The Pentagon quietly implemented, then reversed, new gender-neutral language for military award citations. The new language described both male and female service members with the pronoun “themself.” However, that language lasted barely a month before the DOD scrubbed it amid criticism.
The Pentagon inserted gender-neutral language into the Manual of Military Decorations and Awards on August 7, according to The Daily Signal, which discovered the change. The change occurred with so little fanfare that even The Signal did not discover it for several weeks.
The August 7 version of the Manual is no longer available online, but an archived version records 11 uses of “themself.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher called the move “substituting grammatical error for honor.”
U.S. Senator Tom Cotton added that “‘themself’ is not even a word.” (Notably, word processors such as Microsoft Word auto-correct “themself” to “themselves” on every occasion.)
“The Department’s embrace of far-left gender ideology doesn’t merely subvert the English language in ways that would astonish George Orwell. Worse, it exemplifies a Pentagon leadership consumed by the fads of the faculty lounge at a time when the Army can’t hit its recruiting goals, the Navy can’t keep ships out of dry dock, and the Air Force can’t find spare parts for planes.”