TWIBS: Congress Still Flipping Trans Troops Two Birds
Have you ever wondered, “Why doesn’t congress do anything to help me?” Well keep wondering, baby, they’re about to ruin thousands of lives!
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
So it turns out the National Defense Authorization Act has a transphobic rider attached to it… for the second time in a row. If you can already read exhaustion in my… uh, typing… congratulations, you’re extremely perceptive! And if you’re wondering why I’m exhausted, it’s because I’ve already written this article once before.
In July.
Five months ago.
In case you don’t want to read my last article about the NDAA, here’s a brief rundown: It’s a bill that has to be approved by congress and the president annually, though the exact timeline between new drafts varies, and it authorizes the federal government to make specific expenditures. The Department of Defense and Department of Energy are the big spenders, here, for America’s armed forces and nuclear program respectively, though there are a billion and one beneficiaries of the NDAA.
Like any good bill, the NDAA had two troublesome “riders” attached to it back in July. Riders, for those of you who aren’t in the know, are typically unrelated and often politically motivated stipulations added to a bill. They are particularly effective for must pass bills like the NDAA, which… y’know, must pass, or the government can’t function. If you don’t keep up with politics, you’ll know a must pass bill has failed to pass when pictures of sad kids outside shuttered national parks’ gates start cropping up on Facebook.
Shit. Sorry. I made that joke last time, too.
The first rider we’re concerned about, here, is Section 1079(a) of title 10, United States Code, which has been amended to read: “(20) Affirming hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and other medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization may not be provided to a child under the age of 18.”
Meaning that service members who are enrolled in the armed forces’ healthcare program, TRICARE, won’t be able to provide their transgender children with life saving gender-affirming care. Big problem, to say the least.
The second problematic rider is Section 1093(a) of title 10, United States Code, “Performance of sex change surgeries: restrictions.” In this section, the amendment makes clear that no funds made available to the DoD may be used for “sex change surgeries,” nor may any DoD healthcare (or other) facility be used to perform a “sex change surgery.”
That sucks, obviously, though it’s unlikely to be a problem in practice if Trump enacts the second transgender troops ban we’ve been hearing rumors about. It goes without saying, but if they won’t let us enlist, we won’t be able to get “sex change surgeries” through military healthcare. Which is a real shame, since I was seriously considering joining up to have my genitals reconfigured into some sort of mysterious arcane void from which I could draw mystic powers with which to defeat my foes, both those near at hand and those who are afar.
Or whatever.
Anyway, you get the idea. We knew this could be bad back in July. It’s bad now because even if President Biden vetoes the bill, congress only needs a two-thirds majority vote in each chamber to override his veto.
Here’s the other twist: eighty fucking one House Democrats voted in favor of the current NDAA draft, knowing full well how horrific it will be for the trans community. 124 Democrats and 16 Republicans voted no, but eighty fucking one House Democrats gleefully plunged a knife into the backs of every service member with a trans kid at home, and potentially thousands of trans troops.
We’re talking about an $895 billion defense bill, of which 81 House Democrats believe the meager resources that would be expended on trans people are somehow a waste, or a distraction. For a bit of context, the DoD spends more on dick pills than it does on trans troops and their families. And while I believe every man and woman in uniform has a God given right to dick pills, I can’t help but be disgusted by the hypocrisy.
The bill goes to the senate for a vote some time in the next week. Here’s what you should do: Check this list and, if your Representative voted yes, call them and yell at them. After you get done with that, call your senators and yell at them until they agree to vote no on the NDAA until these transphobic riders are stripped.
Yes, I know you can’t actually directly call most politicians like that. No, I don’t think you should scream at their beleaguered staff. But we have to do something, right?
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
