The average transgender soldier will spend 238 days recovering from sex change surgeries and unavailable to deploy, according to an Obama administration study.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration’s transgender ban places deployability as a determining factor into whether to admit transgender individuals into the military. The White House outlined guidelines to implement the ban within six months in a memo to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday.<\/p>\n The ability to be deployed to war zones or bases around the world is an issue for transgender soldiers who undergo taxpayer-funded sex change operations, according to a\u00a0study by the RAND Corporation<\/a>.<\/p>\n The 2016 study was commissioned by the Obama administration, which favored opening the ranks to transgender individuals, and funded by the office of former secretary of defense Ash Carter.<\/p>\n The study found that, on average, transgender troops seeking basic sex-change operations would be nondeployable for 238 days, or 34 weeks out of a year. The figure amounts to 65 percent of one year.<\/p>\n