Raby Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, gave the “directive”, and now … it’s going to be reality. The Marine Corps are set to officially rename 19 job titles in order to make the branch more “gender neutral” (this is the first year that combat jobs are open to both women and men).

Goodbye “infantryman.” Hello “basic infantry Marine.”

From the Washington Post:

The list of jobs removes the word “man” from 15 of the titles and replaces it with Marine. In other changes, “antitank missleman” has been renamed “antitank gunner,” and “field artillery operations man” is now “field artillery operations chief.” The other three title changes pertain to positions associated with reconnaissance Marine (formerly reconnaissance man) occupational specialties.

Some titles will remain the same, such as rifleman and mortarman, but the mere possibility of Marines having to possibly change their title to rifleperson spawned plenty of indignation.

The Marines are scheduled to make an official announcement very soon.

Here’s a chart that lists the changes according to MOS:

marines changes chart photo

For any further pertinent news regarding this story and the upcoming announcement, this post will reflect it through an update. So stay tuned.