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

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.