Asking for opinions on Marine Corps culture

[kb2012]

So at TBS today, we were having a "guided discussion" regarding social media and the underlying issue that caused the recent fiasco to happen.

We came to the agreement that there is a culture that exists. I suggested that it's the way we recruit. It takes a certain kind of individual to serve in the Marine Corps. We find testosterone laden, hormonal 18 year olds and convince them that they're gonna get to kill people and blow shit up. We pump it up as this awesome brotherhood (which it is) and put them in three months of training with 60 others just like them and force them to live in close quarters. In this environment, they feed off of each other and an alpha male, ultra masculine culture emerges. Most of these kids are fresh out of high school and lack maturity.

Keep in mind, I have no problem with how we recruit and train individuals. It's a tried and true method that produces the greatest war fighters ever known to mankind. I'm simply saying that a masculine culture that has difficulty accepting females is a byproduct.

Two individuals took offense to what I said and stated that I'm writing off the value of enlisted Marines, particularly junior enlisted. I disagreed, and explained that I'm simply talking about what I've observed.

Can anyone add their perspective to this?

 

[kb2012]

In the first sentence of the second paragraph, I meant to say "there is a culture problem* that exists".

 

[Grunt]

I find it expressive of a lack of maturity and horrendous decision making. They ought to know better as far as posting anything like that on the Internet and not expecting it to find its way back to them somehow.

I was the same as them, but I didn't do those things because I used common sense. Personally, I think that at its most basic level...they were simply stupid and did something stupid. I won't give them any excuses for what they did. They simply need to own it.

 

[BloodStripe]

So at TBS today, we were having a "guided discussion" regarding social media and the underlying issue that caused the recent fiasco to happen.

We came to the agreement that there is a culture that exists. I suggested that it's the way we recruit. It takes a certain kind of individual to serve in the Marine Corps. We find testosterone laden, hormonal 18 year olds and convince them that they're gonna get to kill people and blow shit up. We pump it up as this awesome brotherhood (which it is) and put them in three months of training with 60 others just like them and force them to live in close quarters. In this environment, they feed off of each other and an alpha male, ultra masculine culture emerges. Most of these kids are fresh out of high school and lack maturity.

Keep in mind, I have no problem with how we recruit and train individuals. It's a tried and true method that produces the greatest war fighters ever known to mankind. I'm simply saying that a masculine culture that has difficulty accepting females is a byproduct.

Two individuals took offense to what I said and stated that I'm writing off the value of enlisted Marines, particularly junior enlisted. I disagreed, and explained that I'm simply talking about what I've observed.

Can anyone add their perspective to this?

It's a generational issue that is not exclusive to just the military.