Gender Pronouns…Military Edition
The United States Air Force is specifically taking a lot of shit right now over their efforts to acknowledge and support gender identities, pronouns, etc. Many of the other services, I am sure, are not far behind. I know the USAF is taking the heat now, but if the other services continue down the same path, they will take the same heat in the near future. If you’re not familiar with the current and ongoing story at the Air Force Academy, look it up.
For those of you that don’t know, the Air Force has traditionally been run by the Fighter Pilot community. Not cargo pilots, or ground support pilots flying A-10s, not helicopter pilots. These are the fast-mover, pointy-nose, dogfighting kind of pilots. It isn’t unlike the other services, honestly. The Army has traditionally been run by Infantryman, although we’ve had a stretch of special operators over the last 20 years or so. The Navy has been surface warfare officers. The Marines have been traditionally Infantryman as well. For the Air Force, it is fighter pilots.
What the Air Force is forgetting, and specifically the fighter jocks running the place, is they still have a significant portion of Airmen that fight ON THE GROUND. The Combat Controllers, Pararescue folks, and others all live life with ground combat units like the Infantry, Armor, and Special Operations. One thing ground combat units have in common, especially over the last 20 years, is the bad guys like to shoot at us and when they do it gets ugly. It is pretty easy to forget that when you’re looking down from 30,000 feet going Mach 2.
We used to plan for something called “the Golden Hour”. That hour was to get a critically wounded servicemember from the point of injury to a critical care facility. If you could get that person to a critical care facility in one hour, their expectation of survival went up exponentially. Think about that. Someone gets shot or blown up and you have one hour, whether by ground or by air, to get them to a real doctor. By the way, the fight hasn’t stopped and maybe won’t stop while that helicopter is on it’s way to pick someone up, or long enough to get them loaded into a vehicle. You’re still getting shot at.
If you’re the one who is wounded, when you DO get to that critical care facility, they aren’t looking up your medical records. They aren’t checking your medical history. They are going to get a report of your known injuries. They need to know what blood type you are and if you are allergic to any medications. Those two critical pieces of information are found on your dog tags.
You know what isn’t on there? Your preferred pronouns. Your sexual orientation. Your race. Do you know why? Because when someone is fighting to save your life, the only other thing they need to know about YOU your biological status is; male or female. That’s it. Those are medical terms. You will be described by the medical team as male or female and that is based on your biological reproductive organs.
The medical team isn’t going to give a shit about your feelings. Or how you prefer to be addressed. They don’t care about they/them. They don’t care if you identify as something other than your biological sex. And you know what? If you’re lying there bleeding on a table and conscious, I am pretty sure you’re not going to give a shit if they call you by the wrong pronoun either.
I am not talking about civilians or your neighborhood emergency room, although you could argue the same. I am talking about servicemembers. I am talking about a small critical care facility in the middle of nowhere. In a tent. Running on a generator. In a war zone.
What the military does is life and death. I am not hyping that up or making it to be something it isn’t. Our primary job is to be the most efficient tool our government has to kill people. In that vain, there are people trying to kill us as well. We spent the last twenty years learning hard lessons, losing friends, and fighting to keep ourselves and our teammates alive. Biology matters. Medical terms matter. Right now the Air Force, and the other services as they go down the same path, need to remember what we have all been through in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If you are a servicemember, no matter the branch, and you are putting more effort into diversity, equity, and inclusion than you are into being an expert at your mission of winning wars, you’re missing the purpose of your service. I know it is messy. I know it is something people don’t like to talk about. I also know it is the truth. How do I know? Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.
At the most critical point where you are teetering between life and death, you will realize…your pronouns don’t matter. Biology matters. The military should not, cannot, forget that.
(Photo courtesy of Air Force Magazine)