Department Of Defense Official Testifies That The Military Must Be A "Safe Space" For The Non-Binary

 

When a rainbow-colored Navy training video on the proper use of preferred pronouns surfaced last year, many people thought it was a joke. Sadly, many people were wrong.

Recently, a top Department of Defense official offered testimony to Congress that doubled down on the video’s underlying message: the armed services must be a "safe space" in which each and every member feels validated and affirmed on his and/or her journey of self-discovery. Remarkably, the video discussed how to make the Navy a "safe space" for people who wish to explore their gender identity.

People traditionally joined the navy to explore the world and burnish their character, not to explore their gender identity and sexual preferences. This puts a new twist on basic training. “Am I a boy or a girl?” is really basic. Or perhaps neither or both…or something else entirely would be a better fit. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead with my own personal gender journey!

This has to be good for unit cohesion and operational readiness, particularly when hundreds or thousands of sailors are confined to a single boat, right?

The DOD’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer (CDIO) reportedly told the House Armed Services Committee that the “concerns young Americans have about safety are negatively impacting [military] recruiting."  The CDIO further claimed that potential recruits do not “feel safe reporting to work for fear of discrimination."  

Our military now needs to be “a safe space” or no one will join it? This seems oxymoronic and counter-intuitive at best, and potentially cataclysmic at worst.

If service members value their “lived experiences,” “own truths,” and “individual gender journeys” over their collective ability to perform their mission and defeat the enemy, “screwed” doesn’t begin to describe what we are as a nation.

Impotent might come close.

This DEI bullshit is undermining the very ethos that traditionally placed discipline, teamwork and collective lethality above individual concerns.

We’ve all seen movies and documentaries depicting sergeants barking at those in basic training, etc., if the private didn’t do something exactly correctly. Exclamations like “Drop down and give me 20, maggot!” were explicitly designed to make sure the soldier was competent enough-- and tough enough-- to have the best chance of surviving battle.

A sniveling response such as, “But, sarge, you misgendered/dead-named me! Can I go to a safe space now?” may very well eventually lead to the death of us all.

Or to all of us being forced to transition…to being under the control of our adversaries.