Actually, it's about prudery.

Not a combat vet myself, or a vet of any kind, but... my understanding of heroism in combat relies heavily on the behavior of recipients of the Medal of Honor, and other citations for bravery. In essence, personal sacrifice to protect one's brother soldiers - or, as contemplated here, one's brother and sister soldiers.

Did sex have any bearing on past acts of bravery? Doubtful. Might it, on possible future acts? Perhaps. A cliche commonly invoked during the last flap about gays in the military concerned Athenian soldiers who allegedly were not only permitted but encouraged to form love interests among their fellows, with the thought that they might more fiercely defend each other and thus prevail. Might a fighting unit comprised of couples with a heightened natural protective instinct, whether or not reinforced by love and sex, be more effective than one of exclusive gender and repressed sexuality? Interesting concept... Joe Haldeman (a Viet Nam vet) in his classic novel The Forever War, tended to agree - and it was written 30 years ago.

[Note, incidentally, that the word 'fraternization' is derived from frater, Latin for 'brother'. My guess is, the misuse of the term for relations in the ranks comes from its earlier use in the phrase 'fraternization with the enemy' - lit., treating the enemy as a brother - which is a form of treason and punishable as such. Looked at in that way, it can be inferred that the Other Gender is also the Enemy.]

Exclusion of women from military units solely because they're women has its origin, I believe, in Crusader notions of chivalric 'purity' heavily overlain with bad old fashioned Puritan self-denial and given a high-gloss polish by Victorian/Edwardian Mediaevalist Revival romanticism (see also Wagner's "Ring Cycle" - it is no accident that WWI was the last war in which an appeal to chivalry was even attempted). The key to the twisted psychology is repression - if you put the genders together but forbid what would otherwise be natural tendencies, you guarantee the very tensions, and their dangerously unnatural releases, that destroy a unit's cohesion; it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If, however, you allow bonds to form that reinforce morale, esprit de corps, and the rest of the euphemisms for the brotherly love of comrades in arms, you possibly make that unit stronger than "the sum of several of its parts".

In the face of modern warfare, where women have been forced by immediate danger to enter combat - or, in the case of Israel, where every able body is needed regardless of gender - there is no doubt that bravery, skill and leadership in combat are not exclusively sited on the Y-chromosome. Exclusion of women from US combat forces is the last, crumbling bastion of a society which has otherwise evolved to suit the environment.

E'