I think my heart just stopped. For sure it skipped a beat.

Suddenly, laughing at the Woke Words idiots at Stanford, Brandeis and CalPoly isn’t so funny anymore.

In fact, it’s making me kind of ill…

Marine Corps may drop ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir’ over gender-neutral concerns for drill instructors

The Marine Corps has been advised that its drill instructors should no longer be referred to by gendered terms like “ma’am” or “sir” — an idea that a top training leader has pushed back on.

The recommendation came in a recently completed academic report from the University of Pittsburgh that the Corps commissioned in 2020, according to Marine Corps Times.

An “academic report,” huh? There’s the problem right there.

…Inside the University of Pittsburgh report ― which ultimately would stretch to more than 700 pages and cover topics ranging from recruits’ injury rates to boot camp staffing challenges ― one annex grabbed Iiams’ attention. It detailed all the “sexually demeaning and gender-based language” described by drill instructors and recruits in focus groups the university had run.

…University of Pittsburgh’s Neuromuscular Research Laboratory and Warrior Human Performance Research Center was tasked, under a $2 million contract, to “analyze combinations of gender-integrated training and make recommendations for models that integrate genders to the greatest extent possible while continuing to train Marines to established standards,” the service announced at the time. Marine Corps Times obtained the study, completed in June, through a public records request.

…Compared to the boot camp environment of a few decades ago portrayed in films like “Full Metal Jacket,” the language highlighted in the report was not particularly shocking.

But it represented a culture and mindset that [Lt. Gen. Kevin] Iiams says has no place in today’s Marine Corps.

Despite what may have happened in the past, he said, language like this violates the official recruit training order and fails to meet the service’s standard of treating all recruits with equal dignity.

Oh, good gravy goodness. So a LtGen gets a $2M report from ivory tower academics who are outraged by Marine drill instructors (DIs) using colorful language in boot camp. How is that surprising? You should have seen my sweet SIL’s face watching “Full Metal Jacket” for the first time, bless her heart.

“But it’s not really like that, right…”

We could only give her the head tilt.

To continue. Said general, now with his knickers in a righteous wad, summarily trots to every training depot to upbraid the help to clean their acts up.

…“My assessment at that point was, this is not something that could actually wait,” Iiams told Marine Corps Times in an end of September interview. “There was no way that we could have let this go on, if this was actually still festering.”

Holy. Smokes.

…Iiams, who made the emergency trip to the recruit depots with his senior enlisted adviser, Sgt. Maj. Peter Siaw, said he was “somewhat reassured” in his conversations with leaders that they already have been moving to police the language and behavior described in the draft report by reinforcing the standards drill instructors are expected to meet and the regulations governing training.

While Iiams said he did not take any actions to determine the identities of the interviewees in the University of Pittsburgh report or push for discipline, he confronted the notion that the coarse joking was an important part of building rapport between drill instructor and recruit.

“Demeaning and degrading language is not a leadership tool right now,” he said. “And that’s what we have to continue to reiterate ― that that is not part of how we train our Marines. The salty language, while that might have been something they smiled at or grinned at in some other realm, that’s not what we do as part of the Marine Corps.”

Now, I realize there have to be adjustments made – this is 2022 and not 1972 – and especially since the Corps is no longer exclusively training recruits separately according to sex. Since 2019 there have been gender-integrated training companies, but the Corps has continued to resist integration at the platoon level, which is smart, smart, smart.

The Marine Corps has been the one military service holdout to full gender integration at boot camp.

In 2019, with the passing of the next year’s National Defense Authorization Act, members of Congress thought they had finally forced the Marine Corps to accept full gender integration, which would see men and women train side-by-side in the same platoon at recruit training.

…However, language in the law left room for interpretation.

…The Corps’ current definition of coed training sees five male platoons train alongside one female platoon.

The Corps has run 19 coed companies through Parris Island, South Carolina ― the historic training place for all enlisted women in the Marine Corps ― and one coed company through San Diego, according to documents the Marine Corps recently shared with members of Congress that were viewed by Marine Corps Times.

The Marine Corps has refused to say whether it eventually will integrate boot camp at the platoon level, but none of the plans it shared with members of Congress indicate that platoon level integration is in the works.

Another surefire way to get Marines to dig in hard, which this report does, is to tell them “everybody else is doing it.” As if what the other services do in their nowhere-near-comparable boot camps should influence the making of Marines? ‘Tis to laugh.

…The lengthy report, commissioned by the Corps from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020 and completed in 2022, points out that half of the military services already have done away with gendered identifiers for training staff.

“The Army, Navy, and Coast Guard effectively de-emphasize gender in an integrated environment,” the report states. “Instead of saying ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir,’ recruits in these Services refer to their drill instructors using their ranks or roles followed by their last names. Gendered identifiers prime recruits to think about or visually search for a drill instructor’s gender first, before their rank or role.”

Fortunately, there are still cooler, mission-oriented heads operating in high places, who have said hold up. There are potential ramifications to be considered.

…The proposal was under consideration by a Marine Corps leadership team assembled to guide service efforts to integrate boot camp, Col. Howard Hall, chief of staff for Marine Corps Training and Education Command, told the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services in December.

But, he said, leaders had concerns.

“That’s going to take some effort,” Hall told the committee during its quarterly public meeting Dec. 6 in Arlington, Virginia. “Honestly, that’s not a quick fix. What are inculcating in our young recruits that will or will not be reinforced when they graduate and enter the fleet Marine force? So again, we want to avoid any quick-fix solutions that introduce perturbations down the line.”

…Hall said the Marine Corps was working to change the training materials highlighted by the University of Pittsburgh study, but expressed concern about making any moves that would put boot camp practices out of step with fleet ones.

“All of a sudden, we change something at recruit training, and recruits start coming in and using a different identifier. It’s not something we would change overnight,” he told Marine Corps Times following the advisory committee meeting. “Again, we’ve got a history of ‘sir, ma’am, sir, ma’am. If we change something at the root level, how do we make the corresponding change at the Fleet Marine Force? So it’s not ours to implement alone.”

We Marines revere our history and those “sirs” and “ma’ams” are very much an ingrained part of it. We revere our boot camp experience, knowing how very different it is from any other service, how integral it is to our esprit de corps while serving, and the enormous camaraderie we have as Marines later in life. Barking “Yes, MA’AM! No, SIR!” is a defining Marine Corps experience. To Col. Hall’s point above about being “in the fleet” (which means out in the real Corps doing your job) – those courtesies abound. They are second nature to Marines. That’s how you answer superiors or affirm your agreement with friends, maybe even talk to yourself at zero-dark-thirty as the Staff Duty checking a cold lonely flightline.

“Does this suck out here? Yes, MA’AM!”

Those courtesies are learned where? Boot camp.

One of the most telling experiences I’ve ever had illustrating the indelible impression Marine Corps boot camp leaves forever on one’s psyche happened, once again, while watching “Full Metal Jacket.” It was my second time seeing it in the theater, and I’d dragged about six of my squadron bros with me. I knew what was coming – they didn’t. And it didn’t disappoint.

You could tell, to a person in that theater, whatever their age, who the Marines were during the initial boot camp sequences. There was dead silence and rapt – almost shocked – faces were glued to the screen.

Flashbacks?

Yes, SIR.