Trans women must sign up for military draft: Is Selective Service right?

Curtice (Yes)

Joe Biden has spent a significant amount of time appeasing trans activists, pushing their radical agenda on the American people, and telling them he is committed to 'advancing transgender equality in the classroom, on the playing field, at work, in our military, and our housing and health care systems — everywhere, simply everywhere.' Biden's regime has even held K-12 school lunch programs hostage if they don't embrace and teach dangerous gender ideology to children. But now his administration is grappling with a clear contradiction, which entered the political spotlight when the Selective Service's website stated that 'US citizens or immigrants who are born male and changed their gender to female are still required to register.'

Despite progressives' and even recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's inability to define what a woman is, Selective Service (SSS), no doubt relying on science, knows exactly what a man and a woman are and how they are biologically distinct. This is a nod to truth and reality—that human beings are born either male or female. These distinct differences between biological men and women are facts on which the military relies. Stating the obvious is not bigotry, nor is it hate. The concept of a biological man pretending to be a woman worked as a running gag in the TV show M*A*S*H*, but not so much in real life. Selective Service is at least perceptive and realistic enough to know that many biological males could claim to be trans women if it meant they could dodge registering with the SSS. Reality is a good thing. It's good to see any portion of the current administration willing to live in it.

Ellery (No)

Whatever one's feelings are on the draft or the Selective Service, it's almost certain that the century-old legislation did not give thought to transgender or gender-non-conforming identities when it was made. The fact that the Selective Service requires trans women to register but not trans men is blatantly discriminatory on the basis of gender identity. So blatantly, in fact, that it was declared unconstitutional by a federal district court over three years ago.

Additionally, the implementation of the policy doesn't take into account transition status, unlike modern sports regulations, thus nulling any reasonable logic of it based on physical capability. Not to mention the ridiculousness of that line of logic at all, given the number of cis women currently serving in a multitude of capacities throughout the military. Likewise, in 2016, Biden signed an executive order stating that 'open transgender service has had no significant impact on operational effectiveness or unit cohesion in foreign militaries.' This whole issue has come into the limelight as a result of a tweet by the Selective Service, which has brought the flawed policy plenty of public criticism but also, unfortunately, given transphobes fuel for their bigoted rhetoric.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Trans rights activists, bipartisan politicians, and a recent congressionally mandated commission have all shown support for annulling the Selective Service act or else removing the gender stipulation and requiring everyone of the age of majority to register. Either option would cleanly fix the issue; it just requires legislators to take action and amend or replace the outdated document.