The Marine Corps has a “toxic masculinity” problem

The fight for the soul of the Marine Corps is just getting started.

On May 12, the US Marine Corps launched its first commercial with a female lead, part of a broad effort to persuade more women to join the service.

The ad, titled “Battle Up,” was meant to let women know they’re welcome in the Marine Corps. But it also inadvertently refocused attention on the service’s well-earned reputation for being a fraternity that often marginalizes or mistreats female troops.

The commercial dredged up memories of last March’s “Marines United” scandal, where male Marines shared photos of naked female Marines, veterans, and other women on Facebook without their consent. Around thirty Marines face courts-martial for their involvement in the group.

Marine leaders are trying to change the culture with measures like a new rule that says Marines can be forced out of the service if they share nude pictures online without consent.

That change comes at a vital time. Marines already have been asked to fight overseas during the Trump administration, and if men and women in the service distrust one another, it’s going to make their high-stakes deployments even harder. (Right now, Marines are firing weaponry at ISIS in Syria and deploying into “hot spots” in Iraq.)

So before the Marine Corps can most effectively help maintain order in the world, it needs to maintain order among its own ranks. Perhaps more fundamentally, the Marine Corps needs to find its identity in an age when the Pentagon’s top civilian and military officials say women should be treated the same as men across the services.

"I think this whole thing, as disturbing and as difficult as it has been, has actually been a benefit," said Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps, during a Senate hearing on Wednesday. "I think it's brought up a very simple point — it's really not about social media, it's about how we view women in our Marine Corps."

Marines have struggled to incorporate women for decades

The Marine Corps has had problems integrating women ever since the first woman joined the service in 1918. Even today, women make up only 8.3 percent of the corps.

Most notably that problem plays out via sexual harassment. In an article for Vox, one female Marine wrote that she carried knives with her for protection while walking to the base’s showers.

She also recalled being told never to walk around a base alone. “Women struggle to feel fully part of the Marines,” she concluded, adding that she consistently feared for her safety. Not because of the enemy, she said, but because of her fellow Marines.

The Marines United scandal didn’t help matters. Marines United was a 30,000-member Facebook group with mostly active-duty and retired male Marines victimizing female Marines by posting naked pictures of them. Worse, the pictures were accompanied by the victims’ names, ranks, where they were serving, and even their social media accounts.

In sum, it was a testament to the culture of sexism and harassment that still afflicts large portions of the Marine Corps.

When the story broke on March 4, all eyes were on the Pentagon. It took until March 7 for Neller to offer his rebuke.

“When I hear allegations of Marines denigrating their fellow Marines, I don’t think such behavior is that of true warriors or war fighters,” he said in a statement. “If changes needs to be made, they will be made.”

Three days later, on March 10, Secretary of Defense James Mattis — a former Marine four-star general — publicly condemned Marines United as “unacceptable.”

Marine Corps leadership, at least, is taking action. On May 9, top Marine commanders said that troops who shared nude pictures on social media or anywhere online without the consent of the people in the pictures will be booted out of the service. That means they won’t receive benefits they would have kept had they left the corps amicably.

The new initiatives were greeted on the Hill with a mix of optimism and continued worry. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), chair of the House Military Personnel Subcommittee, said via a spokesperson that he welcomed the change but that “much work remains.”

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a House Armed Services Committee member and a former Marine, said through a spokesperson that the military as a whole — including the Marines — has “much more work to do eliminate the underlying conditions that permit such misconduct to occur and persist.”

All of this has taken on new meaning with the release of the “Battle Up” advertisement, especially because of its controversial content (by Marine Corps culture standards). Namely, the commercial’s protagonist was shown serving in the infantry, making it through very tough training, and establishing her moral and ethical courage from a young age.

But the infantry part is what became a big deal. Historically, only men have served in the infantry in any military service. As of today, only four women serve in the Marine infantry. Not 4 percent. Four, total.

But the commercial — and the opening of combat roles to women — fits in with the cultural changes the Defense Department implemented during the Obama years. Those changes, though, are hard for some in the Marine Corps to accept.

The Marine Corps needs to change. It doesn't want to.

The Obama administration opened the door for women to serve in combat roles. The unhappiest service about that order? The Marine Corps.

In September 2015, Gen. Joseph Dunford was the top Marine, and he recommended women be excluded from some of those combat roles. (Dunford is now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.) Mattis, before he was nominated to be defense secretary, questioned whether women should join the infantry.

The Marines’ reaction was to be expected, though. The corps acts like a fraternity, according to Emerald Archer, an expert on women’s advancement at Mount St. Mary’s University in California. Many Marines, she said, believe that integrating women would ruin that brotherhood.

Those who work with Marines agree. There’s a “toxic masculinity culture” in the Marine Corps, James Joyner, a professor at the Marine Command and Staff College, told me.

That may be what is at the core of the women-in-infantry debate among Marine ranks: the identity crisis of a historically macho club now being forced to let in women.

Now that the Marine Corps must allow women to serve in combat roles — and is putting out recruiting commercials highlighting that fact — it tears at the social fabric of the service. That has led many to act out, some anonymously, online.

The fight for the soul of the Marine Corps is just getting started

The Marine Corps is struggling with what its rank and file does online, especially when that activity is revenge porn. Mainly it’s because Marine leadership is old and it doesn’t understand internet subcultures.

But most Marines are young — very young — and they naturally understand even the shadiest parts of the web.

Marshall Chiles, a spokesperson for the now-shutdown Marines United group and a former Marine himself, knows those sketchy parts. He gave quite the interview to the Daily Beast.

“The Marine Corps is supposed to go out and win wars, being the front line of defense for America,” he said. “So why should would we integrate women when we know it’s going to happen and it’s just going to continue to be a huge distraction?”

A quick recap of his views here: Sexual crimes are going to happen no matter what Marine leadership does. Integrating women further will only make things worse and the Corps less capable of winning wars. So why deal with the distraction of giving women a shot to serve on the front lines instead of focusing on the next fight?

Chiles does not represent the attitude of all Marines, even though some do agree with him. Now Neller must figure out how to end the mindset that sees certain troops as “females first, not Marines first,” as Archer noted.

That’s going to be hard for old-school Marine officials. “Leadership is just genuinely puzzled” about what to do, Joyner said.

And to be fair, it’s not just the Marines. Sexual assault has increased in other services, and even in military academies, reports the New York Times. According to one Pentagon review, there were 6,172 reports of sexual assault last year.

So as the service tries to win battles around the world, the most important fight may be the one closest to home: the battle for the soul of the Marine Corps.