->-bleeped-<- More Likely in Military, Study Finds
By ADAM KLASFELD
            
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/07/24/48664.htm

     (CN) - Biologically male U.S. veterans were twice as likely as their civilian counterparts to identify as female, a former military psychologist told Courthouse News, discussing a soon-to-be-published study of more than 5 million service members.
     No information has been released indicating whether the subjects of the study sought sex-reassignment surgery, or more generally disassociate with the sex of their birth.
     The study by psychologist George Brown follows up on his 1988 paper, "Transsexuals in the Military: Flight Into Hypermasculinity," which relied on interviews with 11 service members who identify as male-to-female transgender, meaning that they were born as biological males but identify as female. Many prefer the umbrella term transgender over the more narrow descriptor transsexual, which usually implies surgical alteration.

      "Flight into Hypermasculinity" speculated that enlistment statistics could bear out the theory that male-to-female transsexuals might enlist as a way of "purging the feminine self."
  Yep, you get no arguement here!  Been there, done that!  There are a lot of those stories here on Susan's and elsewhere.  But I didn't get hyper-macho, I was too skinny for that. 
  Joelene

I believe that...

I know that I went through periods where I tried to over-emphasize my masculine side in an effort to avoid harassment for just being myself.  I convinced myself that I could define my gender identity by choice.  Still had dreams I was female on occasion mind you.  Did things as mundane as keeping facial hair as a sort of "barrier" to wanting to present as female.

...silly really, but I get it...having feminine traits causes grief, so the first move is to drive them out.  I'm glad I don't think that way anymore but, with a wife and family, I don't know exactly what to do about it, I just know that Josie is here to stay.

Also the thought that if you are killed in action it will prove how manly you were, and prove all the doubters wrong.

Fri Jul 27, 2012 at 04:00 PM PDT
Transgender in the Military

by rserven

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/27/1114308/-Transgender-in-the-Military

George Brown is a psychologist who served 12 years in the US Air Force and worked for 13 years in the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Back in 1988 he wrote a paper entitled Transsexuals in the Military: Flight into Hypermasculinity (pdf).  A copy of that paper was present in Bradley Manning's housing unit, according to testimony at his Article 32 hearing.

In that paper Brown speculated that male-to-female transgender enlist in the services as a way of "purging their feminine self".

    Current military policies, in association with the proposed hypermasculine phase of transsexual development, may actually result in a higher prevalence of transsexualism in the military than in the civilian population.

    --Brown, 1988

Brown claims to have new research data to support that thesis.

Quote from: justmeinoz on July 27, 2012, 04:44:27 AM
Also the thought that if you are killed in action it will prove how manly you were, and prove all the doubters wrong.

very intuitive