Tech Leaders Speak Out Against Trump Ban on Transgender Troops (axios.com)

Technology executives, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai took to social media to voice their displeasure over President Donald Trump's latest stance on transgendered people in the military.

"I am grateful to the transgender members of the military for their service," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We are indebted to all who serve. Discrimination against anyone holds everyone back."
Brad Smith, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer said, "We honor and respect all who serve, including the transgender members of our military."
Salesforce said it "believes in equality for all. We support and thank all U.S. service members, including transgender Americans."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "Everyone should be able to serve their country -- no matter who they are."
Veteran entrepreneur Max Levchin urged support for transgender people across party lines. "Trans kids, soldiers etc need our support today and to know they are valued & respected regardless of politics. Let us not be divided."
Uber told news outlet Axios, "We owe the deepest debt of gratitude to all those who volunteer to serve in the US Armed Forces and defend our values. These patriotic Americans deserve to be honored and respected, not turned away because of who they are."
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said, "Discrimination in any form is wrong for all of us."

Comments

Cue virtue signals in 3,2,1...

[sethstorm]

When a major policy change is announced, Silicon Valley has to prove their devotion.

Re:Mental illness

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the post-op suicide rate is even higher than pre-op. Turns out that once you chop your dick off and still aren't a woman, there isn't a next step, and you also can't go back.

Re:Cue the outrage!

[alvinrod]

Gender dysphoria is still considered a mental illness. What they've done is to separate that from transsexuality. The argument is that once a person is receiving treatment with hormone replacement therapy and/or have had gender reassignment surgery, they no longer experience gender dysphoria, so its transsexuality which is no longer considered to be a mental illness.

Sure, some of that comes down to mincing words, but it's pretty clear that whatever it is that is being experienced is an illness or it wouldn't go away with treatment. From what I've read, it appears as though there is some region of the brain that is responsible for the self's perception of gender and that it is possible for problems during fetal development for the brain to develop in an atypical manner, possibly as a result of incorrect or untimely hormone exposure. Gender dysphoria also seems to have a high comorbidity with other mental disorders, so there could be other factors at play as well.

I think people are reluctant to accept some of this because a lot of the science is relatively new and goes against the idea that environment or upbringing is somehow responsible for this. There's also probably a lot of pushback because there seems to be a new fad surrounding gender and sexual identity with young people creating new genders that don't have any basis in science (or at least none of which I'm aware) and a lot of people are looking at that and lumping all transexuals in with that crowd which leads them to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense.

Re:Cue the outrage!

[aevan]

Same group that has cellphones and hot drinks as (maybe) carcinogens?

Re:Cue the outrage!

[tlhIngan]

You're wrong about that. A male who believes that he'll become female if he cuts off his penis has a mental disorder by every definition.

Except that's not what happens. You end up with a person who believes they are female, but has a penis. They never think they're male. They believe themselves to be female.

In fact, there is a very genetic reason for this - you have to remember that a female has two X chromosomes, while a male has one X and one Y. When conception begins, the Y chromosome is not active. In fact, the fertilized egg multiplies as if it was female - yes, that includes early development of ovaries and a vagina. sometime later, around two weeks or so, the genes in the Y chromosome start to assert themselves and deactivating certain genes in the X chromosome. In effect, the Y chromosome patches the X chromosome. (This is standard - some genes deactivate other genes at certain times).

So what happens? Well, the vagina descends and becomes the scrotum, while the ovaries descend as well and transform into testes. Other genes are involved with hormone production - testosterone and others replace estrogen production. It's a wonderful example of reuse, since the testes and ovaries perform similar functions - just one produces an egg, the other, sperm. But they are both involved in producing cells with half the chromosomes.

Now, all this takes time, and while for the vast majority of people, it definitely happens, but genetic defects do happen, as well as errors. It's entirely possible that only part of the X chromosome is patched properly, so you get some of the male transition happening, but not all of it. So you end up with someone who's a little more ambiguous, and this conflict between who they feel they are and how their body develops causes a great deal of internal stress.

Chopping off their penis doesn't make them female - they were ambiguous and felt female to begin with, but always was identified biologically as male. Gender reassignment surgery helps relieve internal stress by making their perceived sex the same as their physical sex.

Re:Virtue signaling douche bags

[SlaveToTheGrind]

The first citation is of generally higher quality, even though the study it is based upon includes only about 6,500 valid respondents when there are about 1.5 million transgendered people in the USA

It's hard to discern your point here -- are you suggesting that kind of sample size is way outside the norm for a study like this, and that it therefore may have significantly skewed the results? This actually seems like a fairly healthy sample size, and the p-values throughout the study reflect that.

Further, it counts suicide attempts, not suicides.

Again, your point is unclear. You can't possibly be saying that we shouldn't pay attention to a massively disproportionate rate of suicide attempts simply because some of them weren't successful.

The study does not say what you guys want it to say.

Whether or not anybody "wants it to," here's what the study actually says (emphasis mine):

The prevalence of suicide attempts among respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality , is 41 percent, which vastly exceeds the 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population who report a lifetime suicide attempt , and is also higher than the 10-20 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults who report ever attempting suicide.

I don't understand the outrage

[GodfatherofSoul]

I can't stand Trump, think he's already the worst President in our history, but I have no problems with this decision. I'm an army brat, I was in ROTC, went to basic, had all the training to be a military officer (just never signed up), and I know 1st hand and personally of people being either kicked out or prohibited from joining for all kinds of medical issues, some of them ancient history, some of their mildly debilitation. The idea that someone is going to physically alter their body in extremely intrusive fashion that requires all kinds of lifetime medical and even surgical regimens to maintain them and the military is supposed to 1.) pay for it 2.) make concessions for the other commitments to that surgery; is a real head scratcher.

My only problem is Trump obviously did it as another one of his twitter shiny bauble, public debate distractions.

Re:Virtue signaling douche bags

[Tenebrousedge]

Given that 62.7% have an identifiable mental comorbidity, and 81.4% have a personality disorder, I think there's a very, very high probability that the high suicide rate comes from mental illness rather than societal pressures.

You don't have much conception of the societal pressures. Personally, I dealt with varying levels of depression from about age 8 until fairly recently, and it's been precisely the realization of how much of that was due to external pressures that has been key to ending that. One of the more punishing mental traps is the idea that you are somehow shameful or wrong for being who you are. That is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, however. I mean, look at this forum; Slashdot is even one of the better-educated parts of the Internet.

As far as your studies go...oh boy. So the statistical error you're making is not considering or controlling for other confounding factors. Assault and various kinds of sexual and other abuse occur at a rate far higher than the general population, and these have well-documented effects on mental health. You're also interpreting a correlation as a causation, and specifically framing that causation in a manner which supports your prejudices when all evidence suggests the reverse. I also am forced to assume that you did not read anything of those studies beyond the abstract. You might have noticed that the one was published in "Psychiatry Journal", the other in "Medical Journal of Islamic Republic of Iran", and both of them were done in Iran. Even if there were some reason to believe that these were valid journals or good science, there's no justification for assuming that these figures correspond to conditions in the Western world.

So to repeat, I did ask for something other than the first paper that came to hand. And a minimum standard of politeness would involve reading it first.