How will the Army transition with transgender in open showers?

Just know, I'm retired so what I say is just an opinion.

I feel if you have male sexual organs, you will shower and be housed with the males.
That would be the easiest resolution, and what I would've expected.
It's not discriminating, just common sense.

Men are men, and woman are women. PERIOD

If we'd just Starship Troopers and do co-ed showers, this would be a non-issue, except troops cannot even behave with separate showers and living quarters.

I thought about this question while I was stationed in Germany from 11/1966 to 6/1968. I was assigned to HHC, 3ID G2 Section and we has a gay man assigned to the G2 section. He ALWAYS showered alone in the wee hours..and never bothered anyone...he was respected by all members of the section for the excellent work he did....BUT I did ask myself that question...the answer I cam up with is that NO ONE should be required to "shower" with anyone who could view them as a Sex Interest.

......all the combat arms units need to focus on hand to hand combat and staying alive ....the rear units have the luxury to shower......

That’s nonsense …

I find it fascinating how little regard we seem willing to give to women troops in these situations. We're falling all over ourselves to be concerned with the trans service members' feelings but don't seem to accord women in the same showers the same degree of consideration.

Things may not have reached this level of drama in the military as they have in other environments, like gyms and jails where open showers are more common and there have been many recorded incidents of trans individuals taking the fullest possible of the relatively impossible position they have put the authorities in, to the detriment of women's' feelings of safety and security while they are stark naked and relatively defenseless in the presence of genetic men who are typically physically larger and stronger. I'm sure the DOD will do its level best to suppress news of any such incidence in the modern military, but as the number of trans troops increase, so will these unfortunate incidents.

(I call them "unfortunate incidents" because the press releases rarely describe them as sexual assault, or rape, even when that is just exactly what they are.)

I have a daughter in the military, and I hope she never has to worry about being accosted by someone who has exploited the regs to gain access the women's' showers for their own evil intentions, but that happens all too frequently in the civilian world.

If we're going to be considerate of people's feelings, let's try and find a balance that's workable so we never arrive at that awful moment, so we can avoid having the investment this country has made in this military and its personnel go to waste. Women who feel unsafe will simply take the training we provided them, and leave. We have trouble enough meeting recruiting goals without young women being told to get accustomed to the presence of genetic men in their showers and other living spaces.

And for anyone who'd like to give me a little quiz on biology and suggest I'm not welcome in the conversation without a PhD in morphology, just know that such arguments are the same special pleadings, ad hominems (arguments against the man instead of the argument he raises) and ad verecundiam (arguments from authority), all classic logical fallacies that routinely fail to resolve problems everywhere else, like telling a man he can't have an opinion on abortion because he lacks a uterus, or telling a women she can possibly understand what it's like to go to war because she never served.

All people are very capable of imagining and reasoning, and don't have to pass your test to do so. And anyone insisting that we need to, say, pass a pop quiz on amino acids in order to contribute to one of the most tenuous issues of the day is flattering themselves and demeaning others with irrelevant nonsense.

There is a strange suggestion inherent to all of these pro-trans positions that trans people have no responsibility at all for the impact that their presence has on others, and that the physical anomaly they present to people who are not suffering from the same disorder is irrelevant and of no consequence, but that's the same awful structure as the soft racism of low expectations is when we think some minority Marine from a tough neighborhood who had to struggle to earn the GED and qualify for the Marine Corps isn't apt to be just as capable and teeming with potential as a privileged white kid from the OC. Trans women are perfectly capable of understanding that their presence is, among other things, not as easily explained in a shower full of naked women where no one is wearing name tags. How do women know this isn't just a naked guy who helped himself to their space for the kicks? What if their hair style isn't able to suggest that quite so easily? What if, in the most neurological sense, the shock of a naked, genetically male individual among the women in the shower space is experienced far sooner than the purportedly rational explanation that the male genitalia they're seeing is just the physical feature of a person who'd rather be thought of as a woman?

Or is that entire line of argument not valid because I didn't get a PhD in human morphology and genetics, and why is it again that only those people are entitled to understand our experiences for us?

You see? While we're busy pretending this is the Whig-Cliosophic Society (my nephew debates at Princeton) real women are having traumatic experience both in the military and in civilian life, and the only ones whose feelings are given much consideration are the trans folks, but not the women.

When did it become okay for us to disregard women on behalf of anyone? And when did some women's need trump other women's needs?

The ultimate answer is that there is no pat solution to the problem, but the safest one would be to make shower spaces more individualized and private, but we can barely provide our lower enlisted safe and healthy barracks spaces free of mold and mildew without blaming them for their problem and branding it a discipline thing.

I see a pattern developing. Cowardly management avoid the responsibility of making potentially unpopular decisions by blaming those least able to affect the needed change.

How American of us.

My daughter is leaving the service. I did some of the hardest and best years of my life in uniform, but if I had to enlist today, I doubt I'd have chosen to serve. The military is bleeding credibility and respect among the people we serve and from among whom we recruit. How wise is it to cater to a handful of inflexible people with medical issues if it results in falling readiness and it turns us into a punchline?

If it results in one woman's abuse, it was not worth it. And it may already have.

Showering is a relatively minor issue. The really big issue is the non-deployability of transitioning service members. Not everyone HAS to deploy, but every service member must BE ABLE to deploy. If you cannot maintain deployability, for whatever reason, you are a liability to the service and someone else has to fill that gap.

The current administration and high command elements have decided to make the military one grand social experiment, so I imagine they will figure it out. I am so grateful I served when I did. I used to promote joining the military. Towards the end of my career, I volunteer coached high school baseball, and I had several of my players join. I ensured they dealt with honest recruiters, and went over the paperwork. NOW? If somebody asked me what I thought, I could not, with proper conviction encourage it. My nephew was the last one I had join, and he joined with every intention of making it a career. After he told me things that were going on, he did his tour and got out, and I wasn't about to even attempt to talk him into staying. So nope, the military lost a decent off the side recruiter. The military should teach how to destroy and effectively kill the enemy, destroy their targets, and toughen them up mentally and physically enough to endure the rigors of combat operations. Under the Biden administration, they have brought their divisiveness into the ranks of the military. Example, what are your pronouns? The only pronouns should be, Private, Private First Class, Specialist, Corporal, Sergeant, Seaman, Airman, Petty Officer, Gunny, Chief, etc. etc. Those are the ONLY PRONOUNS that should be used. Hockey Pucks to the garbage going on.

This comment will cause some heartache... people espousing transgender ideology should not be in the military. The separation of soldiers into their respective transgender beliefs is a barrier to unit cohesion. The accommodation of respective medical processes to maintain transgender choices makes medical care less available to non-trans warfighters. The associated psychological problems. requires, again, command attention that will be diverted from warfighters. People desiring a transgender lifestyle as civilians isn't a problem. The U. S. military should not be a large, captive social experiment pool.