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.

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 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.

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