An 18-year-old female military recruit was reported to have been forced to shower with biological male transgenders who still have their genitalia intact. The "extremely uncomfortable position" the young recruit experienced was first raised at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week.
The young woman feared that speaking out about the Joe Biden administration's policies could disrupt her dream to serve the country. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), who learned about the matter from the attorney general of the South Dakota National Guard, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Rounds said the female military recruit has been in significant distress in having to shower with soldiers who were supposedly changing from male to female. The recruit also complained of having no choice but to sleep in between these two "transitioning" people, who already initiated chemical interventions to change genders, but their genitalia were fully intact as they have not yet undergone the mutilation procedure.
"The respect that this young recruit should have received and the privacy that she should have had, she was being deprived of," the senator from South Dakota pointed out.
The Pentagon has released a statement about the matter. "Department of Defense [DoD] policy is that all service members must be treated with dignity and respect. We would encourage any troop who's feeling uncomfortable or has concerns about privacy in shared spaces to work through their chain of command. Commanders may employ reasonable accommodations to respect the privacy interests of service members," the statement reads.
However, the girl's "options were not good," according to Rounds. "She could have basically resigned or stepped away. She could have started over again. And I think this is one of the reasons why we're not meeting our recruitment goals now," the senator stressed. "And the 'recruitment crisis' is partially due to Biden's woke agenda that we now see coming down by executive order [EO]."
He explained that Biden's EO led to the changes in policies and directed the DoD to integrate individuals who were transgender and how they should be perceived within the military.
Also, the current administration reversed former President Donald Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the military. "Most of the focus is on the transgender individuals, not on the individuals who are working with them," Rounds said.
Under the definitions that Biden's DoD was using, transgender individuals may be housed in female facilities even without genital surgery.
Former defense secretary says US military recruitment is dying
The military is in the midst of its worst recruitment crisis since the 1970s and this places the country at serious risk should rival nations China or Russia launch attacks. According to the Daily Mail, actions taken by Biden, including his withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, have been blamed on the poor recruitment numbers.
Mark Esper, the Trump administration's defense secretary, warned that America's armed forces are dying. He noted in an op-ed that the military's all-volunteer force (AVF) is the most affected, falling short by up to 15,000 soldiers of its 65,000 target last year.
"The Pentagon must steer away from lowering standards, reducing the size of the military, or creating hollow combat formations," Esper said. "With the threats from China and elsewhere growing, we cannot risk our future by ignoring these issues." Esper's remarks came after data from July 2022 found that the number of veterans, service members and their spouses who recommend a career in uniform has dropped sharply.
Also, research from the Military Family Advisory Network (MFAN) found that the number of military personnel who would advise others to enlist sank nearly 12 points to 62.9 percent between 2019 and 2021. Those surveyed complained of being cash-strapped and even going hungry. Others warned the U.S. military was becoming another casualty of the culture wars, with woke criticism of the armed forces deterring new recruits.
Critics see Biden's regime going extreme with the "woke" policies in the military to raise the figures, without considering the discomfort these could bring. And these policies may be causing the recruitment issues in the first place.
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