TWIBS: The Transgenders Are Ruining… Military Enlistment Rates?!

This is rough, even by Fox’s typical print journalism standards.

by Alyssa Steinsiek

This week, Fox News Digital reporter Hannah Grossman brings us an extremely interesting, thoroughly vetted, and very real story about a cisgender woman in the military who is afraid of transgender women. The actual factual big time for sure real human woman in question is apparently a member of South Dakota’s National Guard.

screenshot from Fox News

Grossman says Mike Rounds, the junior senator from South Dakota, brought up the charming anecdote at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing: apparently a National Guardswoman is having a hard time coexisting with some icky trans girls who haven’t had the surgery.

You know which surgery I mean.

Yes, that one.

screenshot from Fox News

There are a few things that bug me about this story.

I mean, almost everything about this story bugs me, but it has a few truly bizarre elements that stand out to me as—forgive me—total horse shit.

Let’s start with the suggestion from Senator Rounds that this woman’s options were to “resign or step away.” Now, I looked up the senator’s work history prior to entering politics in the early 1990s, and I’ll tell you what I didn’t see: military service! I’m not about to start waving any Support Our Troops flags, but I think it’s always best to avoid talking about stuff that isn’t in your lane.

Mike, you can’t just “resign” from the military on a whim. It’s a bit of a commitment. As a matter of fact, they tend to take it pretty personally if you try to “step away.”

a “meme”

Next up, the whole origin of this fairytale is confusing. I don’t know if that’s shoddy journalistic work on Grossman’s part, but I do think she should consider sending her editor a passive aggressive email, considering how many typos there are in this article alone!

She reports that Senator Rounds heard the story from “the attorney general” of the South Dakota National Guard, a position that, as far as I can tell, does not exist. Consider checking out an episode of JAG, maybe?

According to another article about the same incident, Rounds reported that the soldier in question was afraid she’d be “targeted for retaliation” if she expressed her discomfort. Never mind that she obviously did speak up and hasn’t been retaliated against, or the data on the sort of violence transgender veterans experience… this woman feared for her life!

What if she was canceled?

Okay, let’s talk facts. Like, actual facts.

In 2016, then president Barack Obama told transgender troops that they were A-OK to serve. In 2019, then president Donald Trump decided that transgender Americans should be barred from service entirely, a move that was compared to the draconian ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy repealed in 2010. Finally, in 2021, President Biden rolled back the rollback.

I love political ping pong.

As a result, the Department of Defense established guidelines for gender transition and related healthcare among active duty and reserve personnel. These are, unsurprisingly, pretty thorough.

According to Section 3.4, Gender Transition Approval Process, trans servicemembers must receive a medical diagnosis from a military doctor to begin transitioning. That servicemember’s gender marker in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) will be changed only once their doctor has decided their transition is “complete.”

What does that mean, exactly? It’s hard to say. What constitutes a “complete” transition is a topic of debate even within the trans community, and I doubt a cis army doctor’s thoughts on the matter are particularly nuanced or thought provoking. Let’s just say I have my doubts that there are any trans girls terrorizing the cissies in basic.

Both Fox articles want to blame transgender people for low military recruitment numbers, but the reality of the situation is that fewer young people than ever want to get injured, develop PTSD, or die for a nation that’s never taken care of them in any meaningful way.

So, is Senator Rounds’ story true? I seriously doubt it. But if it is… so fucking what? This is obviously only a problem if you believe trans women are men. Otherwise we’re just talking about ladies showering after PT. Since when is that a big deal?

Mystery Nasty Girl, if you’re out there reading this: Babe, please, grow the fuck up.