Last week Donald Trump announced (via tweet) that he was banning transgender troops from serving in the United States military. While most of the country, including many in Trump’s own party, have criticized the ban, few out of the LGBT advocacy community have been willing to call the ban transphobic.
President Trump’s gave two reasons for banning transgender people for the military: that they would saddle the military with large medical bills and that they would cause “disruption“. The idea that transgender people will bankrupt the military if they seek transition related medical care (surgeries, hormones, therapy, etc) is simply wrong. Out of a Defense Department budget of 600 billion dollars, 8 million is spent on healthcare for transgender soldiers. The idea that that amount would “burden” the defense department is simply preposterous. The real reason that people don’t want the military paying for transgender troop’s healthcare is that they object to transgender people. Trump’s second reason for banning transgender service members holds as little water as the first. The idea that transgender troops decrease effectiveness has been rejected by research. People in favor of banning transgender troops often say that they would decrease unit cohesion, and therefore effectiveness; this is presumably the “disruption” that Trump was referring to. Numerous studies contradict these claims. Diversity has not been found to disrupt unit cohesion or decrease effectiveness. People believe that transgender troops cause unit disruption because they themselves are uncomfortable with transgender people.
Even if Trump’s own reasons for banning trans people from the military weren’t so blatantly transphobic, his ban still would be. Banning people from the military (and society in general) has a long and bigoted history. Racial minorities served in separate units (or were banned from serving altogether) for most of American military history. Women were only recently allowed to serve in combat roles and are still prevented from serving in certain roles. Gay people were banned from serving altogether until recently. All of these bans had similar justifications to Trump’s transgender ban, and all of them are now considered to be discriminatory by most of society. Banning an entire group of people from an organization without any real reason except from bigotry is discrimination, and it is time that we treated it as such.
Some may ask why it matters that we call Trump’s ban transphobic. After all, many have spoken out against it without calling it transphobic, and calling it such could antagonize those who oppose Trump’s ban, but not in “that” way. But the problem is that if we don’t acknowledge the transphobia of this ban then it is impossible for us to the connections to other transphobic actions. It is the same “disruption” that trans people supposedly cause that leads to people attempting to ban them from public bathrooms. It is the same “burdensome” costs that lead to insurance discrimination. If we do not see these connections it is possible for people to claim that incidents are isolated, which they are not. Transphobia is pervasive in society, and Trump’s ban contributes to it.
Donald Trump’s reasons for his ban on transgender service members hold little to no water and contribute to societal transphobia. So why are people so resistant to calling Trump’s ban what it is: transphobic? This may seem like an exercise in futility and semantics, but I assure you it is not. We must call Trump’s ban what it is not only for the sake of correctness, but for the sake of equality and tolerance.
Liberal Talking Head 