The U.S. Senate on Wednesday cleared a national defense authorization bill celebrated for troop pay raises but condemned by Democrats for targeting transgender children in military families, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.
Senators voted 83-12, with five not voting, to approve the $884.9 billion National Defense Authorization Act that received bipartisan praise for the pay bump, upgrades to military housing and investments in artificial intelligence and other advanced technology.
But the annual legislation drew ire this year from Democrats for a provision banning the military’s health program from covering certain treatments for youth experiencing gender dysphoria, defined by doctors as the mismatch between a person’s sex assigned at birth and the gender they experience in everyday life.
All Democrats present for the Dec. 11 U.S. House vote opposed the defense package, which passed along party lines under the Republican majority.
The White House has not released its position on the bill, as it generally does with legislation ready for the president’s signature.
I will not downplay trans rights, but I cannot believe 1 of 100 people are truly trans. That’s a stunning number, over 330K Americans.
Let’s do some simple thought experiments. How many trans people have you personally known? After 54 years in this world, I can’t think of a single one. I’ve have had loads of gay acquaintances, friends, coworkers, etc. All I got on my mind was a trans woman at the Home Depot that really knew her shit about paint. Loved her, she’s gone. Yes, being closeted will skew that number big time, I get that.
And I’m not talking about teenagers. FFS, given the current social environment I would have called myself trans at 17, always been in touch with my feminine side. Used to always joke that I should have been born a woman. LOL, I’m wearing a woman’s blouse right now! (Skinny guys! Have a look at women’s clothes! They’re cut for us.) Yet on the Kinsey scale, I’m pegging hetero and masculine.
The percentage of people who were left handed magically rose from less than 1% to around 10% after we stopped persecuting people for being left handed. The same dynamic is at play here.
The thing about trans people is we’re often an invisible minority. If you met me on the street or even were my coworker for years, you wouldn’t know I’m trans. I’m a trans woman in my mid 30s. I simply don’t bring it up with people who aren’t really close to me. That’s both for my own protection and because frankly, most of the time I just want people to see me as a woman, not as a trans woman. And just in case you’re one of those people who thinks you can magically identify all the trans people around you, well confirmation bias is a thing. You only see the trans people you see. Some of us are out and proud gender-fucking pink haired gender studies majors, but most of us are just pretty regular boring people. We have jobs and lives like everyone else. I live with my husband in a 3 bed 2.5 bath house in a regular suburban neighborhood. You could be my neighbor or coworker and not know it.
In your age group, a lot live quiet sad lives never coming out because they don’t want to disrupt what they do have. Or they transitioned and disappeared from everyone they once knew - that was incredibly common and the encouraged thing to do for trans people in your generation (if they were allowed to transition, the gatekeepers had to judge you able to pass and conventionally attractive to be allowed to transition). Back then you told no one, there’s stories of trans women who transitioned, moved, and got married, and never told their husbands about their medical history beyond their infertility (although that was, presumably, unusual), other than very immediate family trans people fully disappeared. This was the way things were up until the 90s. And that’s assuming they ever found the language to describe what was going on - a lot of trans people in your generation killed themselves without ever knowing why things were awful.
Of the people I knew before I came out as trans (in 2012, which was, as far as awareness and acceptance goes was a long time ago), there’s at least a half dozen trans people. Obviously I’ve met a lot more since transitioning, and even not being out anymore I have had so many people come out to me as one of, if not the, first people they came out to. Also, non-binary folks are relatively new in the public consciousness (of course, they’ve always existed - certain forms of two spirit identities for example, or Public Universal Friend who found their own thing) and many of them would have simply been uncomfortable and gender non-conforming in generations past.
For a myriad of different reasons, “hetero and masculine” guys generally don’t seem safe to come out to, especially ones in their 50s, so you only know about the trans people who have to be out to you (and not passing is one way of being forced out). If I met you IRL, I would never tell you I was trans, and you would never know. And I’m more willing to be out than trans people your age.
Have you considered that the ones you do know might not trust you or know you well enough to be open with you in particular? Or with members of your generation in particular?
Yes. I accounted for that.
Research shows transgender individuals are younger on average than the U.S. population. We find that youth ages 13 to 17 are significantly more likely to identify as transgender (1.4%) than adults ages 65 or older (0.3%). https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/#%3A~%3Atext=Over+1.6+million+adults+(ages%2Ccompared+to+the+U.S.+population.
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Mid-30s here. Three close friends who are trans, and a sibling who is trans. I am cis hetero, so it’s not about being surrounded by my peers. There’s a reason anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence and I suspect you and I are opposite ends of the scale showing why.
I merely mentioned my anecdotal evidence, and made clear it was anecdotal. The post was meant to be a talking point. That’s kinda what humans do? Relate their experiences to get input from other humans?
Right, I was intending to add a data point and continue the discussion. Didn’t mean to come off as confrontational, apologies if I did.