Air Force bucks Trump admin order regarding preferred pronouns in email signatures
The U.S. Air Force announced that it is again allowing the use of preferred pronouns in email signatures. This applies to both the Air Force and Space Force. An Air Force official pointed to an existing law related to the use of pronouns in emails. This is from the National Defense Authorization Act signed in 2023 prohibiting the Secretary of Defense from requiring or prohibiting preferred pronoun use in signatures.
From military.com:
A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2023 explicitly states the defense secretary “may not require or prohibit a member of the armed forces or a civilian employee of the Department of Defense to identify the gender or personal pronouns of such member or employee in any official correspondence of the Department.”
The walkback of pronoun usage was welcomed by military LGBTQ+ advocates like Sue Fulton, an Army veteran and West Point graduate.
“I’m pleased that some part of Trump’s administration is still following the law,” Fulton told Military.com in a phone interview Friday.
The Department of the Air Force’s decision to ban pronouns in email signatures came from a Feb. 4 memo issued not long after Trump’s executive order. That directive, signed by Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Gwendolyn DeFilippi, named removing pronouns as the top action on a list of changes that needed to happen “immediately.”
Luke Schleusener, the CEO of Out in National Security — a nonprofit organization that supports LGBTQ+ national security professionals — told Military.com in a statement that backtracking on the policy falls in line with other hasty Trump administration decisions describing it as “sloppy, lazy and overloaded with animus.”
“At a time when the American people face growing global threats, these attacks on LGBTQIA+ service members, DoD civilians, and veterans make all of us less safe,” Schleusener said.
In late 2021, the Department of the Air Force announced it had allowed airmen and Space Force Guardians to include their pronouns in their correspondence. It was one of several major policy achievements of the service’s LGBTQ Initiatives Team, a barrier analysis working group.
Additional Reading:
Novelly, T. (2025, April 4). Air Force backtracks on banning personal pronouns from email signatures. Military.com. Link.
Category: Military issues
Let the firings begin.
As in “Ready. Aim. Fire!”?
Frog-march some “woke” f*ckers out the door now, OTH separations included:
Do Os get OTH? This doesn’t seem like an enlisted-purview thing.
Can– usually it’s just a choice of Honorable or dismissal from service– but takes some doing.
“A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2023 explicitly states the defense secretary “may not require or prohibit a member of the armed forces or a civilian employee of the Department of Defense to identify the gender or personal pronouns of such member or employee in any official correspondence of the Department.””
I’m no lawer, but to my uneducated eye, it looks like the Air Force is following the law. I disagree with the law, but ya still gotta follow it.
So if Hegseth can’t enforce it, I would think he could at least make some lives miserable.
That’s kind of a Democrat dick move, isn’t it?
Does it not happen all the time in places that aren’t government places of employment?
If the law specifically stops the Secretary of Defense from prohibiting it, couldn’t the order come directly from the Commander in Chief?
I don’t know. We’ve only been shown what it says about the Secretary of Defense.
I think CiC would legally have the authority. If the law prohibits the SecDef only, it says nothing about the CiC’s authority.
OTOH, if it tries to limit CiC’s authority, it may not hold up in court.
Take the stars and the bars and throw them in prison.
At least TAH is gender neutral and does not require preferred
pronouns with user names.
We’re all dickweeds here.
That’s Mr. Dickweed to you sgt.
Oh shit!
My apologies, Mr. Beans!
Or “….weedettes”.
Don’t leave the weedettes out. We like our weedettes.
I prefer the term dickvine to better demonstrate my superior girthiness. After all, service is all about me and not others.
/Signed/ E. Normous Johnson
Richard Plant in more formal surroundings.
Or mixed company?
My preferred pronouns are they/them as I am gender omnipresent.
I dismiss your reality and substitute it with this observation: your pronouns should be dog/shit.
Mine are Fuck/Face, courtesy of the USMC.
Mine are the same as Elon Musk’s—Prosecute/Fauci
Preferred pronouns: My Lord/…given unto Him
Someday, I will kill that guy and take his place, and these will no longer be a joke.
If they cannot “require or prohibit it” then service members are not required or prohibited from participating in their little “Tom foolery”. I hope the first person ordered to participate breaks it off in their ass.
Hack Stone is wondering if someone does include their “preferred personal pronouns”, and the person they are interacting with uses the pronoun based on their gender at birth, will someone be dragged into the Star Chamber for misgendering the confused individual?
I was on orders 21-22 and during a staff meeting was informed that my email signature lacked the pronouns. I informed them that if we are not tight enough to address me by my patrinomic, then you are allowed to use my rank as my pronouns. This was not acceptable to the snowflakes and they scolded me for being so backwards in my thinking. I retire next month and still only have my rank, name, and title in my signature block. Screw this bovine excrement. I’m taking my pension and going home.
First of all “At a time when the American people face growing global threats, these attacks on LGBTQIA+ service members, DoD civilians, and veterans make all of us less safe,” this is all bullshit. If it were true, we’d all be in a world of shit.
Second, I want someone who feels the need to list their pronouns to do so. It makes it easy to identify the crackpots and have minimal/zero contact with said individual. I don’t need to waste my time/walk on eggshells so some emotionally weak & fragile individual feels better about themselves by forcing us to conform to their world beliefs.
The contractor I work for acquired another contractor and they sent out a new email signature template with logo & mott. Included was all the popular pronouns plus some new made up ones. I have only seen 1 person that uses any pronoun in their signature. Myself and everyone else deleted those from the the template. Its good to work with like-minded people.
The Navy’s Naval Aviation Training and Operating Procedures Standardization (NATOPS) manuals are said to be written in blood, yet they all state up front that NATOPS “… is not a substitute for sound judgment.” Not every contingency can possibly be standardized so the program has to rely on the individual’s solid training and good sense when things get exciting in, or even near the aircraft.
Not applying sound judgement is a red flag and gets people fired for cause.
*cough*
Reminds me of the time I was a CO and I called BUPERS to get a read on a policy.
“Skipper, if you can justify it, you’re good to go!”
In case anyone wants to know who were the sponsors of the amendment that inserted this pernicious language, it was Senators Reed (D-RI) and Wicker (R-MS). The amendment passed by unanimous consent 27JUL23. Anything that can be stuck in there can be removed in the next NDAA.
S.Amdt.935 to S.2226118th Congress (2023-2024)
Wicker? Can anyone verify if that individual has a door on their mailbox? And what if the mailbox identifies as a garbage can?
I’d rather be “winning” through the rolling out of challenge-proof EOs at a slower rate. “Losing” easy ones comes off as amateur and risks getting us derailed by stupid sideshow distractions.
Maybe, but it does keep the opposition busy. But in their haste to counter, and general hatred of anybody who doesn’t drink the kool-aid, it both exposes the hypocrisy and opens them to mistakes. Possibly even charges one day.
Trump only has 2 years before the possibility the house/senate reverts back to Democrat majority, even if by 1. He is exposing those on both sides those who seem to hate the country only slightly less than they hate him. The master they serve could care less about we, as long as the power and money remain.
EO away, and expose all. Make them expose themselves as to exactly where they stand. Get them so far over their skis they can’t recover.
Well said.
If we can make up our own “personal pronouns”, then why can’t we make up our own personal rank?
I dunno, “Specialist” did make me feel kinda special.
Mom always said I was special. I even rode the special bus.
Me, too. Then I learned what a corporal is and I realized no one with any standing gave a damn.
Did President Joe Biden sign the National Defense Authorization Act with an auto pen? Inquiring minds want to know.
I haven’t an inkling.
Does this Law prohibit service members using preferred pronouns from being arbitrarily being sent out to patrol the old NORAD line (or equivalent)? Say twenty miles a day in snow and ice?
Ghey.