Gender-Integrated Training at Parris Island
The gender-integrated approach to recruit training for Marines is not having the numbers of candidates that had previously been hoped for.
Per the article: The first ever gender-integrated Marine boot camp class graduated on March 29, aboard the Parris Island, South Carolina recruit depot.
However, Marine officials have been murky about a re-occurrence of the gender integration experiment while routinely expounding that the company’s integration was solely done out of efficiency because few female Marines were slated for January’s recruit training cycle.
But Berger told senators on Tuesday that India company’s integration “went great” and that he discussed with Gen. Robert B. Neller, the commandant of the Marine Corps, that “we have to look at this perhaps for next year.” – Military Times article
In January, a platoon of about 50 female recruits joined five male platoons for training. The article does not mention how many dropouts there were, if any, by platoon or overall. There is another gender-integrated training program possible in 2020, although the CO of Parris Island, Brig. Gen. Glynn is clearly skeptical about it. Adding the female platoon to the male platoons was done for economy’s sake.
The article brings up that old chestnut about gender segregation leading to lower standards, etc., for women, but the Commandant of the Marine Corps has indicated that he has no intention of changing the training/recruit environment to include putting men and women together in open bays.
Well, no, I wouldn’t want that either.
Category: Marine Corps
Off course, we could always pull out the second chestnut: “If if ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
I swear, common sense is becoming so rare it should be considered a friggin super power.
Welcome to 2019. I agree.
Watch Idiocracy. That’s about a future world in which people with a baseline IQ and common sense are non-existent.
Given what we’ve seen over the past few years, that flick appears to be a premonition!
PC hits the Marine Corps Boot Camp. Those Horse & China Marines are turning over in their graves right now.
Well, now, they simply added the women’s platoon to the others because funds for training had been cut somewhat. That’s in the article, and that was what I put in my article.
Remember all that budget boohooing a while back? This is the result.
The female platoon trained by itself just as the five male platoons trained as individual platoons. All six platoons were co-located in the same dormitory complex but with a separate female only bay.
I don’t think this arrangement constitutes gender-integrated training. It was done as a cost saving measure. I was never one of The Few, The Proud but this arrangement didn’t seem to weaken the training of either the males or females. I can’t really muster any outrage over this as an Army retiree but it might be viewed more harshly but those who wear the EGA.
The Army was doing that on a larger scale when I went to BCT (FT Jackson) in 1987. Each battalion had a female company. We did not train together.
When I think coed training I think Susie Rottencrotch going toe to toe pugil sticks with some dude, being killed, and a safety stand down occurring.
I read your article too fast and just slowed it up right now to absorb it. Sorry Ex for my super duper fast judgement.
That’s okay. When time is limited, you do what you can.
I am beginning to believe that it might be time for me to invest in a noose.
I hear Uranus has a noose.
The only constant in the military is change.
Experimentation is a good thing.
And starship troopers.
But, leaders have missed the main points from Heinlein, having to do with leadership and why there are starship troopers to begin with.
Heinlein never visioned a gender-mixed military. On the contrary. The mobile infantry were all men, and the starship pilots were all women, because he thought women are better at math.
His wife was a chemist and a civil engineer in the Navy. She was the model for many of the women in the books he wrote.
If “Starhip Troopers” is the only Heinlein book you’ve read, you’ve missed a lot of good storytelling by him.
And by “you”, I mean ALL of you guys.
I read the whole article and links but still no one said if any young Devil Pup managed to get laid!
Have you ever smelled a WM recruit? Gotta have some mean nuts to get on that.
Smells better than the 30+ male recruits in the squad bay. Seriously though working at 4th battalion chow hall during team weak the female drill instructors smelled so good.
Firewatch is about to get real interesting. 😎
Trained a coed plt in the early 80’s when I was a DS. Turned out to be a fuck fest.