This past week, TheWarHorse.org broke a story on a Facebook group with a total of 30,000 Marine Core active and veteran midshipmen that shared naked pictures of women in the Marines. Pictures of the female marines social media handled were also shares, comments about how these women should be raped soon followed.
Thomas Brennan, an Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran and Purple Heart is the founder of The War Horse and is also the man who wrote the story. He has been getting death threats from people in the military because of his story. The great thing about this story is that it's not the military protecting its own, but the military not putting up with misogynistic and sexist behavior. Although Brennan is a veteran, he is still a part of the military and a traditional aspect of military culture is that you don't "rat out" your colleagues and you protect the reputation of the military in order for it to be held to the highest regards. Many of the military's arbitrary laws such as not being able to talk on the phone and walk at the same time when you're in uniform or not being able to hold the hand of your significant other are set in place to keep a pristine and decent image of the armed forces. Anything that makes midshipmen or cadets look like degenerates will be sunk. This time, it wasn't. This is why I think Brennan publishing this story is admirable. Sure, it was just a Facebook group, but the Marines have the highest rate of sexual assault and abuse than any of the other branches. They are also notorious for not wanting women amongst their ranks. Brennan publishing this story cracks the sexist issues within the Marines - and to an extent the Navy - to the public eye. Most of the times cases like these are Court Marshaled, the military's judicial system, and a lot of the details are not disclosed to the press. Since this story was taken to the press first it will lift a veil in the corruption found within midshipmen. My problem with the story is how everyone else is talking about it, focusing it on the Facebook group itself and not the fact that both the Navy and the Marines have had multiple cases of sexual abuse resulting in officers keeping their jobs and midshipmen being damaged for life. The hierarchical system within the Military makes it hard for women and men who have been victims of abuse and harassment to press charges against their superiors. The bigger picture this is the patriarchal and sexist nature of the military as a whole. The military has been trying to push towards a more inclusive, an effort spearheaded by the Army, but there are obvious flaws with the plan and the biggest one is the culture surrounding certain branched such as the Marines. We now have the story, it's time to look deeper.
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AuthorHi! I'm Isabella Grullon. I am a junior journalism major at Ithaca College from the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
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