flight — an update

No, we are not talking about Top Gun or 12 O’clock High, we are talking about the tendency of transgender people to join the military. It is well documented that transgender people join the military at about twice the rate of the United States general population. Understanding of why transgender people are attracted to the military is interwoven with the movement to allow transgender people to serve openly in the United States military. The fact is that there are simply too many TSTG in the military to ignore them. Right now they cannot get medical or psychological help from the military that increases the TSTG susceptibility to suicide. We do not know that actual suicide rate of TSTG active duty soldiers and marines but the rate among TSTG in the VA system is 20X times that of other people.

On Thursday, the Williams Institute issued a report estimating that approximately 15,000 solders and Marines who are currently in the military are transgender people. But I think the number is at least 22,000 which I estimate by multiplying the number of people in the military that is about 220,000 by the best estimates of transgender frequency in the population made by Lynn Conway (2000) which is at least 1%. This is probably low because we know that MTF transgender people join at twice the rate of the population and FTM join at three times the rate of the population. Surveys made since Conway’s original work also support the idea that the population rate may be much higher than 1%.  (It is interesting that estimates by epidemiologists in the Williams Institute are starting to converge with those from other sources such as Conway.)

Before the Williams Institute report released last week, surprisingly there actually were two studies performed by researchers in the U.S. military and the Veterans administration. The leader of these studies is Dr. George Brown who was a physician in the USAF and now in the VA. Much to the surprise of the military in his first study done in 1988, there actually were transsexuals in the military and veteran ranks. At the time, he could find only 11 transsexuals in the military and VA medical system to study. I reported on this study in a previous post.

In his second study (released in late 2013) Brown’s research group found that the number of transgender people under treatment in the VA were four times expectations. (I could not report on this study in my previous post because I had difficulty getting a copy.  I finally wrote directly to Brown and he sent me one.) This time Brown used a huge subject population consisting of all of the veterans in the VA medical system which is approximately 4-5 million in any given year. Brown looked at the populations for each year from 2002 through 2011. During those years, the frequency of transgenderism nearly doubled.

The very dark news from the second Brown study was that the rate of suicide for transgender soldiers and marines was 20 times that of others in the VA system. Brown called for improved treatment to deal with this problem.

Some attribute the high rate of transgender participation in the military variously to hypermasculinity and looking for a transgender “cure.” Being in the military is certainly a perfect cover story for a transgender person in the closet.

But in my previous post I laid out the case for a simpler explanation. Participation in the military requires attention and concentration which interferes with thinking about transgender behavior. We all have experienced these intrusive preoccupations with transgender behavior until it is impossible to ignore them. I found that I could only fight these preoccupations for about 6 weeks before I became desperate to crossdress.

Although the number of TSTG on active duty is too large to ignore, the movement to allow them to serve openly seems to be on hold pending political timing considerations.

Legally, transgender people could instantly serve openly in the military with a stroke of a pen by the DOD Surgeon General, by the Secretary of Defense or by the President of the United States. No law must be repealed as in “Don’t’ Ask Don’t Tell. (Remember that President Truman integrated the United States military in 1948) with a stroke of his pen.)

When recently asked about changing the policy, DOD military officials pointed to the difficult of treating transgender soldiers and marines in remote areas.

Gone are the hang-ups with blackmail, moral turpitude and endangering morale. Now it’s just a matter of telemedicine and logistics. United States military have served with the military of at least three other countries that accept transgender people. The recent Palm Center commission of medical experts led by former Surgeon Gender Joyselyn Elders concluded that there was “no compelling reason” for transgender people to be excluded from the military.

I suspect that some of the foot dragging by the military medical establishment and VA may be due to ignorance of how to deal with and medically treat transgendered people and transsexuals. The United States military medical establishment is already stretched to train themselves for such things as treating IED blast injuries, sepsis and PTSD. The military medical establishment is more ignorant of transgender issues than the civilian medical professionals who are still pretty ignorant. The VA medical administration is sympathetic but understaffed and largely untrained. Civilians have only recently started to teach about transgender and transsexual issues in medical and nursing schools and in continuing education courses. However, by ignoring TSTG service members both the military and the VA are losing them to depression and suicide.

And there are politics involved in the timing. Although Secretary of Defense Hagel recently said that he has been open to studying the matter, he has yet to ask for a study. It probably is not in the best interest of the Democrats to change the military transgender policy before the fall elections but it hopefully will happen during the tenure of this Democrat President. The danger is that DOD will slow-roll such a study and delay implementation until after a new President takes office.

Tags: featured, military, politics, Transgender, veterans

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Politics