On the heels of last month's exciting news that the U.S. military's elite forces may finally admit women come some concerns -- not about women's abilities, but about the "sexual distractions" they might cause.
Former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb told NBC News that introducing women into these previously all-male units would almost definitely cause distractions.
"How do you practically expect men and women not to have sex together under extreme stress, a half a world away from America, and how does that affect unit effectiveness?" He asked.
Former Airborne Ranger and Special Forces sergeant Jack Murphy agreed with Webb's assessment:
It can shift the focus of doing the job if everybody's trying to get laid. I know it sounds incredibly juvenile, but it's incredibly true. Throwing a woman in the middle of a team like that is just going to make the entire team useless because, in the end, there will be so much infighting, so much drama.
Though Webb and Murphy don't question women's ability to do Special Ops jobs, Tracie Egan Morrisey at Jezebel claims that their statements reflect a lack of confidence in their own competence and preparation.
"If the military has such little faith in Special Ops members' abilities to control their own impulses, doesn't it mean that the military has done a shitty job in training them?" Egan wrote.
The directors of Special Ops have commissioned the RAND Corporation to survey its men about the "social ripples" of adding women to their units. Let's hope this "sexual distraction" fear doesn't get in the way of qualified women serving in their preferred fields.
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