CV NEWS FEED // The Pentagon has ended Change 5, a controversial pronoun policy that replaced the words “himself” and “herself” with the grammatically incorrect term “themself” in some awards given to servicemembers.
“Without any fanfare—no doubt in an attempt to put this entire sordid affair behind it—the Pentagon simply posted ‘Change 6’ to the Manual of Military Decorations and Awards,” The Heritage Foundation’s Cully Stimson wrote Thursday in The Daily Signal.
A number of prominent veterans had slammed Change 5, including Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-WI.
“The Department recently stripped gendered pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’ from awards honoring the brave men and women who dedicate their lives to this country,” Gallagher said in a statement when the policy was first announced at the beginning of the month.
“Instead they require all awardees, regardless of preference, to be reduced to a gender-less, collective ‘themselves’ – substituting grammatical error for honor,” he continued.
After the initial backlash against the rule change, the Pentagon issued a “clarification,” saying that it did not ban the words “himself” or “herself” and merely intended to make “themself” the “default” pronoun.
Stimson, whose reporting (along with that of Dakota Wood, also of Heritage) helped expose Change 5 to the general public, took credit for its scrapping after less than a month.
But for The Heritage Foundation exposing this issue of wokeness on steroids, all military awards and citations would have required the androgynous, grammatically incorrect pronoun “themself” instead of the standard “himself” or “herself.”
“This seemingly minor policy change was and is emblematic of deeper issues within the Pentagon affecting lethality, unit cohesion, recruitment, and retention,” Stimson added.
