Female Civil War re-enactors portray women who passed as men to fight. Female Civil War re-enactors march proudly onto the battlefields where their forerunners disguised themselves to fight.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2014/04/female_civil_war_re_enactors_portray_women_who_passed_as_men_to_fight.html

Kim Hopfer, a mother of two, lives on a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She works as a truck driver, and each year spends her one week of vacation re-enacting the Civil War—not in a hoop skirt and bonnet, knitting socks, but in a pair of Union blue trousers, among the ranks of the 138th Pennsylvania.

The re-enacting community often derides wannabe re-enactors whose personas are historically inaccurate as “farbish,” but in fact Kim is far from farbish. She represents one of as many as a thousand women who served in the Union and Confederate armies during the war, cross-dressed as men.

One of these soldiers was Frances Louisa Clayton, alias Jack Williams, a Minnesotan who enlisted with her husband in 1861. To pass as one of the boys, she took up drinking, smoking, chewing, and swearing. When Frances’ husband died, a few feet in front of her at Stones River, she stepped over his body and kept fighting.

Many like Frances enlisted with loved ones; a woman from Tennessee named Melverina Elverina Peppercorn joined the Confederate army to be with her brother. At least two women went to war with their fathers.

 But women also enlisted for many of the same reasons soldiers enlist today: patriotism and adventure, honor, economics. (A maid in New York at the time could earn $4 to $7 a month for her services; a Union soldier got $13 a month.)

The war ignited the imaginations and ambitions of young women like Emily, a 19-year-old from Brooklyn who wanted to enlist because she believed she was Joan of Arc reincarnate. Harriet Merill joined the 59th New York Infantry in order to leave behind the brothel where she worked.

what is the real reason right wing leaning men are so dismissive of woman, i've suggested mommy issues, afraid of being shown up, need to feel important.

 i would like to see someone ask those woman why they support the the centuries long war against them, they quickly say it's false and no one ever seems to ask why they think that or how can they deny it given glaring evidence.

Although she lives in town, this was her first time re-enacting at Gettysburg, and she was still trying to adjust to the heat. “You got to march, you got to keep time, you have all these clothes on, you have a 12-pound rifle plus however much weight in gear, plus all the wool that you have on.”

Raising her boot for me to have look, Kim said, “These are the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever had on my feet. They’re very hard. They’re very flat.” She admitted that she and some of her comrades “kind of have a Dr. Scholls thing going on in there” to make it a bit more comfortable. “Your feet hurt. Your back hurts. Your shoulder hurts. Your arms hurt. But it’s worth it. It’s really worth it.”

Many did wrap and hide and do whatever they had to do. At least five women fought in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, including an unidentified drummer girl who swore that once she healed from her injuries she would never wear a dress again.

In the mid-19th century, no one carried an ID card. To enlist, a woman basically needed only to cut off her hair and pick an alias. Army surgeons conducting physical examinations often checked only to see if a recruit had teeth to tear open powder cartridges and a finger to pull a trigger.

Once she enlisted, however, a female soldier had to learn to pass as one of the boys. Loreta Velazquez sometimes wore a fake mustache. Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, a farm girl from New York who served as Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, wrote home to brag of a fight in which she gave another private in her regiment “three or four pretty good cracks.”

Summing up this kind of identity and gender performance, Sarah Emma Edmonds, a Canadian who served as a Union soldier, nurse, and spy under the alias Frank Thompson, wrote in her memoir that the war was a time for “entire self-forgetfulness.”

i see a few things that republicans could use to berate those women and question their sexual persuasion, bottom line they were discriminated against and there to my knowledge has not been a rational reason to continue to exclude them.