Female Marine Vets: Sexist Culture Put Us at Risk

Female Marine Vets: Sexist Culture Put Us at Risk
Oct 11, 2012
Stars and Stripes
by Jennifer Hlad

WASHINGTON -- At Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, female recruits learn to blouse their new camouflage trousers above their combat boots. They learn to low crawl under barbed wire and shoot an M-16. They learn to fight. And, several female Marines told Stars and Stripes, they learn that they must decide which of the three types of Marine women they will be: a slut, a dyke or a bitch.

"You are told that pretty much any contact with male Marines makes you a slut," said Katie Appeldorn, who served in the Marine Corps from 2006 to 2010. "It is automatically assumed she is sleeping around. Dyke isn't necessarily a lesbian, but she is thought to be.

"Bitch is what you are told to be. It basically means you don't give the men around you an inch."

The DOD and the individual services have spent hundreds of hours over the past decade talking tough about sexual assault and sexual harassment -- vowing to hold commanders and attackers responsible and stressing a "zero tolerance" policy. But Appeldorn and other female Marines said they learned early that there is also zero tolerance for women perceived to be "asking for it."
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