USMC Scandal, Continued

American Military News has interviews with some female Marines, at least one of whom appears in the database of nude female Marines. At least the ones they spoke to all agree that this is a problem with male Marines, period. At no point do any of them appear to entertain any idea that there's any additional discipline that might be imposed on the exercise of sexuality in general.

Maxmilian, the creator of Terminal Lance, agrees. The idea that discipline should be imposed on sexuality is right out:

To the first point, everyone sends nudes in 2017. There are so many photos of my modestly large penis out there that you could fill a 7-ton if you printed them out. The argument that women are asking for it is rapey as hell and straight up victim-blaming. Nude photos sent or received, unless otherwise specified, have a pretty clear implication of privacy involved in it.

That's a pretty big generational shift. Even 20 years ago, the mere existence of nude photos -- physical ones, which couldn't be instantly transmitted around the globe -- was pretty racy stuff.

This is an area where the law is really not very helpful. In general, if I take a photograph that photograph is my intellectual property and I can share it if I want to do. If I share it with you and you, without my consent, publish it widely I can sue you for copyright infringement. But if you took the photo -- even if it's a photo of me taken without my consent, if I was in a public place at the time -- you can do whatever you want with it. It's your intellectual property.

One woman in another context tried to copyright the image of her own breasts as a method of using copyright infringement law to get her images taken down from 'revenge porn' sites. The method seems clumsy and impossible to extend to a broader set of cases, and may only have worked because she herself took the photos. If her boyfriend had taken them, it's not clear to me that she would have had a claim to copyright his photos (taken with her consent) even though they were images of her.

It may also be the case that copyright law, which is how we usually control images, really misses the point of what's going on here. We have stalker laws that punish what is otherwise perfectly legal behavior, for example, taking photos of someone in a public place. Perhaps the nature of the offense here is such that the ordinary laws shouldn't apply.

Maximilian speaks to this issue:

There’s an underlying reality that needs to be addressed, and that male Marines need to really internalize here.

Female Marines are female.

We can talk about one team, one fight and all of that, but at the end of the day they are still women.

He goes on to note that women are only 7% of the Marine Corps, and thus can't effect changes in the culture on their own. Male Marines will have to help them, if it is to be done.

Nevertheless, I still think that the coed combat arms are going to present a very real readiness concern that earlier integration did not. The Marine Corps' leadership was prescient about it, but they were told to shut up and stop thinking by Secretary Ray Mabus. Here are the first fruits.

UPDATE: The DB takes another swing.