When I read articles like this I get soul-sick. I truly do not understand the male psyche in so many ways, but I do understand that if these type of torture initiation programs continue to exist we will always have abusive men ‘protecting’ others with cruelty under the guise of a uniform that is suppose to stand for something else.
If this is a product of Creationism/evolution we aren’t very advanced.
This is a BBC article about British Marines. I hope American Marines don’t initiate each other like this. If they do that might explain Jeff Gannon’s Marine Corp.
Marines ‘violent bullying’ probed
A criminal inquiry is being carried out after a film apparently showing a Royal Marine recruit being beaten unconscious was leaked to a newspaper.
The footage, obtained by the News of the World, appears to show two naked men being forced to fight each other as part of an initiation ceremony.
Twelve new recruits who had just finished their 32-week commando training were alleged to have taken part in the initiation ritual, while around 40 other marines – also stripped naked – watched.
The fight appears to have been “directed” by two non-commissioned officers. One was dressed in a surgeon’s outfit, the other dressed as a schoolgirl.
The abuse of human beings in every way, shape and form MUST stop.
I don’t know what their teaching today, but when I went through training, it was surely nothing like that.
You would get the shit kicked outta you, if you messed up, but that was all…and it made you stay on your toes, beleive me….LMAO
“The Times they are a Chang’n” (Dylan)
peace be with you….
I’ve been abused and all the men had military backgrounds. Someone at dkos said that this type of haxing helps prepare men going into battle.
To what? Instill anger and hatred to their fellow man or woman I ask?
People who have been abused either act out or suffer deeply for years.
I’ll take it further. Regarding the male psyche- It’s like watching boxing and wrestling- I just don’t get the ‘entertainment factor’. Where is the pleasure coming from from watching two human beings beat the shit out of each other?
I’m male and I don’t get that either.
I think it is to instill indifference and emptiness. It’s easier to kill if the target has no identity or value.
First, Guckert was never in the Corps. (Read the original series of diaries over at ePluribus). Secondly I don’t see how you can extrapolate a single incident by recruits in the British military to the entire, and complex, “male psyche”, especially in the co-ed USMC. Finally, there are few people more adverse to war than the professional military.
Their job is to engage an enemy when demagoguery prevails over diplomacy. They cannot complete the job with psychotics, drunks, drug addicts, the illiterate, the fool, or the crazy. Those types rarely make it on the bus to basic training. Those that do are culled and removed during basic, as are those unsuited to the task.
Of the wide variety of people I know who have been in combat, none fit your description. Until they set foot in Vietnam, or Iraq, or Korea, or an island in the Pacific, their motivation was to protect and defend our Country. After the first piece of metal pierced the helmet of the person next to them, their motivation shifted to keeping their unit intact and alive. They accomplished that task by killing as many of the enemy as possible.
If you want to see an end to abuse and torture, I think you need to look more closely at those who sit in the chambers of governance, and to a society that feeds on rage and anger.
the gannon reference was his porn site where he was looking for a few good marines.. And I am not making a generalization. No more than one does when saying ‘the republicans’ we know they aren’t all bad..
My husband is sick again today. Something viral again and little bug got it too. I will ask him if he has ever heard of our Marines doing this. He has served with quite a few Marines. I have personally never heard of American Marines having such an initiation.
I asked him if he has ever heard of our Marines having a strange initiation involving two naked recruits beating each other up while the rest of the naked recruits watched and he just said, “No Honey, that was Lord of the Flies.” I showed him the photo of the naked bums and he said, “Hmmmm, Yeah, that could be the Brits.”
This seems to be a less rictualised “rite of passage” similar at the end of training that is/has been common to the completion of many training programs – in industry called appresnticeships – in Britain. The NCOs in charge dressed as either a schoolgirl or a medic have resonances of the “stag party” – far more rowdy than the equivalent US Batcehlor’s party.
The actual events seem to be a mock fight where the two had their arms enclosed in foam tubes and it later developed in (presumabley fuelled by alcohol) to a point where the NCOs tried to enourage them to fight bare fisted. One refused and was knocked out. Other forms of bullying are well reported in the British Army and for some time the senior officers have been trying to suppress it.
Taken as bullying, there are indeed parallels in the US forces. I am sorry Tracey, but surely you remember the scandals over the “blood winging” ritual that US Marine Corps inductees were put through.
It’s not just the British military and it’s not just the military. Degradation, including sexual degradation, is par for the course in almost any competitive environment — fraternity and sorority hazing, for instance. Read Louise DeSalvo’s “Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work” for a description of the “fagging” tradition at Eton. It’ll make your hair stand on end. I don’t get it. I never have, but it’s endemic. And please don’t get me started on “straight” guys and circle jerks — or many other arguably homo-erotic activities. Can you say denial? Humans are lowly evolved beings.
You always dice it right down to the atom.