What’s happened to the chaps?

Bad news this week for those who fear we’re becoming a nation of girlie men. According to a survey carried out by Demos, a third of men who graduated from university this summer would give up their careers to care for their children. In addition, more than half the men surveyed said they frequently dress up in women’s clothing, while 66 per cent admitted they still hide behind the sofa during Doctor Who.

Okay, I made that last part up, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The feminisation of the latest generation of young men never ceases to amaze me. With their long, blow-dried hair, their expensive designer clothes, their ‘man bags’ and jewellery, they are like some terrifying new genetic hybrid: half-man, half-Barbie doll. God help us all if President Ahmadinejad ever decides to launch an invasion. If these milksops are responsible for the defence of the realm, the mullahs will be in Downing Street within 24 hours.

Whatever happened to the solid yeomanry of England? The obvious answer is to blame the Femi-Nazis. The relentless feminist critique of masculinity that has been blaring out of our schools and universities since the 1960s has taken its toll. Today’s young men have been ideologically programmed to believe that any overt display of masculinity — tucking their shirts in, for instance — would be an endorsement of ‘the patriarchy’. Far better to make common cause with the oppressed by using moisturiser and eating salad.

No doubt that’s part of it, but there’s also something less rational going on. Martin Amis’s analysis, as advanced in The Pregnant Widow, is that it’s women’s sexual liberation that has frightened the horses, not the endless theorising that’s accompanied it. Men simply can’t deal with women expressing sexual desire — it reduces them to timid little mice.