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I have to get off BB for a few hours, because reading replies on a thread like this without the ability to like them is mental torture (everyone, assume you’ve gotten one from me);
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It’s interesting which industries do this sort of thing earlier. Often it’s not the ones you think. In oil and gas, for example, the position “landman” was effortlessly changed to “land manager” years ago. Why not? Anyone who complains about such things is a crybaby. There’s no other way to put it.
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My cousin has three of his female children in the USMC. They can do anything a man can do, and likely better. As they like to say in his family, “we’re not tough, we’re trained”. I like that.
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And that reveals what a lot of the complaints are about - loss of privilege. They’re complaining because something has changed that has reduced their level of privilege. It’s why the bathroom paranoids all mention that the city of Charlotte started the issue by passing an equality law. Anything done to make things even slightly more equitable is opposed because it diminishes the privilege of the first class citizens, though ironically, they’re too self-unaware to recognize that that is the cause, so they grumble about PC culture and how correcting years of inequality is itself racism and bigotry.
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Sheesh, man, that’s a helluva stretch, innit? Justifying the use of a photo because it establishes an a-to-b connection between speech “mostly confined to tweets, Facebook links and comments’ sections” with the desecration of corpses? That strikes me as a false equivalence.
I agree with Brian_Anderson - this was a missed chance to post a photo of the women marines whose existance updated semantics.
Also, while I think the name changes are great and folks taking umbrage silly, “tweets, Facebook and comments sections” aren’t inappropriate places to vent displeasure. It’s kind of what we do here, too.
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Huh. Is ‘maggot’ a gendered title?
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As always, when someone complains about political correctness, just re-read their words with “political correctness” replaced with “respect for others”, and see what jackasses they look like.
“But on the other, it’s a direct reflection on society’s crybaby respect for others.”
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Do the female marines do that “This is my rifle, this is my gun” thing?
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I had a friend from high school go into the Marines. Since she did all the same number of pushups/pullups/run times that the men did instead of the women standards, I’m willing to bet that she personally did.
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People feel helpless against the machine that controls their lives, so they misplace their anger towards things that are easier to understand.
It’s not surprising a hyper controlled and misused organization like the Marines can’t handle a woman working there.
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Epiphany’s Edge would be a great name for a prog rock band or album.
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“On one hand, the name changes from ‘man’ to ‘person’ or whatever they want to call it doesn’t really matter. They could call mortarmen bakers for all I care,” said Sgt. Geoff Heath, a Marine rifleman with multiple combat deployments. “But on the other, it’s a direct reflection on society’s crybaby political correctness.”
Well…he is right about there being political correctness…he’s wrong about who’s been imposing a politically correct orthodoxy in language since the time the Marines were founded.
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I remember a time when moaning about “political correctness” meant moaning about clunky terms like “differently abled”. Now it’s moaning about polite behavior. My grandpa’s generation was tough, but they were polite by the standards of his generation, too, and it’s a politeness that seems to have disappeared about the time the Me Generation got old enough to worry about their retirement fund.
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I wonder how quickly this would get reversed under a Trump administration, though…
I also love how “considerate of other people” translates into “crybaby” for Sgt. Heath. That’s the kind of truck-nuts mentality that pisses me off.
Edit: And in light of some of the criticisms I’ve been seeing further down the thread–I respect soldiers, Marines, anyone who acts in good conscience to defend others. Same with law enforcement officers: there are some true heroes out there. But there are also insecure bullies who only got into the service for their own pride and ego.
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You’d think they’d welcome the added excuse to remind people that they’re Marines.
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No one is equating one act with the other act, only drawing a connection between the attitudes displayed in both. Not really a stretch in my mind. People get on Facebook to voice their opinion that we should bomb X. I see no problem putting up a picture of bombed people in that context. The context here are that the marines are being emasculated. Why not put up a picture of overly macho marines?
Sooooo, “PC” types are the crybabies, but manbabies whining about gender neutrality is…what now?
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Reading these comments is pretty depressing. The mocking tone very much implies that you consider Marines inferior to yourselves in every way. I think you are mistaken in this.
But the primary point is not the actual degendering of the titles. What is driving discontent is the fact that Mabus and others in the civilian leadership seem to share your contempt for those serving. Some of the changes are symbolic, like the changing terminology, and the practice of naming ships after progressive bureaucrats, instead of medal of honor winners or famous battles. Other changes are not as benign. Even if you support the social progress goals that are now a top priority, you have to understand that these are not things that the armed forces are doing in addition to their regular mission goals. Cost-wise, for every new program that is funded, something else loses out. Right now, the USMC is struggling to pay to repair their aircraft and equip those Marines actually in combat. But there is plenty of money in the budget to build special vans that can be driven to FOBs so that the troops can be shown powerpoint presentations about microagressions or whatever.
The Marines have always done more with less, and even taken some pride in that. But it is demoralizing to tell a Marine on sentry duty that he has to stand his post with a broken NOD (night scope), while the corps is spending lavishly on new uniform designs for transgendered troops. It is not that those Marines are misogynist bigots, it is just that they don’t want to see comrades die over the new priorities.
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So I guess I’ll never get to be a Missileman now. 
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