VoidZero52

I remember in early 2017 (marines) when we all had to attend a class talking about trans service member’s options and how the procedure could be paid for by the military. The instructor was very supportive of it and stating it matter-of-factly, and some classmates of mine were horrible about it, saying “what’s stopping me from transitioning to get a better score on the PFT?” or “why would they come mooch off of the military to pay for it?”

My instructor said something I loved there, he said “everybody joins for different reasons. Some people join for college, or for family, or because they really want to shoot guns, or to get some other medical thing paid for. All that matters is that you serve, and you get what you came for.”

Did you have this class in the navy? How was/is the rhetoric in your circles about trans service members? I get the feeling navy service members are on average a little bit less conservative than my marine buddies were.

I actually heard Ben Finegold comment on this recently: one of the reasons you can’t do that is because tournament and space organizers need to know how long you’ll be there. It could take dozens and dozens of games for somebody to win 7, and logistical plans usually need to be made complete ahead of time. So they settle on a known number of games with a tie breaking mechanism (in this case rapid games).