In the 1989 film "When Harry Met Sally," Billy Crystal proclaims, "Men and women can never be friends, the sex thing always gets in the way."
Nowhere is this more on display than in efforts to integrate men and women into the military. Defense Secretary William Cohen's announcement that he would leave the current structure of basic training in place while directing the services to ensure that the sexes are sufficiently separated in their otherwise integrated barracks does little to solve the immediate challenges. These challenges were highlighted last December by Cohen's own commission on gender-integrated training, formed after revelations from the Army's Aberdeen, Md., training facility and headed by former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
Kassebaum Baker recommended establishing separate, gender-segregated 60-person platoons within integrated training companies.
Platoons are the fundamental military organization, where unit cohesion, mutual support and closely shared experiences are nurtured. These units not only train together, but also live, sleep and eat together. Trainees are energetic, healthy young men and women, usually right out of high school. Many are away from home for the first time and, as was noted in a congressional hearing, are "in their sexual prime." Training cadres found it difficult to maintain discipline and to establish uniform, understandable, workable rules about fraternization and dating during limited off-duty time. Accordingly, rules have evolved, such as the "no talk, no touch" rule discovered by the Kassebaum Baker commission, making it difficult for recruits to work together and forcing platoons to be artificially reconfigured. If the objective is to foster an environment where men and women are treated equally and work together regardless of gender, allowing trainers to establish rules making it difficult for trainees to interact is inconsistent with the goal.
