Lizak 1

Matthew Lizak

Professor Sheila Feilding

WRTC 103

October 5, 2018

Systemic Sexism

The Few, The Proud, The Sexist. For many Americans the lore of being in the military

starts in early childhood where children play with toy soldiers and GI Joe’s. However, for

females these mock frontline battles are the closest they will ever get to an actual fire fight.

Many females are turned away immediately because of their lack of physical strength or agility

and even if they do make it through the first cuts they are greeted with a failing one track system.

One boot camp survivor, author Kate Germano, wrote “Separate is Not Equal in The Marine

Corps,” published in 2018 in The New York Times, and she argues that female Marines are

unfairly put into supporting roles by an oppressive and unchanging set of rules present in the

Marine Corps. Germano uses recent evidence of female oppression in the military, along with

personal experience, and emotional language to create an appeal to her claim that females are

oppressed in the military.

In her article, Germano first sets the stage by describing one of the happiest days of a new

Marines life, graduation day. Those who are left can rest assured that the weeks of grueling

training and sleepless nights were all worth it for this moment. But, even graduation day is

different for female Marines. Females are given the option to sit or stand throughout the

ceremony, an option that is certainly not available for men. Germano continues by discussing

performance records for women at Paris Island where women were consistently outperformed by

men in nearly every graded category. She later states that not only are women underrepresented
 Lizak 2

in the Marine Corps they are simply not wanted to fill important positions like infantry officer or

Ranger. By targeting educated people with military interests Germano effectively conveys her

message through a conversational manner. Furthermore, Germano concludes by stating if the

military does not change its ways, they will be wasting female talent which is constantly

evolving as females redefine themselves through competitions like the CrossFit games.

Throughout her work, Germano uses many sources that build her credibility and appeal

to ethos, as well as formulate a strong argument. Her appeals to ethos start immediately when she

describes arriving “at Parris Island in June 2014 to command Fourth Battalion — the only

training unit for enlisted female recruits in the Marine Corps” (Germano par. 3). She describes

how female Marines were granted access to chairs and even given cups of cold water while their

graduation ceremony was going on. This directly opposes what the Marine Corps says it

accomplishes by “equal” training of both men and women. Drawing on her personal experience

in the Marines she later describes how “women hadn’t performed better than men in almost any

category since records had been kept. That included academics, attrition and injury rates,

marksmanship, even marching” (Germano par. 6). By using her personal experience with Marine

Corps training she effectively uses ethos to boost her credibility and prove to the reader that she

is a reputable source for information regarding female Marines.

Adding to her ethos appeals, Germano uses strong appeals to logos by citing many facts

and statistics along with her logical development of ideas throughout her work. She highlights

the fact that up until very recently many of the most challenging positions in the military have

been dominated entirely by males but, “This all changed when the Department of Defense

required that by 2016 all military occupations, including the infantry, be opened to women”

(Germano par. 8). This fact introduces and supports Germano’s claim that female marines were
 Lizak 3

in fact not even considered for infantry positions which were solely open to males even if there

were qualified females. To illustrate this point Germano continues with many statistics:

“About 500 Army women serve in combat jobs, 10 have graduated from the elite Ranger

school, and 74 have graduated from the infantry or armor basic leader’s course. They

have met the same exacting standards — for push-ups, speed and the weight they carry in

their packs — as the men. But only 11 female Marines have made it into the infantry.

And only one woman has made it through the punishing Marine infantry officer course”

(Germano par. 9).

These statistics are a few of many that logically support Germano’s main idea that women are

underutilized and oppressed into subordinate positions to men. All of these facts and statistics

build a strong appeal to logos and illustrate to the reader that this issue is very controversial and

worthy of discussion.

To further her rhetorical appeals Germano also employs a strong appeal to pathos in the

beginning and middle of her argument. Her introduction is filled with emotional language and

dramatic phrases that evoke sympathy for female marines; she notes the recruits were “mosquito-

bitten and sunburned” and also had “sand wedged under their fingernails and dug into their

scalps” (Germano par. 1). These images and subsequent phrases make the reader feel sympathy

for the female marines and therefore employ an excellent use of pathos. Adding to this idea are

phrases such as, “No one believed the women could do better” and “The slowest women in the

platoon set[s] the pace for runs” (Germano par. 6-13). All of these phrases create negative

emotions about women’s ability to complete tasks in a military setting. These words establish the

inequality that exists when women are constantly being compared to men in regard to the ability
 Lizak 4

to complete strenuous tasks, and are an appeal to pathos, or the readers emotions when

confronted with a polarizing issue.

However, Germano also includes multiple logical fallacies in her work which detract

from her main argument. One example of this is when she quoted a Marine Corps drill instructor

saying, “make sure the females make it over the walls in the obstacle course” (qtd. in Germano).

This quote is an example of allness and implies that all Marine Corps training for women based

upon the “everyone gets a prize” ideology which simply is not true for other Marine Corps

installments. Furthermore, Germano includes many instances of oversimplification by using

statements like “the corps dragged its feet” and “had lower expectations for women” (Germano

par. 5-9). By leaving out crucial explanation of these topics Germano takes away from the

validity of her argument because she lets the reader answer these questions by themselves.

Throughout her work Germano effectively employs the rhetorical devices of: ethos,

logos, and pathos in order to build her argument that females are oppressed in the Marines. By

stating relevant facts and statistics Germano makes the reader believe in her argument and

therefore get emotionally attached to it. Germano also relates her topic to the civilian world

where the image of female strength and courage are constantly being changed by competitions

like the CrossFit games. But her use or rather misuse of the logical fallacies of allness and

oversimplification in the middle of her argument detract from her overall argument. By doing so

readers are distracted from her main argument and instead focus on the trivial aspects of the

logical fallacies. Germano could have more effectively driven home her final point of

underutilization and oppression of females in the marines by not including logical fallacies in the

middle of her argument.

 Lizak 5

Works Cited

Germano, Kate. “Separate is Not Equal in The Marine Corps.” The New York Times, 31 Mar.

2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/sunday-review/marine-corps-women-

segregation.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-gender-and-

society&action=click&contentCollection=gender-and-

society&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=search&contentPlacement=1&p

gtype=sectionfront