She says this issue of transgender Soldiers has been nothing but a huge distraction for her unit and that most of the female Soldiers in the unit are the ones questioning the entire program. Almost no Soldier in her unit was in support of the initiative, according to a February survey taken of several state Guard units and organizations, and the hundreds of questions the troops were asking the DoD people sent out to brief on the impending arrival of transgender Soldiers mostly revolved around shower, latrine and barracks accommodations and their discomfort with that, the inevitable confusion my wife says she thinks would result when it came to these biological ‘men’ and/or ‘women’ and so forth. She says it’s just a bridge too far at the moment.
I’m retired military, with much of my enlisted (and a part of my commissioned officer) time spent out in the field, with Marine infantry/Recon units or in some form of special operations/special warfare. Needless to say, I’m not even a fan of having women in the infantry or in special operations ‘trigger puller’ roles, so let me stipulate to that and be honest about where I’m coming from in terms of this debate.
Speaking honestly, I’m also not sure what, if any, issues would arise from transgender troops, especially given that the armed forces are quickly being taken over by Millennials, who seem to be more accepting of such things. It may just be that time will eventually solve this “problem,” especially if North Korea launches a nuclear-tipped ICBM at us next year (the year they’re projected to have intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, according to the latest news reports) and we need every man jack and “swinging dick” (making a joke 
on deck and sending rounds downrange at Whoa Fat over there in Pyongyang.
But from what I’ve heard through the various military officer groups of which I’m still a member, this was becoming a thorn in the side of SECDEF Mattis, who’d already announced a six-month delay in implementation to further study the issue. Mostly, the feeling was that the initiative was a solution in search of a non-existent problem: there’d been no huge clamor for transgender Soldier rights, or similar issues, and many officers (at least the ones I know, active duty, reserve, and retired) didn’t want the headaches for what would turn out to be a very, very small percentage of troops in the armed forces. Almost every Marine with whom I’ve served and kept in touch with was flat-out against the idea, though I think it was the Army that was leading the push and which was planning on accommodating most of the transgenders that DoD knew about at this point.
At any rate, I think a 2011 report said that the number of adults in the US who identified as transgender ranged from 0.3 to 0.6 percent of the population (up to 1.4 million adults at the high end of estimates). Many people also still have a difficult time accepting that transgenderism and the rights that should appertain are analogous with civil rights for minorities such as blacks or Hispanics.
I’m also retired military, and that’s my take too. What irritates me with the gay and LGBT ideas shoved on the military in the last decade is that none of the proponents of these ideas are doing it for the good of the military. They’re pushing the idea because they like progressive advocacy or they think that it will be a factor in getting elected.
To me it’s hugely important that we put the effectiveness of the military as #1. At the small unit level, the military is like a family of members from very different backgrounds that all jell together and end up willing to do anything for each other under very high levels of stress. Anything that messes with that is really bad.
I know that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was kind of a kludge, but it did work. In the 90’s I worked with a couple female officers that, years after I worked with them both came out of the closet, and both of those ladies were really awesome and I’m good friends with them to this day.
My point is that when we’re dreaming up ideas to shove down the throat of our military, we should ask them…“do you think this will tighten small unit bonds?” and “will this add expense, bureaucratic hassle, or reduce deployability statistics?” And if the answers come back unsupportive, we don’t do it. The highest good is the health of the military, not the feelgood program of the day. A healthy military is a more effective military and that translates to fewer kids getting killed.
The problem with my “don’t shove progressive ideas down the throat of the military” is the integration of blacks into the military. On the one hand I hate to see ideas shoved down the throat of the military by well intentioned outsiders, but on the other hand, like most other Western white folk, I really have case of hates re. racism. Once can’t say “Doing this is bad” when they actually mean “Doing this is bad UNLESS it’s for a cause I really care about”.
So here’s my attempt to navigate that hypocrisy. I’d like to think that with our changing values on racism in the 60’s and the decades that followed, the cultural changes would have driven the integration of the military, just like the cultural changes created the network of anti-racist laws that we have now. That is to say, the military would have fixed it on their own because they are a reflection of our culture.
