Female reenactors as soldiers?

[Appius Solanius Pertinax]

Well... I'm not asking because we're thinking about including women into our group. We did that right at the beginning. And we're sensible enough to ban things like long hair spilling from under the helmet ourselves.

I'm asking because recently we've encountered some of those deeply entrenched views on the other side of the argument. It doesn't matter that the female has crew-cut, wears the same kit as all the other soldiers, and, what with helmet and armor and bracae and shield and proper wide tunic and everything, you have to be real close and coming from a good angle to be able to tell she's a woman. She's a woman, and this fact alone is enough.

And you can imagine that having to tell the female members of one's group "sorry, you can't go to that event, the guys who run it banned female soldiers" is not something one enjoys...

So I wanted to find out how many people accept this, how many are strictly against it, how many take the middle ground and accept/ban it depending on the quality of the impression, and I'm hoping to learn what percentage of groups (and consequently events) follows which view. I want to know how often we'll have to deal with this in the future...