I can't stand this argument that young people need (more) structure in their lives and the military service makes you man. The first thing it teaches young men is to obey blindly...

Being someones puppet actually seems rather backwards to me of what being a "man" or masculine is. I've thought that masculinity is about being independent (not listening to others!) and protecting others. But who am I to say this, I probably don't know shit. But honestly it doesn't seem like very masculine thing to do to abandon one's own values because someone else says you must do this and that. But nobody cares about that stuff; the meter of masculinity (or manliness, not the same thing, but in this case I guess they're intertwined) seems to be the ability to endure mentally and physically challenging tasks. Funnily, when following this criteria, being a single parent of multiple children seems like the most masculine thing to do (working potentially multiple jobs and all the troubles of parenting).

Btw, perfect timing since I was just navigating to today's prompt :D