George Gilder on United States Marine Corps

“Otherwise the epitome of male liberation is Marine Corps boot camp, twelve weeks without a moment of liberty, all devoted chiefly to the extirpation of feminine ties and sentiments in the assembled young men. From the moment one arrives, the drill instructors begin a torrent of misogynistic and anti-individualist abuse. The good things are manly and collective; the despicable are feminine and individual. Virtually every sentence, every description, every lesson embodies this sexual duality, and the female anatomy provides a rich field of metaphor for every degradation.”

“When you want to create a solitary group of male killers, that is what you do, you kill the women in them. That is the lesson of the Marines. And it works. Artfully exploiting the internal pressures of the group, the instructors manage to evoke a fanatical commitment from almost every recruit. They arrive as various and rebellious boys, swearing under their breath what they will do to any drill instructor who lays a hand on them. They end up, after twelve weeks of manhandling, often including violent physical abuse, gladly and voluntarily making large financial gifts to the instructors. It is the closest thing to an act of love that happens at Parris Island.”

“Most of those who have experienced these sentiments would testify that they are not exactly homosexual. They do not represent a shift to males of sentiments conventionally directed toward females. They represent rather a distinctive bonding process that corresponds very closely to the kind of male tie that Lionel Tiger has controversially envisaged. It has its uses in protecting a society from its enemies or in abetting the performance of crucial group activities. But it is deadly to individuality and civilization. It is deadly to the setiments that women evoke from men: love, creativity, nurturance, commitment to the future. Above all, it is perfectly barren (in the etymolohical sense, from the old French word bar, meaning man). The male group, separated from women, is the sterile solidarity. There is no real love, no individuality, and no procreative instinct.”