Marines Do It Best

I decided to interview a friend of mine who is primarily a mentor to me. Her name is MIDN 1/C (Midshipman First Class) Bernadette Bell. I mainly call her MIDN Bell or just Bell considering the environment we share. I interviewed her because she has already completed most of the initial path all female Marine Corps Officers must take and I myself am going down the very same path. I am focusing on the female stereotype mainly because I want to observe the effects of the female uprising and Bell’s role and the fact that it has impact on me results in a perfect interview for my paper. After our junior year in college all Marine Corps Midshipmen must attend OCS (Officer Candidate School). I asked Bell several questions about her attendance there. Some of the answers I received were not too surprising like when they showered they could not move without bumping each other and every place they went they were expected to move orderly and with haste. But the answer that I got that fit my stereotype the best is that throughout OCS the platoons are divided by sex. So Bell and every female before and after her have only ever participated in activities with other females. She told me everything they did there was with their platoon and with only females. What I do not understand is how that would give us an advantage as women officers when we have to go out to the fleet and take charge of males as well. It does not give us any benefit because I feel the males will only respect us because of the chevrons we wear on our uniform and only to our faces because they will feel more capable than us as males. Bell has given me a lot of advice and most of it involves bettering myself or I will not make it when I get to OCS and definitely not through TBS (The Basic School after I graduate). OCS is a six week long course when you attend it after college. We learn tactics, book knowledge, physical fitness, and get tested on it all. TBS is six months long and it is after we graduate college. There we have to learn everything in generalization that our enlisted learn in specific detail as one job. In other words we learn some of everything as an officer while and enlisted man learns one thing in specific detail. We do it that way so as an officer we learn how to properly utilize our enlisted me and know their jobs and what they are good at. Interviewing her stirred up more curiosity in me because now I wonder why are males and females separated during training but expected to function so thoroughly during battle and within the fleet. When I was in the United Kingdom I found out women are still not allowed to join the Marines over there and when I told one of their military females that I was going to be a Marine she was ecstatic and thought it was amazing. By this I have realized that maybe I have taken advantage of what has been provided for me as a female over here in the United States but I suppose I feel like that because I wonder why taunt and tease me? If you are going to give me a taste of the pie why can I not just have a slice and we share the whole thing?