Meet the Ex-Men

The NYT credulously profiles war heroes who, after a decade of slaughtering Taliban and ISIS, have decided that they were always really ladies on the inside.

From the New York Times news section:

Meet the Trans Troops the Trump Administration Is Barring

Officers and enlisted. Combat veterans and recent recruits. Transgender service members say their military experience has looked nothing like the portrayal of them in the political arena.

By Dave Philipps

Reporting from San Diego

Feb. 27, 2025

Sgt. First Class Julia Becraft circled up a dozen infantry soldiers at Fort Cavazos, Texas, and introduced herself as their new squad leader. She let them know they were in experienced hands: She had deployed to Afghanistan three times, seen a fair share of combat and been awarded the Bronze Star.

Also, she told them, she was transgender. …

Many of them volunteered to serve not yet recognizing that they were transgender.

Chief Warrant Officer Jo Ellis was just out of high school in 2009 when she joined the Army National Guard as a helicopter mechanic. She deployed to combat as a door gunner, then became a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. In 2021, while going through the military’s brutal survival school, where pilots endure mock torture, sleep deprivation and solitary confinement, she had a sudden realization that she was trans.

Because New York Times subscribers have almost never been informed by the NYT of other, more plausible reasons, such as a certain sex fetish, why grown men might suddenly insist they are women, readers have been indoctrinated into believing that when various 30-year-old war heroes announce they are women, that’s because they were incorrectly assigned the wrong gender at birth. Therefore, to avoid being bullied in school by mean boys who will grow up to be Trump supporters, these essences of femininity pretended to be macho on the outside. Thus, they spend 12 years raining death down upon the Taliban from their Black Hawk or whatever before they finally get up the courage to go against societal norms and publicly declare their womanliness. And the fact that they’d clearly fooled the entire world for 30 years by putting on this fraudulent 24x7 tough guy act is just another reason why you must believe every word they tell you now, although you must also believe that their first 30 years of life were all a lie.

Got that? It’s easy if you (don’t) try. It’s only when you stop and think that it starts to make no sense.

Somebody ought to give a survey to military men who announce they are women to see how many female gender stereotypes they fulfill:

What do you look forward to more?

A. The Super Bowl
B. The Academy Awards

Oscar nominee?

Wicked
Dune: Part Two

Pop star you prefer listening to?

A. Beyonce
B. The Weeknd

Oldies star?

A. Whitney Houston
B. Metallica

1990s movie?

Fight Club
Pretty Woman

Favorite stick-like object?

Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond driver
Magic wand

And so forth and so on.

This of course raises the question of the incoherence of progressive ideology. Feminists have forever been arguing, not unreasonably, that you can be a real woman without fulfilling every feminine stereotype.

But then the ex-men came along and quickly got the whip hand over the feminists by arguing that if you don’t check off every single trait on the Michael Jordan Checklist of Utterly Self-Confident Manliness, then you might well really be a woman in your soul (or wherever The Science says these days that gender identity resides). Similarly, if you are an adolescent girl who isn’t quite as feminine as, say, Jessica Alba, then you were probably assigned the wrong gender at birth and should have your breasts cut off.

Lately, we are making progress in rolling back this spasm of collective delusion. The New York Times, for example, is not on the offensive like it was in 2013, but is now playing defense.

Hopefully, the Trump Administration won’t get distracted by other topics, but will keep up the pressure on this winning issue.