No more “Yes, sir!”
The US Marines may ban recruits from respectfully addressing senior members as “sir” or “ma’am” to avoid “misgendering” and offending them.
The woke recommendation was made in a new $2 million report commissioned by the Corps from the University of Pittsburgh.
The exhaustive, 738-page study that the Marines first commissioned in 2020 said traditional ways of addressing superiors were holding back gender integration.
“Employing gender-neutral identifiers eliminates the possibility of misgendering drill instructors, which can unintentionally offend or cause discord,” the study said.
“By teaching recruits to use gender-neutral identifiers for their drill instructors, Services underscore the importance of respecting authoritative figures regardless of gender.”
The two-year study by the University of Pittsburgh’s Warrior Human Performance Research Center also said that “the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard effectively de-emphasize gender in an integrated environment.”
“Instead of saying ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir,’ recruits in these Services refer to their drill instructors using their ranks or roles followed by their last names,” it said.
“Gendered identifiers prime recruits to think about or visually search for a drill instructor’s gender first, before their rank or role.”
Col. Howard Hall, chief of staff for Marine Corps Training and Education Command, told the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services this month that the radical shift was being considered by leadership — albeit with some pushback, the Marine Corps Times said.
The proposal is one of a half-dozen recommendations the Marines’ entry-level training advisory council is considering, the report said. It’s not clear when the service will decide which ones to pursue.
Hall warned the December meeting of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services that it would not be “a quick fix.”
“That’s going to take some effort,” Hall told the committee of the switch to gender-neutral identifiers, according to the military outlet.
“We want to avoid any quick-fix solutions that introduce perturbations down the line.”
Hall later told the outlet that “it’s not something we would change overnight.”
“We’ve got a history of ‘sir, ma’am, sir, ma’am.’ If we change something at the root level, how do we make the corresponding change at the Fleet Marine Force? So it’s not ours to implement alone,” he said.
News of the possible change was quickly ripped online as “making a joke of our military,” with one commentator claiming: “Any real Marine would not let this happen!”
“Just another reason why I got out of the Marine Corps,” one former member wrote, saying: “We are WARFIGHTERS, not politicians.”
Podcaster Craig Chamberlain, meanwhile, quipped: “If captured by the enemy, at least we know our troops will be prepared to use the right pronouns.”
Others, however, suggested it was not as big an overhaul as it first appears.
“As a former Marine, it was always yes or no drill instructor. Ma’am or Sir was only for addressing an officer,” one person wrote, with others saying only recruits would ever use the terms.
The commissioned study highlighted a number of areas where the service still comes across as being a male-dominated operation, including sexist behavior and jokes and training material focusing on men, often using male pronouns even for positions held by females.
Women became a permanent part of the regular Marine Corps in 1948, but still only account for 4.3% of officers and 5.1% percent of those enlisted for active duty, according to the Marine Corps University.