• Redcuban1959 [any]
    ·
    1 hour ago

    Making trans people with combat knowlodge unemployed for a transphobic reason doesn't seem like a good idea.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 hour ago

      I sincerely disagree. 15,000 members of the US Armed Forces do not move the needle on the US' imperial might (which ultimately is predicated on financial domination and vassals, not military prowess). 15,000 marginalized people within the armed forces, however, represented a prime tactical advantage for a revolutionary political movement. See: Aaron Bushnell.

      Obviously we can talk back and forth all day long about how the US armed forces can never be truly radicalized because of their position as footsoldiers of capital, but the hard material reality is that the American left is deficient in firepower but the military is full of possible fellow travelers. Remember that the Chinese Red Army was mostly made up of Nationalist deserters. How do you expect to be successful without a significant fifth column?

      • gay_king_prince_charles [she/her, he/him]
        ·
        43 minutes ago

        Those 15,000 aren't just combat roles and grindable meat; a lot of them are in support and technical roles. There are a lot of roles in which removing 1 person creates a sizable inconvenience for many and can harm operations. You are correct that trans people are overrepresented as saboteurs in the military, but almost all of those people joined pre-transition and seeing the contradictions of US empire radicalized them. The trans people who have transitioned and then joined are more often than not dyed-in-the-wool believers in the US empire who don't have the same opportunity for radicalization.

        • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
          ·
          35 seconds ago

          Not only depriving the military of those skillsets and capacities, but absorbing them for ourselves

  • marx_mentat [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 hour ago

    "first they came for the trans soldiers and I did not speak out because I was not a trans soldier... Then they came for me (a soldier) and there was no one left to speak out for me."

  • red_stapler [he/him]
    ·
    3 hours ago

    I was going to post something like “yay no :flag_trans: imperialism”; but this is going to mean 15000 more unhoused people isn’t it?

    • nandos_house_of_glues [she/her]
      ·
      2 hours ago

      it’s also a bad sign for us generally when they don’t even want to try to convince us to do rainbow imperialism or buy things, which is where it seems to be going

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]
        ·
        46 minutes ago

        Aaron Bushnell was a trans person in the US Air Force and she was 50 times the leftist I am.

        • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          40 minutes ago

          She martyred herself out of guilt from being in that institution. That’s the difference between her and the rest of the troops. Until they prove otherwise, a troop is a troop.

        • gay_king_prince_charles [she/her, he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          31 minutes ago

          That is a 1 in 1,400,000 occurrence. The war criminals outnumber the self immolators 10,000,000 to 1, so I'm not concerned about the near-non-existent chance that someone decent gets cut. Also, keep in mind that Bushnell wasn't out and therefore wouldn't be cut by this decision. Both major trans saboteurs were pre transition when they joined as it is a different experience.