Aurora Hatchel

In Response to 47’s Executive Order: Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness

Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.  Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.  A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.
 
 
 
The trees are laughing at you.
You can barely hear it in their branches
Just above the rising sea levels
Turning the coastlines of mankind
Into a rueful smirk.
 
Your rage is but a tantrum
Before the great sages of the cosmos:
Growth, Pain, and Sex.
They have folded the edges of the universe
In on itself, each crease kissing its lover
Until there is a small season
Named humanity.
 
Even your Honor, Truth, and Discipline
Are but wrinkles in the Great Timeline
That will flatten as each end is pulled taut.
Your words will not ring over a frozen planet
Or the infinite diversity within a black hole.
 
I, however, am in the company of Schizophyllum commune,
A mushroom with innumerable genders and sexes.
We cling to the fading trees, singing their memory,
As the age of rain gives way to your arid inevitability.
Your Science and his dim-witted brother, Normal,
Chase after us with sticky fingers, begging to mimic
Our mycelium that rivals your WiFi, AI, and Fiber Optics.
They are pleading not to be left behind
By the wiser siblings who predate and will outlive them.
 
And soon, so shall you.