Ah, I remember my own days in the military fondly, but one of the biggest adjustments we had to make was learning that there was a set of instructions for doing everything from operating heavy machinery to washing your socks. Hey… that’s just military life for you. There’s always a manual to be referred to and if you get confused, there’s a manual listing all of the manuals. Take for example the rules about getting a sex change operation. You’ll want to make sure that you’ve checked in with the correct sources and…

Wait a minute. What was that again? A sex change manual for the military? Turns out there’s now one of those too. (Washington Times)

The U.S. military has a manual for everything, from how to dress to how to wage war.

Now the Pentagon has sent out a detailed written instruction to commanders on how a service member can change his or her sex in a step-by-step process that allows for extended time off.

The directive restricts personnel from living their “preferred gender” lifestyle, or “Real Life Experience,” on a military base among peers until the sex change transition is complete.

The Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy must set up a bureaucracy — dubbed the Service Central Coordination Cell — to guide commanders overseeing sex change transitions.

Rather than a doctor, the service member’s commanding officer will need to personally take charge of this situation. The rules go into effect this October and state that the service member must obtain a physician’s diagnosis that becoming a transgender person is “medically necessary” for the man or woman to meet military obligations. I’m sorry, but how’s that going to work again? What jobs in the military would make it “medically necessary” for them to surgically change their gender in order to do their job? And if that is a requirement for some jobs, how have we managed to get them done for all this time?

Beats me. This is apparently the new rule of the road under the vision of the Obama administration. All I can tell you is that I’ve still got a copy of my Bluejacket’s Manual from the 1970s around here and I’m pretty sure it didn’t cover anything like this.