Thousands of Marines serving in the infantry and other essential positions are being reassigned new gender-neutral job titles. In an attempt to appease the “political correctness” movement sweeping the nation the Marine Corps are removing the word “man” from 19 job titles. The renaming process isn’t running unopposed, some military officials are fighting to keep the word “man” in some of the service’s most iconic job titles.
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After months of review, mandated by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, an official service-wide announcement was issued that the change would go into effect in the next few days. The roles that are receiving title changes have been carefully deliberated on and were carefully selected according to on military official that asked to remain unnamed.
Over 33 positions were reviewed but, in the end, only 19 were deemed too “gender-specific” to warrant a change. Iconic titles such as “rifleman” or “mortarman” will remain untouched due to their iconic status and rich history in the Marine Corps. One unnamed official commented on decision to leave certain titles by stating:
“Names that were not changed, like rifleman, are steeped in Marine Corps history and ethos, Things that were changed needed to be updated to align with other MOS names.”
Many of the titles that were changed will simply have the word “man” replaced with “marine”. For example, a Basic Infantryman will be referred to as a “Basic Infantry Marine.” Other titles were replaced with more creative alternatives, an anti-tank missileman will now be known as an “Anti-tank Missile Gunner.” See the full list of the proposed changes below.
Role title changes for U.S. Marines
Other positions that contain the word man will not be changed if the instance of the word “man” does not refer to the Marine doing the job. Examples of these titles are Manpower Officer and Marksmanship Instructor.
Mabus claims that the title changes were spurred by legislation that allows women joining the Marines to serve in combat roles. Both the Marine Corps. and Navy were asked to revise their job titles by Mabus in January in a statement issued to Gen. Robert Neller and other military officials
“As we achieve full integration of the force … this is an opportunity to update the position titles and descriptions themselves to demonstrate through this language that women are included in these MOSs, Please review the position titles throughout the Marine Corps and ensure that they are gender-integrated as well, removing ‘man’ from the titles.”
While the Marines have conceded to the request and changed certain job titles the Navy has fought against the proposed changes. They have called for a second review which is expected to take several months.
While the move has been successful in appeasing the wishes of over-sensitive social justice warriors it has left a bad taste in the mouths of many service members who claim political correctness is making a mockery of long-standing traditions. Several commenters, who claim to have military experience took to social media to criticize the change. One commenter stated:
“If a woman isn’t going to consider making the Navy her career because she is called a fireman or a corpsman, then I don’t think she was going to make the Navy a career period, We don’t need [people who are easily offended] like that clogging up the institutions that protect our country.”
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