Saw this posted on another site. Interesting perspective:
"Normally I just lurk here, but since everyone is piling on and I've never seen this board have so much activity I figured I'd provide my own perspective.
I miss my rate. When I was joining up, the rates and their cool symbols and all that were a part (not a decisive part mind you, but a part) of the reason I picked the Navy. I enjoyed our history, our sense of community pride and identity. I enjoyed the good natured poking at the other rates.
I am (was) a CTR. Or, a "Real CT" as the retired CTRCM who does goundskeeping at Corry Station would tell you. A "Retard" if you ask CTNs. Along with CTIs and CTMs, we were the OG CTs back in the 40s (There was another, but that rate was killed a long time ago) so we had a proud little history of our own.
But being a CTR, I can see clearly why this systemic change is happening. Back in the day when CTRs were created, we did basically one well defined thing. But as time moved one... we began doing other things. So many other things today that when someone looking to sign up asks me what a CTR does, I really couldn't tell them. That's because we do everything. We have many separate career paths that have absolutely nothing to do with one another. In fact, our A school, to most CTRs, is laughably useless. I for instance do nothing that even touches what was taught to me.
That makes it a 4 month long waste of money in many cases. But the waste of money does not stop there. Once in the fleet, these people basically now have to go through an "A school lite" to learn how to do their actual job, because they learned zero about it in their job school. Obviously, I can't go into specifics. But there already exists a Navy school that would have prepared me directly for the job I'm doing and it would have saved the Navy much time and money to send me to that school instead of the standard CTR one. But alas, due to the way ratings are set up, this more optimal route was not possible.
This same story is repeated for many other rates as well, I imagine.
I understand the break with long held tradition is really hard to all and really disheartening to some. The more conservative among us are positing some liberal conspiracy to protect the feelings of those who sexually identify as attack helicopters. But really, look at the facts of the matter. You all know the big problems, like ones I just described earlier, that the rating system had. Did they have to get rid of ratings and give us cold numbers? No, probably not. They could have done anything.
This is not merely some silly attempt to just get "man" out of titles. The biggest proof of this is that the #1 most common title in the Navy is now Seaman. They were changing everything. Nothing was safe (well except the title Chief... maybe that was safe). There's no reason for them to have kept "seaman" unless they absolutely wanted to. They killed airman and fireman after all. All announcements and talking points as well don't go near anything gender related. That dumb idea may have been what sparked this one, but it clearly didn't have anything to do with the end result.
Community identity can and will be reestablished, even with cold hard numbers as our titles. For proof of this you need look no further than the Marines or Army. I know hardly anything about those two branches, but contained in what little I do know, is the knowledge that 11Bs and 0311s think they are the shit.
In summary, while sad and nobody likes to see long held tradition die, I think some sort of huge shakeup like this was needed and I think this will work out to the Navy's advantage in the long run. And I don't think it's some bleeding heart liberal conspiracy to take down the patriarchy.
This is just the beginning... obviously more big changes are coming down the pipeline after this. I know that cynicism runs strong among us (myself included), but give this new thing a chance. Sometimes change is good.
-The B540 formerly known as CTR."
