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Old 02-15-2013, 11:00 PM   #11
Irish Wolf
 
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

If removal of tattoos is simple and relatively painless, I'd make it necessary for every recruit to have such identifying marks removed. ("You do not belong to your clan, maggot! You do not have a family! The Marines are your family now! And you will receive Marine markings when you have earned them!")

They could, of course, always be replaced if/when the individual musters out, should said individual desire them. (The Nahal in your example might elect to have his tattoos back, assuming he musters out on his homeworld; then again, if he's been tattooed by the Corps, he may regard those tats as being of greater significance than those provided locally.)
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Old 02-15-2013, 11:47 PM   #12
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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If removal of tattoos is simple and relatively painless, I'd make it necessary for every recruit to have such identifying marks removed. ("You do not belong to your clan, maggot! You do not have a family! The Marines are your family now! And you will receive Marine markings when you have earned them!")
In 784 cases out of 785 I would agree with Sousa accompaniment. And that could still be good psychology with respect to Nahalese — I'm not sure.

Nearly all Imperial Marines recruits must perforce be dealing with culture shock; it is very likely taken into account by the psychoengineers who devise the boot camp experience when they adjust the degree of stress to produce an optimum trade-off between resocialisation, brutalisation, resentment, and neurotic breakdown. I'm just wondering whether perhaps erasing a reb's tattoos would be too stressful, produce too much resentment, and perhaps even produce a counter-productive subconscious feeling that the recruit is a strey* who ought to be diffident and passive. Nahalese have it deeply ingrained that a person without tattoos who takes up arms is a dastard.

What about this: at the Imperial Marines boot camp that collects recruits from Nahal (and perhaps all), recruits have all their tattoos erased, but they get a class number temporarily tattooed onto their right chest and their left and right hands temp-tattooed red and cyan "so that they poor dumb muddyfeet can learn to tell left from right". These belittling tattoos are replaced (with, say, name on the right chest, marines crest on the left at the end of basic training (16 weeks). Designated tattoos are added after Infantry School and Commando School; when the recruit takes solemn vows and gets his or her bionic reinforcement installed her or she is free to wear whatever tattoos he or she chooses, but it is common (at that camp) to add, say, a large regimental back piece.

Perhaps each regiment that has passed through that sector has a cohort of members, recruited while it was there and of corresponding seniority, among whom the distinctive tattoos remain common for decades.
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Old 02-16-2013, 12:13 AM   #13
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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If removal of tattoos is simple and relatively painless, I'd make it necessary for every recruit to have such identifying marks removed. ("You do not belong to your clan, maggot! You do not have a family! The Marines are your family now! And you will receive Marine markings when you have earned them!")

They could, of course, always be replaced if/when the individual musters out, should said individual desire them. (The Nahal in your example might elect to have his tattoos back, assuming he musters out on his homeworld; then again, if he's been tattooed by the Corps, he may regard those tats as being of greater significance than those provided locally.)
PAINLESS! What do you mean painless you miserable little worm! You wanna be a Marine you're gonna earn it or I'll know the reason why!
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Old 02-16-2013, 02:10 AM   #14
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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What about this: at the Imperial Marines boot camp that collects recruits from Nahal (and perhaps all), recruits have all their tattoos erased, but they get a class number temporarily tattooed onto their right chest and their left and right hands temp-tattooed red and cyan "so that they poor dumb muddyfeet can learn to tell left from right". These belittling tattoos are replaced (with, say, name on the right chest, marines crest on the left at the end of basic training (16 weeks). Designated tattoos are added after Infantry School and Commando School; when the recruit takes solemn vows and gets his or her bionic reinforcement installed her or she is free to wear whatever tattoos he or she chooses, but it is common (at that camp) to add, say, a large regimental back piece.

Perhaps each regiment that has passed through that sector has a cohort of members, recruited while it was there and of corresponding seniority, among whom the distinctive tattoos remain common for decades.
In that case, I'd definitely make it all recruits; otherwise, you might have the situation of a Nahal seeing his squadmates as less than men, because they don't have tattoos. If everybody is marked the same way, though, that allows for those cultures that require such markings for adulthood/manhood, while maintaining the uniformity that is so important for any military enterprise.

In USAF basic training we had a process whereby we were "pickled", or issued our unmarked OG-507 green fatigues, during the first week of training. (To that point, we were "rainbows", in civilian clothing, and even freshly pickled trainees were entitled to look down on us.) Once we made it to the third week, we were "canned pickles" - given authorization to affix nametags and USAF tags to the uniforms. (Airman Basic, the rank of every recruit at least until he/she clears basic training, has no rank insignia.)

The terminology has probably changed since, as even the AF has adopted a camo fatigue design, but I have no doubt the traditions remain the same.
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Old 02-16-2013, 03:26 AM   #15
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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In that case, I'd definitely make it all recruits; otherwise, you might have the situation of a Nahal seeing his squadmates as less than men, because they don't have tattoos.
Nahal is in Cetus Sector, so rebs recruited to the Imperial Service on Nahal will collect at Cetus SHQ (which is on and around Eden III) for training, orientation, indoctrination etc. The Imperial SHQ includes the HQ for a Marines division, bases for the sector reserve, and boot camp for the divisional recruitment program. (Recruits are not collected from all over the Empire for training as a central location because travel times are too long.)

If this custom were applied to all recruits in the marines recruit training program at Cetus Division on Eden III, then parochial Nahalese rebs and everyone they trained with would be treated the same way, but the characteristic tattoos would still be shared only by those 4–5% of marines initially recruited in Cetus Sector. The other 21 boot camps would presumably have other peculiarities adopted as adaptations to their queer local circumstances.

Marines regiments are slowly rotated through different sectors. Ideally they ought to spend fifteen years in each sector before being rotated to the next, and there is a 345-year cycle of deployments. In practice, of course, deployments in response to operational exigencies make the actual movements of regiments irregular and unpredictable. Anyway, a regiment spends about fifteen years in a sector receiving replacements from the corresponding division's replacement depot. Then it moves on. So a regiment tends to consist of up to about four or five cohorts of marines, each recruited and trained in a given sector in a given ~15-year period and with corresponding seniority. The regiments that were in Cetus longest ago will have a few very senior marines who still have their Eden III tattoos. Regiments that are still there now have young marines of up to fifteen years' experience with Eden III tattoos: their older and more senior veterans were recruited in other sectors, before their regiments came to Cetus, and they went through boot training in different divisional boot camps.

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If everybody is marked the same way, though, that allows for those cultures that require such markings for adulthood/manhood, while maintaining the uniformity that is so important for any military enterprise.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Do you think that an adequate degree of uniformity can be maintained on a merely divisional/sector scale? Or do even recruits in distant Virgo have to be trained by a program designed to accommodate the oddities of Nahalese? It seems that it would be a lot easier to devise 22 slightly-different programs each capable of digesting recruits from ~34–35 worlds than it would be to devise just one suitable to recruits from all 785 worlds.
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Old 02-16-2013, 04:22 AM   #16
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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In several of the thousand-odd societies in my setting tattoos and other body modifications are used as markers or components of status, group affiliation, individual identity, and even gender identity. For example there is one planet, Nahal, where there are two recognised gender roles, one of which is distinguished by wearing conspicuous tattoos (and, usually, a gun). If you erase or suppress a Nahalese "reb"s tattoos (especially when you take away his side-arm) he is not merely anonymised, but emasculated. On the other hand, if you don't erase or suppress an Aotearoan's tattoos you can't suppress his family identity.

What ought the Imperial Marines to adopt as policy towards tattoos on recruits in basic training?
I'd suggest they should perform thorough body holophotography and -scanning of all recruits that are (or are suspected to be) from such societies, and record the material. Then they remove any tattoos, scarifications and piercings, and upon the termination of service, even if it is a dishonourable discharge or the equivalent, the armed forces will restore all the marks, to a tech level-appropriate degree of exactitude, swiftly and free of charge (if the person desires this), as part of the process of shipping the person back to his home world (or whatever other planet, moon or station the person wants to be discharged to).
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Old 02-16-2013, 04:31 AM   #17
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That said, I wonder if simply making sure to mix up recruits, so that no two from the same world are in the same platoon during training, would be enough? If nobody recognizes or cares about your family identity, that should be effective.
I think it's less about family identity and more about status, including (for some of Brett's world's culturs) gender status.

Males from those planets are used to being recognized and acknowledged as males because they have those tattoos and carry a pistol at the belt. They've grown up in such a culture. That's how they see the world. They don't note gender based on body shape or facial structure, but on the presence or absence of tattoos and a sidearm.

So what you do, when using your proposal, is you strip away those gender markers, and then you put the sole person from that culture in among a bunch of recruits all of whom are from other cultures. And then this sole recruit has a success experience of being recognized as being the gender he needs to be acknowledged as in spite of the absence of the traditional gender markers of his culture.

(Note that we don't know whether it's the male or the female gender that has tattoos and carries a sidearm at all times. Or even if it is reasonable to use terms like "male" and "female" for that culture. But presumably it is very important, on the psychological level, for members of both genders to be acknowledges as the gender that they are.)
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Old 02-16-2013, 04:49 AM   #18
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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I think it's less about family identity and more about status, including (for some of Brett's world's culturs) gender status.

Males from those planets are used to being recognized and acknowledged as males because they have those tattoos and carry a pistol at the belt. They've grown up in such a culture. That's how they see the world. They don't note gender based on body shape or facial structure, but on the presence or absence of tattoos and a sidearm.
And indeed they recognise themselves as reb because they have tattoos and a sidearm. Being tattooed is an important part of a reb's gender identity, and removing his tattoos is in some ways like performing sex-reassignment surgery.
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Old 02-16-2013, 07:23 AM   #19
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And indeed they recognise themselves as reb because they have tattoos and a sidearm. Being tattooed is an important part of a reb's gender identity, and removing his tattoos is in some ways like performing sex-reassignment surgery.
Because he expects to no longer be recognize as the gender he is.

That's exactly why it moight be possible to turn things around if he's placed among a lot of men who recognize him as male because of what he has between his legs. It helps him get over the silliness of the tattoo tradition.

(Of course, if he is a she who still needs or wants to be recognized as male, it'd be more problematic.)
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Old 02-16-2013, 05:56 PM   #20
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Do you think that an adequate degree of uniformity can be maintained on a merely divisional/sector scale? Or do even recruits in distant Virgo have to be trained by a program designed to accommodate the oddities of Nahalese? It seems that it would be a lot easier to devise 22 slightly-different programs each capable of digesting recruits from ~34–35 worlds than it would be to devise just one suitable to recruits from all 785 worlds.
I think you are going to have 22 slightly different programs regardless of the official status. Given the Empires stated psychological skills and high-initiative mindset, each training faculty is going to adjust to match the local cultures to best prepare the recruits simply as part of doing their job. Also the travel times involved means there will be a slow diffusion of techniques rather than a centralized repository of knowledge.
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