Once again, the armed services are engulfed in a “scandal” involving female service members. Beginning in the Marine Corps and now spreading to the rest of the services, it involves servicemen passing around pictures of servicewomen in various states of undress. It all sounds quaintly Edwardian, yet the services’ leadership, terrified of appearing politically incorrect, will treat it like a second Rape of the Sabines. Why they remain frightened of political correctness, a.k.a. cultural Marxism, when they have a commander-in-chief who was elected in part because he defied and rejected PC, I do not know. It might help if President Trump asked to see the pictures.

Such “scandals” are certain to rise again and again so long as official policy insists on ignoring human nature. For the purpose of continuing the species, that nature decrees young men will take the initiative in seeking sex with young women. They will climb every mountain, slog through any swamp, and break all regulations to do so. King Canute knew he could not command the tide; he tried to do so only to show his courtiers he could not overrule the forces of nature. DOD’s leadership, along with too many politicians, apparently believe they can.

Generations of human history, as far back as you want to go, tell us there is only one way to keep young men from hitting on young women: keep them physically separate. That is what we did with the WAVES, WACS, etc. of World War II. The women’s barracks were not only off limits; they were under armed guard. Of course, at that time young women knew they were the objects of men’s desires. Most of them welcomed the fact as useful in finding a husband.

So why do we attempt the impossible, mixing young men and young women cheek-by-jowl while saying, “Now now, no hanky-panky, boys?” It is part of feminism’s (and cultural Marxism’s) war on men. More specifically it is an attempt to destroy the male culture of our armed services. That is the same thing as destroying the services themselves, because any military that does not have an aggressively male culture will not fight. It will come apart at the first touch of real war.

Here’s how the game works. First, mix young men and young women in intimate situations (our submarines now have women in their crews). Then, empower the women over the men by allowing them to charge men with “sexual harassment” for any reason or no reason at all (giving a woman an order she does not like is often cause enough). Then, rip the man away from his chain of command, put him under a commissar system (with all the commissars loyal cultural Marxists) and presume him guilty until proven innocent. Faced with this, the kind of men who want to fight–who are a rare and precious resource in any military–first become discipline problems, then get out. Many of them will go on to find other ways to fight. The rest of the men either hate their lives or–what the feminists want–accustom themselves to being ruled by women.

Why this game is allowed to continue under a Trump administration I do not understand. Probably it has not yet come to the president’s attention; perhaps the latest scandal will prove helpful in that regard. Secretary Mattis surely understands that armed services must have a male culture if they are to fight. Is he merely going to sit back and let the cultural Marxists launch their latest assault on our servicemen?

Again, if we want to have women in our armed services–which is overall a mistake, beyond limited, non-deployable clerical and medical roles–we have a model for doing so, the way we did it in World War II. Was there still some bunga-bunga back then? Of course. But it was presumed women knew how to say “no”, and men were not punished for showing sexual interest in women. That was considered, on the whole, preferable to the alternative. It is only in a world gone mad that our armed services welcome gays while sending men who dare show an attraction to the women around them on their way to the gulag.