Man overboard!
Oh, wait, that might be sexist:
The Navy announced Thursday that it’s removing all historic job titles and replacing them with occupational specialty codes, as opposed to direct titles, effectively removing the word “man” from job titles in a roundabout way.
According to Navy Times, what this decision means in practice is that “Fire Controlman 1st Class Joe Sailor…would be Petty Officer 1st Class Joe Sailor.”
“We’re going to immediately do away with rating titles and address each other by just our rank as the other services do,” Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Robert Burke told Navy Times. “We recognize that’s going to be a large cultural change, it’s not going to happen overnight, but the direction is to start exercising that now.”
Denying that some people are men and some are women is f'sure a cultural shift.
The purpose of the military, last time I checked, was not to be an engine for social change but rather to fight wars.
The military sometimes has been vehicle for positive ocial change–an example is that the military was instrumental in knocking down barriers to racial integration. But this was based on experiences, not on some pathetic attempt to be politically correct.
The kinds of rules the Navy is adopting, based not on experience but on somebody in Washington wanting to be au courant, require a certain blindness to reality.
But, hey, the Navy is only tasked with keeping us safe from foreign foes. We can afford a bit of frivolity when such a minor mission, no?