Gender-affirming care for insecure men
The Low-T call is coming from inside the Pentagon.
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“What if I told you everything you know is a lie?” – Morpheus, The Matrix
What if I told you that everything that you have been told about transgender issues was a lie? That none of the “just asking questions,” “protecting women’s sports,” and “we can’t afford to pay for their care” arguments were made in good faith?
You were used. Duped. Played for patsies by fascists to get you to hand power to them to deal with a phantom menace that they invented in the first place.
Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense has argued in federal court that transgender care is an excessive financial burden, citing approximately $5.2 million in annual spending on treatments. Then last week Hegseth issued a directive that all cisgender men 30 and older in the military be tested for “low testosterone” and have access to “testosterone therapy.”
Hegseth’s announcement came in a video on X titled “High-T Department of War” where he promised to ensure “you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best.” The delivery and tone of the video would have been perfectly appropriate for a 2 a.m. informercial in between Fox News reruns, but it was completely out of place in an address to serious-minded troops.
Hegseth claimed we have “a sacred duty to maintain that [testosterone] advantage,” which raises some questions.
Can only people with high testosterone be lethal? It seems like that would entirely exclude women in the military, which is probably the point. But it also ignores that up to 90 percent of the thousand-plus Russians dying per day in Ukraine are taken out by drones. There are thousands of videos on the internet of Ukrainian first-person-view drones killing Russians, and nobody would ever think of asking about the testosterone levels of the people flying them. For all anyone knows, they could be transgender catgirls with cute little whiskers drawn on their noses sitting in air-conditioned trailers with a game controller a hundred miles from the front.
Then there’s the fact that Hegseth’s new policy sounds suspiciously like gender affirming care — you know, giving hormones to people so their bodies match how they feel about their gender. But that’s something the DoD definitely couldn’t afford for trans people.
There’s also the pesky problem of the DoD testifying in court that transgender people have a serious medical condition that requires them to take hormones, which the military absolutely cannot support logistically or medically. But now, according to Hegseth, he wants guys to be jacked up on testosterone when they’re deployed.
Here’s a little secret: the testosterone Hegseth wants to give to cisgender troops is the same stuff they give to transgender men. And the estrogen tablets they give to transgender women are the exact same ones given to women who have had hysterectomies, menopause, perimenopause, or just want to stop their periods while they’re in the field. So, which is it: taking hormones renders you non-deployable and therefore unfit for military service, or it makes you the perfect killing machine?
Oddly enough, Judge Reyes in Talbott v. USA also noticed these contradictions. Last Wednesday, she issued a minute order that both parties must brief her on “the similarities and differences in administering TRT, both medically and logistically, for trans men compared to other service members, including cis individuals.” She also wanted to know how much it was going to cost to give cisgender soldiers this treatment, and “the Department’s basis for treating trans men and other service members differently between this new policy and the Military Ban.”
The bottom line is that if Hegseth didn’t think trans people were icky in general, he would be fine having transgender men in the service. If someone wanted to take his magical super-soldier serum that makes people into muscle-bound roid-raging he-men straight out Warhammer 40k Space Marines, he’d be happy to have a bunch of otherwise “useless” women saying, “Yo, sign me up.”
Then there’s the side effects of taking too much testosterone, which you just know they’ll be over-prescribing. These include infertility and small testicles due to the extra testosterone suppressing sperm production, and gynecomastia (breast development) due to the excess testosterone being converted to estrogen. Which bring up the next logical question: will the military provide chest reconstruction to all the cis guys who developed moobs, but still tell the courts they absolutely can’t afford the same reconstruction for trans men?
Of course they would, and the courts would buy it.
Most transgender people in the military have already been pushed out or are on permanent administrative leave awaiting a hearing. The reason for this state of affairs is that the Supreme Court overturned the injunctions on the ban on their service basically on the basis of “we don’t want to get in the way of the Lord Trump.”
None of the arguments made against transgender people, including those in the military, were made in good faith. They were always designed to ultimately remove transgender people from public life. Conservatives and supposed “moderates” who mask their opinions about trans people in platitudes show us this over and over again now that they believe the demise of the trans community is fait accompli.
Now, with the right merely conducting mopping up operations, some Democratic candidates are echoing the talking points of people who were never well intentioned. With Republicans, you know what you are getting. But it’s hard to tell whether these Democrats are useful idiots or hypocrites who would claim power over the bodies of people who looked to them for protection.
Just this week, five Democratic members of the House voted with Nancy Mace to bar service members and their families from receiving any transition-related healthcare through the military system (known as Tricare). And Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton recently said she agreed with a ban on transgender people in sports.
At a minimum, these Democrats seem incurious about whether they have been lied to all along, and unwilling to consider the possibility they’re doing the fascists’ work for them.
That’s it for this week
Have a great weekend and we’ll be back with more Monday.
 | A guest post by
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If this wasn't so serious, it would be laughable. I have tried to figure out what is wrong with these people. Not as politicians, not as cabinet heads, not as idealogues, but as people. I don't understand this willful ignorance, vilifying of people, and just plain stupidity. I know the argument for singling out the " other" to test compliance, but I still scratch my head and wonder, what on earth is wrong with them.
Some of the potential bad side effects of high levels of testosterone include: irritability, anxiety, depression, slurred or difficult speech, blood cancer, difficulty breathing, heart attack, reduced HDL (good cholesterol), enlarged prostrate, stroke, sleep apnea, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, and stroke. But yeah, let’s have a medical lay person prescribing treatments.