[USMC Chuter]

Ugh...I'll weigh in (again), against my better judgement.. The bottom line, all politically-correct shit aside, is that the infantry is testosterone-charged. The kind of guys who join the infantry, by and large, are motivated by three things. Sex, beer, and fighting. The beer and the fighting are usually means to the sex, if not the foreplay itself.

Yes, there are the issues of general physical abilities. Yes, there is the idea of chivalry having no place on the battlefield.. But the bare-bones fact is that sexual tension has NO place in an infantry or other combat-arms unit. Despite what people may want to believe, it WOULD be an issue. It DOES exist in EVERY integrated unit. In every unit where males and females serve together, someone somewhere is getting some on the sly (yes, even in field situations folks). It's a managable issue, but not one that needs to be added to the burden of the infantry.

I do not mean in any way to imply that females shouldn't be in the military. They should. And they should serve alongside men. Women are going to find themselves in combat situations in today's world, and they do just fine. But ending up in combat by way of circumstances is different from ending up in combat because that's your primary specialty. Combat arms are all-balls for a reason, and in my opinion that reason is sex far more so than any of the other reasons we like to talk about when this topic comes up.