Women in combat

Both NPR and CNN are reporting today on Congressional committee hearings on the subject of women in combat.  Of course this makes my blood boil, that 30 years later we are still talking about whether American women can "handle" combat, when they do, and they have since history began.  If men don't like to think about women menstruating or wiping themselves in the field (or whatever bothers them so much), that's on them.  I spent 12 years in the National Guard, and though I didn't serve in "combat," I trained in the field with my fellow soldiers, sleeping in tents, eating MREs, and carrying a weapon, etc etc.  I'm shocked that women continue to perform these jobs without full compensation or recognition.  Failure to officially recognize their contributions seems like nothing more than a blatant effort to cheat women out of promotions they've earned, undeer the guise of "protecting" them  Hmmm, doesn't that sound familiar???  They used the same argument when they "protected" women from voting for countless decades. The 2008 documentary Lioness does a terrific job of showing what female soldiers actually do in war zones, and how it affects them (and how the military benefits from their service without rewarding them appropriately).