By ESTHER J. CEPEDA
CHICAGO -- As our country continues to reckon with changing norms of gender and sexual identity, it's becoming more common to find people who think that transgender men and women should be able to serve in the military.
Perhaps more importantly, trans people now also have the voices of hundreds of heterosexual, lesbian, gay and bisexual service members who would welcome them into their military ranks.
This is according to a first-of-its-kind study funded by the Department of Defense, which examined survey data from 486 non-trans, verified active-duty service members across the four major branches of the U.S. military.
Their responses forcefully contradict the myth that transgender service members degrade unit readiness, or "burden" or "disrupt" the military, as President Trump tweeted in 2017 when he banned trans people from joining the armed forces.
Aaron Belkin, the executive director of the nonpartisan Palm Center, said this in a press release highlighting the findings:
"This research ... gives the lie to the claim that transgender Americans disrupt the cohesion or readiness of the U.S. military. If the military really cares about cohesion, it should read the research it funds or stop wasting taxpayer money." The study, "Support for Transgender Military Service from Active Duty United States Military Personnel," was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy.
Going back decades, the rationale for bans of various types -- including against women and people of color -- has been that unit cohesion relies on homogeneity. This has led to the evolution of myths that our nation's service members must share the same muscle mass, body composition, religious beliefs or culture.
But, of course, race, gender, geographic origin and religion have always mattered little in what makes excellent military personnel. (Did you know that the U.S. military now formally recognizes Heathens, Druids and Wiccans in addition to Atheists and Agnostics?)
In the proverbial foxhole, what matters to service people is faithfulness to each other built over months and years of training together, loyalty to their mission and a deep calling to serve and protect their country.
What's inside a service person's undergarments has little impact on any of this.
Notice I didn't say "no impact."
The truth is that, while two-thirds of all non-trans military people surveyed support transgender service, there are some variations in how individual subgroups responded.
Not surprisingly, 82% of lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents supported transgender military service, compared with 57% of heterosexual/cisgender respondents.
And lesbian, gay and bisexual service members and women service members reported the greatest support of transgender service (81% and 75%, respectively), while heterosexual and male service members indicated the lowest support (56% and 62%, respectively).
Black and Latinx service members reported the highest support (69% and 75%, respectively) for transgender people serving. No doubt this is because black and brown people know what it's like for people to conflate "different" with "lesser."
On a particularly bright note, the researchers found that there were no statistically significant differences in support for transgender service between the four branches of the military.
Most "new" groups gain wider acceptance as soon as they become more visible in communities.
This is particularly tricky for trans people, because some can "pass" as their true gender identity and there's nothing in it for them but potential sorrow if they come out to friends, co-workers and others. Others will never be able to transition to their desired gender to the point of fitting unambiguously into what society expects to see when they think of "men" and "women."
And still others will choose to exist in some state of in-between that makes sense for them, regardless of what society's neat categories demand.
All should be welcomed into the diverse branches of our military.
None of them ask for special treatment. Just fair and respectful treatment so that they can focus less on where they'll be using the bathroom or sleeping and more on training to defend our country.
Esther Cepeda's email address is [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.
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