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"I'm not interested in "soldiers" who can't fend off a rapist."

Those rapists are every bit as much a danger to their unit as the women they've assaulted who were unable to defend themselves. Personally, I have plenty of respect for those who've put their butts on the line to defend this country and who've followed the laws and rules they agreed to follow. As such, I have far more respect for the women who've been raped or assaulted than I do for the out of control idiots who attacked them.

That being said, I don't think mixed units is a good idea. The last thing you want to do is distract your soldiers. This, however, is no execuse for the dishonor those rapists have brought upon themselves and the service.

I find rape reprehensible. Particularly disgusting is the "date rape" situation where someone you know takes advantage of you and dares you to do anything about it. That's the toughest (and most despicable) of all for it obliterates any pretense of rape's being a crime of violence against "women" and personalizes the sexual predation.

But as awful as that is (as well as perfectly predictable, given the way our society is saturated with for-profit "Free Speech" these days), I have to wonder at the smarts of women who join military units given the brutally upfront testaments re: the favorite form of "Stress Relief" soldiers will detail at a "conservative" sites such as this where families of soldiers hang out for news and support.

Camille Paglia puts it well:

And unfortunately what's happening today, with this kind of very sanctimonious and sermonizing talk about sex that's coming out of the rape counselors and so on, people do not realize, with all their good intentions, how oppressive this is to sex, what a disaster this is to the mind, what a disaster this is to the spirit, to allow the rape counselors to take over the cultural stage. Now the work that they do is good, and it's wonderful that they're there. But we cannot have this scenario being projected of male rapaciousness and brutality and female victimage.
We have got to make women realize they are responsible, that sexuality is something that belongs to them. They have an enormous power in their sexuality. It's up to them to use it correctly and to be wise about where they go and what they do. And I'm accused of being "anti-woman" because of this attitude? Because I'm bringing common sense back to the rape discourse?

Today these women want the freedom that we won, but they don't want to acknowledge the risk. The minute you meet a man, the minute you go out wiht a man, the minute you go to a bar to have a drink, there is a risk. You have to accept that part of the sizzle of sex come from the danger of sex. You can be overpowered.
I mean, wake up to reality. This is male sex. There's an attraction between the sexes that we're not totally in control of. The idea that we can regulate it by passing campus grivance committee rules is madness. My kind of feminism stresses personal responsibility. I've never been raped but I've been very vigilant -- I'm constantly reading the signals.
Sex, Art and American Culture, Camille Paglia

Dartmouth in Animal House Porn Shocker