(PJ Media) “It is unclear to us as veterans how an exercise regarding preferred pronouns pertains to sexual assault prevention in the military or service academies.”
That’s from a letter Rep. Mike Walz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) sent to West Point military academy demanding answers on why cadets were made to participate in a role-play session about “respecting the pronouns people prefer.” It’s too bad they weren’t teaching such useful skills in the times of U.S. Grant or George Patton — misgendering was probably a big obstacle to Grant’s and Patton’s victories, right?
Fox News reported on March 22 that it had exclusively obtained a copy of Walz and Banks’s letter to West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland. Fox Digital also obtained a copy of the leaked West Point “facilitator guide” with the “It’s Not That Complicated” exercise on “Understanding and respecting the pronouns people prefer.”
According to the congressmen’s letter, the exercises in the facilitator guide were “mandatory for all cadets, led by cadets, and supervised by faculty.” That echo you hear is the Chinese and Russians laughing at the U.S. military.
The “Dean’s Weekend” West Point exercise certainly “distracts” from important military training, as Banks and Walz put it. The “facilitator guide” says that the exercises supposedly develop “bystander intervention skills” and tells the “Faculty Observor” to step in if words become “rude/mean-spirited.” Because in combat, avoiding mean words is definitely a vitally important skill. From the role-play in question:
Walz and Banks quoted from the guide that the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (DoD SAPRO) “has mandated that USMA assess the effectiveness of our prevention programming;” hence the role-plays. The congressmen called out a “pattern of disturbing developments out of West Point and other service academies” as this “exercise represents yet another instance of West Point leadership implementing policies and directives that encourage cadets to focus on their differences rather than subordinate them to collectively accomplish the overall mission and purpose.” Banks and Walz further insisted “these kinds of exercises distract from the core mission of West Point in developing future wartime officers and further erodes trust in our military.”
Another role-play in the guide, called “Dirty Money,” was about “sextortion.”
Banks and Walz asked Gilland various questions in their letter, Fox noted, including, “whether Critical Race Theory is still included in a course syllabus at the academy.”
The congressmen further pointed out in their letter a 2021 guest lecture at West Point with a slide “Understanding Your Whiteness and White Rage,” from Emory University‘s Dr. Carol Anderson.
”Over the last two years we’ve seen a disturbing trend taking place at our military academies that puts politics over service,” Waltz told Fox News. “We have an obligation to ensure military academies such as West Point are prioritizing the education and training of future military officers rather than implementing the political priorities of the Biden Administration. Every minute our soldiers spend in sensitivity training is a minute they could be at the rifle range. Chinese and Russian soldiers certainly won’t be focused on what pronoun a U.S. soldier uses.”
