A Small Success: Stopping "Weekend Warrior"

In 2018 I complained about VA use of the phrase "weekend warrior." Many of us Reservists or National Guards consider this slur both pejorative and inaccurate. Even Google defines it as "a person who participates in an activity only in their spare time." Doesn't sound much like what we did, does it? The phrase works against us and had to stop.

I'm happy to say that VA has stopped using the phrase, at least by the Board of Veterans Appeals. In 2019 the phrase wasn't used a single time vs. more than a hundred times in recent years. I can see how it got started by reading old citations....one judge used it in a decision and than others did also not by any initiative on their part but because of the all-too-easy habit among VA's administrative law judges to simply clipboard each other's work.
The problem is that a judge is like others...words matter, and to have a mental image of "weekend warrior" while deciding whether that particular warrior is deserving of disability benefits is just too prejudicial!

Is this what YOUR BVA judge thinks?