In 2016, Anthony Kurta, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy, announced, “There will be mixed genitalia in military bathrooms, showers, and billeting.” On a conference call with Army Colonel Ron Crews and others, Kurta explained that the new policy allowing transgender soldiers to serve according to their “gender identities” rather than their biological sex meant that a person whose gender identity and biological sex did not match would be allowed to use the barracks of the opposite sex. It also meant that transgender soldiers would be evaluated not according to the physical standards appropriate for their own sex but according to the standards for the opposite sex.

In practice, then, biologically male soldiers who “identified” as female would be treated as if they had the bodies of young women and, for instance, be allowed to pass Army fitness tests at a lower level or pass body composition standards designed for a member of the opposite sex. In an institution that is concerned exclusively with physical realities and physical outcomes, that is no small thing.