Following an order from the Secretary of the Navy, the Marine Corps has removed the word “man” from nineteen of its military occupation specialty titles, leaving only a handful of iconic instances intact. Marine Corps Times:
In all, the Marine Corps plans to rename 19 of its military occupational specialties, or MOSs, as the result of a months-long review mandated by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. A service-wide message announcing the changes is expected to be published within the next few days.
The terms “rifleman” and “mortarman,” are among those that remain untouched, according to a list — obtained by Marine Corps Times on Monday — of 33 MOSs that were reviewed. And that was by careful design, said a Marine official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
[…]
In most cases, the word “man” will be replaced by Marine. Those changes are as follows:
- Basic infantry Marine.
- Riverine assault craft Marine.
- Light-armor vehicle Marine.
- Reconnaissance Marine (to include three other recon-related jobs that include the word “man”).
- Infantry assault Marine.
- Basic field artillery Marine.
- Field artillery fire control Marine.
- Field artillery sensor support Marine.
- Fire support Marine.
- Basic engineer, construction and equipment Marine.
- Basic tank and assault amphibious vehicle Marine.
- Armor Marine.
- Amphibious assault vehicle Marine.
- Amphibious combat vehicle Marine.
The field artillery operations man MOS is expected to be changed to field artillery operations chief, since that position is typically held by a Marine in the rank of staff sergeant or above.
The anti-tank missileman MOS is the only position that will pick up the word “gunner” in place of “man.”
Others on the list — like manpower officer or vertical takeoff unmanned aerial vehicle specialist — will still include the word “man” because it’s part of a word that doesn’t describe the Marine doing the job.
The new titles are clunkier than the old ones, as well as redundant. After all, all those holding a Marine MOS are, by definition, Marines, so mentioning that they’re Marines is rather unnecessary. That said, none of the new titles are egregiously silly and the intent here is reasonable. Indeed, the Corps is about two decades behind the rest of society in making these sort of concessions to a gender-integrated workforce.
Not surprisingly, however, there are objections:
The move has proved unpopular with many Marines and sailors, with several branding it political correctness run amok.
“We have reached peak crazy,” one reader commented on an earlier story by Marine Corps Times about this topic.
“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,” another reader commented on a Navy Times story. “We don’t need [people who are easily offended] like that clogging up the institutions that protect our country.”
Of course, the same could be the same of those whining about rather innocuous changes to job titles.
