Marines to open enlisted infantry training to women
About twenty of you sent this link last night from the Marine Corps Times which reports that the Corps is opening up infantry training for female Marines, despite the fact that the only female candidates for the Officer School have failed the course;
“Female Marines will have the opportunity to go through the same infantry training course as their male counterparts,” the document states. However, as with the research involving female officers, “female enlisted Marines who successfully complete infantry training as part of this research process will not be assigned infantry as a military occupational specialty and will not be assigned to infantry units.”
It’s unclear whether any enlisted women have volunteered yet. Marine Corps officials were not immediately available to discuss the plan.
Only four female Marines have volunteered to participate in the Officer Course and I would thing that not many will volunteer for the enlisted course, and I believe that the enlisted side will probably graduate more females than the officer’s course can.
Women can get all “Hoorah” about it, but I wonder how much celebrating they’ll be doing when, eventually, the social scientists mandate their participation in the course and mandate their assignment to infantry units just to get the social point across.
Category: Marine Corps
When I was a larval Marine going through my MOS school, I got to chatting with the two Parris Island Marines that were with me. To say that the female Marines that went through MCT with them were viewed with contempt is a bit like saying water is wet. The men went to the field, the women were sent back to a hotel for the weekend.
No idea if it’s changed since and I’m sure that someone will complain if they are treated like everyone else. But the powers that be are determined to have equality at all costs, reality be damned.
Here’s another thing about the whole “can a female get through the training” aspect that hasn’t been discussed yet-on the reserve side (in the Army at least) you can go through a 2 week reclass and be a grunt. That’s the back door method to get females MOSQ’d and the feminists will eventually use it to prove their point if all other methods fail.
As a method of gathering data, this is probably the best way to go about this. I have to applaud the USMC for taking this tack.
However, this methodology begs two questions:
a. How much will “self-selection” (e.g., only the most physically-capable and motivated women will likely apply) skew the results compared to population norms, and how will the USMC account for this effect?
b. What happens if/when not enough women “volunteer” to attend?
As a former instructor at the infantry school, I can say this…the training they will receive isnt hard…they will make that no problem…my concern is the four year lifestyle that we all know the infantry is, after they graduate.
Wait and see, is the only thing I can say to this.
If not enough women volunteer, will they ‘be’ volunteered? Who knows?
I don’t think I’d take it seriously if someone sent me back to a hotel for the weekend while the men stayed in the bush. I see no point in doing that.
thanks to having a winger as Commandant who doesn’t know jackshit about the infantry, I see this as a sad joke. And having spent 13 years as an 0311, the only way women will be able to “pass” the course will be to grade on a curve. I know ITS (or whatever it’s called now) isn’t recon indoc hard, but it’s not totally skate.
Kudos to those females that can complete the course. However, since they won’t be assigned infantry mos or to infantry units, I find it hard to believe there will be any sizable number trying. I mean if I was told I could be a medic but would never ever Be a medic it would probably stop me from even trying, that’s a lot of effort just for an atta boy…
@3b Hondo, they could do what the Army did back in the mid 70s. To fill the ranks in CMF 63, re-enlistment for selected pay grades were restricted. Men were not allowed to re-enlist for their current MOS and women were not allowed to reclassify out.
So the Corps is spending time and money to train an extremely small group of people, using existing standards that no woman has been able to pass yet, and even if they complete it successfully they are still not Infantry.
Yeah…I don’t foresee a lot of women jumping at this. Which of course means that some political types will start demanding “more realistic standards” to insure gender-inclusiveness.
What could possibly go wrong?
If not enough women volunteer, will they ‘be’ volunteered? Who knows?
MCT is “Marine Combat Training”. It’s for non-Infantry Marines who have finished boot. So the question of volunteering for it is a moot one. If you’re a woman who has just joined boot, well, you’re not going infantry, so you’re going to MCT.
I went to the Oregon State Fair over the weekend. The Marines had a stand there and were giving away goodies. I stopped and talked with them a bit. They might already have planned ahead a bit on this one.
All women who go in after Jan 1 have to do a minimum of 8 pullups for the PFT. As the Marine I spoke to said, “They want to go to combat, so they have to do the same things as us”.
So, that will actually bump up things a bit as far as physical requirements, at least until the Poli’s manage to get in there and screw things up.
” . . . . at least until the poli’s manage to get in there and screw things up — again.”
There. Fixed it for you.
FEMINAZI: Women should be allowed to serve in ALL MOSs in the Military, Including Infantry and Special Operations! The promotion system favors combat arms or combat experience! They need to be able to compete on a fair playing ground!
ME: Fine, When do you want to start IOC, SOI Ranger or BUDS training?
FEMINAZI: Well, not ME.
ME: Go piss up a rope,,, um nevermind, you can’t do that either.
Hahahahahahahah,there is no woman who can pass SOI(School of Infantry)Marines.Fuck me,in my class in 98 over 25 percent of the wanna be grunts failed.The point is,we join the Corps for a shitload of different reasons.Most of the guys I served with wanted to be a grunt and play big bad Marine(that’s why I joined)I mean only homo’s and weekend warriors(fags) join up to be a it guy or to learn a certain skill,me I wanted to kill bad guys.Woman wont or more then likely don’t want to be a grunts.I mean the life sucks when your not deployed,plus you are stuck in rank forever,of course the females can suck there way to E-4.Glad I’m out.Chesty we need you now more then ever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DDzjtyfLTE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBOXQvx1xNM
My 1st/2nd and 3rd deployment was just like this,and they want to put fucking woman in that,fuck them.
ITB sucks but it’s not that difficult. When you get to the fleet it only becomes more difficult and sucks a lot more. Same goes with Infantry Officer Course. I’ve seen plenty of infantry officers not being able to hack it in the fleet operating as a grunt.
Standards shouldn’t be decreasing, they should be increasing because what is expected of those individuals is only sky rocketing without proper training, pay, or rest.
Old dog, I love your improv banter. Go piss up a rope indeed.
I was a Marine Corps grunt back in the 1990’s, then was an Air Wing Officer. This issue has been ongoing for years now, and I guess feminist lobby groups never let it go away. It seems the USMC has caved in to political pressure to try another social experiment.
Even as an old school Marine, I am all for equality and for women to share the burden of ground combat. I find it surprising that these women who are part of this experiment don’t have to serve out their contract time in a grunt unit- it just amounts to a waste of training money in my personal opinion.
And knowing grunts, I can speculate that 1) there will NOT be a mass of eager female volunteers, because they tend to want to be part of support units. 2) the physical standards will have to be lower to reduce the attrition rate 3) the attrition rate for females in a four year contract infantry unit will be higher due to the punishing physical nature of the job and 4) for the females that fail their primary MOS schools, they will be sent to Infantry instead (= punishment) where instructors have to deal with more people with negative attitudes.
As taxpayer I don’t like or appreciate the Corps wasting money on a social experiment. This issue has been debated and studied for over a decade now. They’ll just find out what they already knew in the first place- that young men make better soldiers ( OK Marines, warriors for all you hotheads out there) than young women do!!
Ohh and as an additional comment to my previous one, I would have to say that my time in the 0311 field I wished that I had chosen something different, like most ground pounders I shared barracks with in 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines. The Infantry sucks as a career choice- most smart Marines who score high on the ASVAB don’t want to do it- and after I got out I had to go back to college to learn a marketable skill.
Good luck trying to convince large numbers of females to do that MOS!