Apres les metrosexuals, les deluge?

Despite having seen some of the most bloody fighting World War II had to offer (five years in North Africa and Southern Europe), my father still looked back on his service as the best time in his life. He loved the camaraderie, the discipline, the purpose -- and he loved the right to be aggressive. I'm not saying that my father was an unusually violent or aggressive man. He was simply a young man with a lot of normal testosterone flowing in his body. There's no getting away from the fact that this testosterone almost certainly elevates aggression -- not weird, psychopathic aggression, but the kind that leaves a man hot under the collar when a store clerk is impolite, while his wife manages to ignore the whole thing. I also don't think my father was unusual in finding war stimulating. I gather from Milblogs, from military memoirs, from psychological studies, etc., that many men do not find military service entirely distasteful, even during war time. If one accepts as true my premise that ordinary, well-socialized young men with appropriate testosterone levels are more prone to aggression, it falls to a society to figure out how to channel that aggression. Throughout history, war has been one way of doing so -- indeed, probably the primary way of doing so -- since it takes that male energy, focuses it away from the community, and uses it to acquire land and wealth (and, in the old days, labor in the form of slaves). This leads me to the question lurking behind this post: what happens when you make military service a societally unacceptable option for young men and, indeed, encourage young men to feminize themselves? I think that's certainly true in our society, especially among the middle and upper classes. Examples: **Middle class schools are actively teaching their young people that there is no such thing as a moral war, or moral military service. I've documented that fight here. Just the latest kerfuffle in this battle for young men arises because of the students in Maryland who protested the "Peace Studies" course taught at their school. **Metrosexuals are all the rage. For those of you unversed in this new terminology, metrosexuals are liberated young men perfectly comfortable wearing makeup and dishing dirt with the girls, all the while identifying themselves as heterosexuals. They're not gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), they're just femi-men. At my local mall, I see young men at the department store with bouffant hairstyles, carefully applied makeup, delicate lip gloss, and bare midriffs -- looking much more beautiful and feminine than the girls attached to their arms. **Men in movies are young and soft. No rugged Clark Gable, Gregory Peck or John Wayne to be seen. They're pretty boys: Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio and Orlando Bloom. Kimberley A. Strassel is not alone in lamenting the missing American man at the movie theater. **At the Olympics, it used to be that the women were pretty and graceful, while the the men were strong and at least pretended to be macho. Now, the women are pretty damn strong, and the men are just as pretty and graceful -- and flutteringly costumed -- as their female counterparts. I don't even want to watch any more. As the French say, "Vive la difference" and when there's no difference, why bother? Speaking of the French, think of this: In the French revolution, these pretty, powdered, patched, and pompadoured men: were utterly defeated by these men: In other words, in the fight between manly men and femi-men, I wouldn't waste my money betting on the latter. Please understand that I'm not arguing for a return to women as second class citizens, nor am I demanding that men prove themselves by grunting and going out to kill people. I am saying, though, that we're embarking willy-nilly on a major cultural experiment in which we feminize our men. At this time of world turmoil, the probable outcome of this experiment leaves me feeling less than secure. UPDATE: I just wandered over to The Telegraph and, coincidentally, there was this nice article about Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. It's a male dance troup that's been around a long time, and is part of a burlesque tradition of drag performances, but I can't resist including this picture to end this post: UPDATE II: Welcome, American Thinker readers. Needless to say, I'd be delighted if you'd stay a while and check out the whole blog. Talking to Technorati: Metrosexuals, Military service