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Ryan Hutcherson

Instructor Shelia Fielding

WRTC 103

30 September 2018

Rhetorical Strategies in The Washington Examiners: “Reinstating the Ban on Transgender

Service Will Preserve Military Effectiveness”

Everyone reserves the right to serve their country in the military, everyone except those

who identify as transgender. An article from The Washington Examiner believes that a ban on

transgender service will ensure military effectiveness. In the article titled “Reinstating the Ban on

Transgender Service Will Preserve Military Effectiveness” The Washington Examiner uses the

rhetoric ethos, pathos, and logos to remind the reader why transgender people shouldn’t be

allowed to serve in the military.

In the article, the main argument is that President Donald Trump reinstating the ban on

transgender people in the military will improve military effectiveness. The author suggests that

since society as whole has not yet accepted transgenders, allowing them into the military would

prevent the military from doing its job effectively due to the unnecessary distraction of the

forced cultural acceptance of transgenders. The intended audience that The Washington examiner

is attempting to reach are people on the political spectrum that classify themselves as moderates,

who do not yet have a stance on transgender people in the military. The goal is to persuade them

to support the ban. The style that the author uses is satire towards transgenders in the military as

being absurd. Topical organization switches between views of transgenders in the military. The

article is from a newspaper which has little to no headings.

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At the beginning of the article the author uses ethos establishing the credibility of The

Washington Examiner stating that the paper “provides news, commentary, and analysis on

politics and policy.”. The newspaper has an inherent conservative bias which is reflected

throughout the article. The author of the article is anonymous damaging the credibility. The

reader is not able to research the author to determine if they are creditable or not. All the reader

must go off is the credibility of The Washington Examiner, though there is not much to the

newspaper itself. News sources have a record of having bias, in this case the examiner has a

conservative bias which in the readers eyes could automatically affect their view on the

credibility.

The Newspaper uses logos poorly and has many logical fallacies. Such as, “But, on the

substance of the transgender decision (as with the travel ban), Trump, or rather Secretary of

Defense Jim Mattis, is right,” with this claim the author does not provide any supporting

evidence as to why president Trump and Secretary of defense Jim Mattis are correct. Another

example includes the statement that “The military’s sole purpose is to smash and destroy

enemies.”. Again, this claim is not supported by any facts or reasoning. The author continues

with “it does not exist for personal enrichment, leisure, community, the pursuit of happiness or

for its own sake, as civilian institutions do.” To add to the authors poor use of logos “Rules on

military recruitment are bases entirely on its goal of breaking things, killing people, and

defeating enemies as effectively as possible within the laws of warfare,” like other claims this

again is no supporting evidence. It is obvious that the author wrote this article with emotion

rather than from an intellectual viewpoint.

The author uses a lot of pathos to attempt to make the reader feel anger towards allowing

transgender people into the military. For example, “significant cultural change on troops, who
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are forced to obey,” making the reader feel sympathy for troops having cultural changed forced

upon them. The author also uses pathos to covey sympathy such as, “People with physical

disabilities and bad health are routinely turned away,” making the reader sympathize with the

fact that not all people are even eligible to serve in the military from uncontrollable disabilities.

Furthermore, the author attempts to denote transgenders by describing “The spectacle of

biologically male athletes dominating women’s sporting events” by attempting to convey anger.

The author uses pathos to explain how each president has attempted to embarrass their successor.

In this case “When Obama made his decision on transgender service and recruitment, it was not

taken with this singular goal in mind. (He had a singular goal, which was to embarrass his

successor)” this information invokes the feeling that Obama had little intent other than to

politically embarrass President Trump.

Overall, The Washington Examiners’ argument isn’t very effective. The information is

thrown at the reader in an aggressive manner with little reasoning to support their claim. There is

an abundance of pathos used to persuade the reader to agree with the ban on transgender service.

The author could use more ethos and logos to prove their point. This argument is relative today

because of the issues within the LGBTQ community being brought to the public’s attention now

more than ever.

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Works Cited

Washington Examiner. "Reinstating the Ban on Transgender Service Will Preserve Military

Effectiveness." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2018. Opposing

Viewpoints in Context,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/XEDBFP740093519/OVIC?u=viva_jmu&sid=OVIC

&xid=2b282142. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018. Originally published as "Trump right to reverse

Obama’s transgender experiment on the military," Washington Examiner, 30 July 2017.