Pentagon’s ‘Clarification’ on Gender Pronouns? When You’re in a Hole, Quit Digging

9/18/23

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from Daily Signal,
9/15/23:

Earlier this week, after we exposed the Pentagon’s woke gender-pronoun policy for the top joint military awards and the ensuing political firestorm it caused, the Pentagon issued a “clarification.”

But here’s the problem: The clarification only confirms our worst fears and raises other related questions.

This issue isn’t going away anytime soon.

On Sept. 1, we exposed the little-noticed update to the Defense Department’s “Manual of Military Decorations and Awards: DOD Joint Decorations and Awards.” The change, effective Aug. 7, required the six top joint awards to use the nonsensical and grammatically incorrect word “themself” instead of the pronouns “himself” or “herself” for each award.

Our post went viral, for obvious reasons, and members of Congress took note.

On the day of our post, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., posted a scathing response on X, formerly known as Twitter, stating that “the Pentagon has once again chosen to waste time and resources on wokeness instead of warfighting.” He accurately called the new policy “insane” and called on Congress to ensure that the Pentagon is focused on “lethality, not pronouns.”

On Sept. 8, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote a public letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, which both poked fun at the Pentagon’s misguided priorities and demanded answers to some very legitimate questions.

Cotton addressed the letter “Dear Mr. Secretary,” with the footnote reading, “If I may be so bold as to assume your ‘preferred gender.’” The senator’s use of humor is appropriate, as the new policy would be laughable if it weren’t such a damning indictment of the state of the Pentagon’s leadership.

He demanded an answer by Sept. 15.

On Tuesday, instead of doing the right thing and simply repealing Change 5, the Pentagon said that Change 5 will stand as is, but with language that “clarifies” that the change does not ban the use of the pronouns “himself” or “herself.”

So, the default pronoun is “themself,” and proper pronouns aren’t banned.

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