Gender reassignment and hormone therapy aren't covered by military healthcare, so that's not the issue. Honestly, I think Trump is either so misinformed that he believes they are covered, or he knows that by implying they are with the phrase "tremendous medical costs" his base will be outraged by an imaginary government expenditure on 'queers'.

I have no interest in defending Trump.

...Yeah, you smell it coming. BUT:

Budgetary concerns for telling trans people "thanks but no thanks" regarding desire to serve in the military might possibly be defensible and comparable to other conditions / states / whatever.

Manning was in jail (whether you think that deserved or not) and got ACLU assistance to be provided with hormone therapy and eventually gender reassignment surgery, because it was deemed psychologically damaging to withhold them. That's some pretty expensive treatment. Paid with tax dollars.

Perform a thought experiment and replace barring trans people from military service with some other group that would similarly require expensive medical maintenance. There's a pretty good example available: Type 1 Diabetes, requiring insulin. And guess what -- diabetics are barred from military service. If you develop diabetes while in the military it isn't grounds for discharge, but if you have it beforehand and want to join up you're SOL.

Back to trans. Do I personally think that they should be barred from service? No, not based purely on that. But if somebody feels that they need hormone replacement and/or gender reassignment surgery, I think they should be paying for that themselves, not on government / military dime.

I'll admit that I see those things not as necessary, but elective. Maybe that's unfair, but at what point does it become ridiculous? Can bald soldiers get hair transplants? Botox? Breast implants?

Trans people want to serve and either A) don't need hormone replacement / gender reassignment or B) are willing to pay out of pocket for them? Sign 'em up. Otherwise, it becomes murky. If that seems insensitive / bigoted, sorry. But plenty of things beyond your control can make you ineligible for military service.


**edit:
Oh, forgot to mention. Do I think Trump really had that sort of argument in mind when he made this decision? HELL NO. He's a spiteful prick. He probably did it for a combination of trying to curry favor with prick GOP congressclowns and just to prod.

Gotta love the internet where twats engage in the fucking typical "reading between the lines and pulling something I didn't say out of their nether regions" shoot from the hip bs...

I don't suggest for a moment that MJ (or any other herbal concoction) is the first stop for medical treatment in the slightest, but it's obvious in this video that, despite multiple surgeries and obvious use of many prescription drugs (she notes that opiates don't even touch the pain) that she was not getting relief... In the context of the video, and noting that her results are anecdotal, if it does result in relief for a person, it's worth trying right? Particularly if you are afflicted with constant agonising pain for which standard medicine hasn't provided a solution?

For instance, my wife suffers from long term depression and panic attacks. Therapy and medicine didn't help (in regards to drugs, it did more harm than good), but acupuncture actually made a significant different (for whatever reason). Should everyone ditch psychology for being turned in to a human hedgehog? Hell no. Should they try it to see if it helps? Why the fuck not?

I'm sorry about what happened to your dad (I'm guessing due to your aim at homeopathic rather than medical that he was on a alternate "treatment" that did nothing to prevent his death?), but stop taking your trauma out on other people. My point was to people who have exhausted more orthodox treatments but who might be hung up on "drugs are bad mmmm'kay" in regards to medical marijuana treatment. Nothing more, nothing less.

Comments show again what a totalitarian topic this is.
If you call this science, you can call scientists scientists who lobbied for tobacco firms, claiming it didnt cause detrimental health effects, claimed the leaded fuel issue wasnt linked to leaded fuel, eugenics proponents or people who used lobotomy and electro shock therapy.

Oh wait, they were.
Keep believing hypocrites. Humans and intelligent, if they cant even learn from history? Dont make me laugh.

Attack the imminent problems, like the hypocrisy in the conflicts in Syria or Libya. Then I am starting to take you seriously. But instead you whine about 0.1 C degrees and let millions of people die to people you elected and which will ultimately backlash to you too.
Just look at this fact: USA supporting ISIS and Al Qaeda through countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel, while also fighting it.
Unbelievable...

And dont tell me me "its not their job". Its everyones job to stop something like that, just like you claim on climate change. Even more so actually!

According to the JH website, it's not only wrong, the study could not show what you claim by it's design.
Excuse me...let me use their exact words....

Food Hypersensitivities and Their Link to RA

In some patients, specific foods have been shown to exacerbate the symptoms of RA.(ref 5) Avoiding these foods or food groups has been shown to have limited, short term benefits but no benefits long term. Even though different forms of dietary modification have reportedly improved symptoms in some patients, people with RA may have spontaneous temporary remissions. Therefore, it is important to perform double-blind, placebo controlled trials to differentiate diet effect from spontaneous remission. You may identify a food that is a particular trigger for you, and this phenomenon is real. However, the science is not able to reliably identify specific triggers for individuals.

Diet elimination therapy is a method of determining food hypersensitivities with patients. Elimination diets avoid a specific food or group of foods such as milk, meat or processed foods that are known to be prime allergy suspects. These foods are eliminated from the diet for a specific period of time. Foods are then gradually reintroduced one at a time, to determine whether any of them causes a reaction.

Panush and colleagues, demonstrated temporary improvement in the signs and symptoms of RA with diet elimination and modification in a controlled study where the symptoms associated with food sensitivities were studied.(ref 5) During this study when the patient was fasting or on a severely restricted diet, the patients symptoms improved significantly. However, when the patient had milk reintroduced into the diet, episodes of pain, swollen and tender joints and stiffness were experienced. Similarly, Kjeldsen-Kragh and colleagues(ref 6) noted that fasting may be effective in reducing the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, however most patients relapsed as new foods were reintroduced into the diet. Pain and discomfort frequently returned once a patient reverted to a normal diet. These studies are few in number and should be interpreted and extrapolated to real life only with careful thought and caution.

Congratulations! Your video, Law Student Sent To Ex-Gay Therapy, Puts Counselor to Shame., has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 88 Badge!

Your video, Law Student Sent To Ex-Gay Therapy, Puts Counselor to Shame., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Only 200 questions? I once took a 500 question assessment just to begin therapy LOL! Scientologists would disagree with the more thorough, actually scientific approach of a true personality test that takes months and months of your time before a multitude of diplomaS-hanging-on-the-wall professionals have something of a clue of what your true motivations are.

Not sure how to put this in the context of the video, but...

My gf was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months back and has just finished chemo... now prepping for surgery, radio, and hormone therapy. I know that's a world apart from chronic leukemia - like flu and aids are both viruses - but her attitude was/is:
"Ok, I'm sick, I've got to go through some crap and I'll be better than I am now, even if I'm not fully cured. There's no point raging out about the big fight, or raging inwardly about how unfair it is. I've just got to do some stuff.

"Sick or not, going to work is annoying but necessary. When I need to take care of my child or bf it can be annoying, but necessary. There's no promise that life is easy, but you just do what you can."

I think it's great that people have the strength of character to rage against the disease and not give in to depression, but I will forever be astounded and impressed by my gf's incredibly practical "meh" attitude.

She's Russian. They're a strange people with the weirdest and most practical dark sense of humour, but it's amazing how practical that whole side is.

Is there someone better educated on the physiological and psychological science of this that can explain why gender transition at that age is not child abuse?

Because from everything I understand about how complicated and frequently fraught with remorse and confusion that issue is for adults....how in the name of fuck can someone that young be mature enough to make that kind of life changing decision? (or indeed have it made for them)

Gender dysphoria is usually only diagnosed in adulthood and usually requires years of psychotherapy and adoption of the desired gender role before any respectable doctor in the UK would allow the transformative process of hormone therapy to begin. (let alone reassignment surgery)

The suicide rate for transitioned people is about 40% I'm told. This appears to mostly be a combination of depression brought on by using the idea of transition to avoid other underlying emotional problems and/or remorse in later years.

None of this is to say people should not transition. There is plenty of evidence to support many a diagnosis of dysphoria and many a success story. But the thing those happy transitions seem to have in common is a very through and mature understanding of themselves.

i.e. things a child is incapable of doing when their mind and personality are still developing.

IDK, the very idea deeply concerns me. Is she actually happy transitioned? Or has she had that idea re-enforced by her parents and such?

I have this hypothetical vision of them panicking at their little boy playing with dolls and tea sets and finding solace in the idea that they are just the wrong gender, instead of being "odd".

I know how silly that sounds, but especially in the south of the USA, gender transition is sometimes considered more socially acceptable than homosexuality and/or being an effeminate male (or so some people in the trans community tell me).

Am I just behind the times on this one? Seems like there would have to be some pretty fucking spectacular medical science to back it up where children that young are concerned...

Now all you need is a kiddy pool, a ton of salt, and an indigo child to float in the pool; in an effort to perform random astral projection, locate and match people up to play D&D. Then dump a thousand d20s in the pool and have the child telekinetically randomize the rolls.

I'm certain there's a method to create randomization via shock therapy. We just need children to experiment on. Perhaps if we administer LSD to pregnant women in hospitals during ongoing double blind tests on a global scale, we can increase our chances of creating super human children for the strict purpose of more authentically randomized D&D.

I mean, it's not just the rolls that need to be given more randomization, the world creation and random events that are generated by human creativity aren't truly randomized --

But if we inundate developing fetuses with hallucinogens and then hook them up to machines and float them in saline solutions, we stand a chance at creating some truly frightening... err, creative D&D worlds.

http://videosift.com/video/Matt-and-Jimmy-try-Couples-Therapy-Again

OH this is funny!

*ban
Thai London Therapy Marylebone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1ZHc8pGIV8

@serious-fase:

better to have loved and been raped than to never have been loved at all. that's my silver lining. also, it is both a joke and my opinion, as i both love and hate my now deceased rapist. yeah, i'm being cheeky but so wut.

too complicated for me to give a shit if my fucked up life and sense of humor triggers someone. try sitting in group therapy with me, sucka. fuck your conservative sensitivity. boo fucking hoo. it's rape. it happens. people get over it and laugh. we don't have to live like goddamn trolls under a bridge just because we are rape victims. honestly, stfu.

i wrote something similar in a therapy session after forgiving my rapist and being annoyed at people that coddled me because i'm a "victim". great, i'm a victim? fuck you.

honestly, if you're not over your rape trauma, don't watch a fucking rape joke video. JESUS. if the world wasn't so overly protective of this shit, maybe we wouldn't be laden with our constipated emotional issues and ineffectual pharmacological solutions which turn into accidental overdose victims every goddamn day. if you can't laugh, that's when you die.

your psychiatrist and therapist and all those tools that convinced you to take all of those drugs and wear the cap of the victim: FUCK. THOSE. PEOPLE.

OOOOORRRR if you like self worth at the cost of a censored life of half triggered social anxiety: Riiiiiiiiiiide the train to proper thoughts and chilled out operational defintions that make doing business and living healthy in corporate america a snap! just shame people for laughing at things that hurt you. and convince others that not shaming others into this is not right. oooohhh, that's the moral thing to do!!!

yeah, no thanks on that one -- laughing at what hurts me most is the only thing that gives me the will to keep living. you wanna shame me for laughing at my problems? that's a bunch of HORSE SHIT. talk about rape -- let's talk about the rape of our fucking minds every fucking day by institutions that teach us this bullshit philosophy.

i'm just tired and hungry -- and i had a good fucking laugh at this video. before you respond to me, fuck you, don't bother. i don't wish to discuss how i deal with my victimization through humor and even if you do -- not reading it