Mommentary on Altar Servers

Elinor Dashwood at Mommentary in her comments section remarks on mixed-sex altar servers, replying to the contention that boys should just get used to mixed activities and not let girls crowd them out:

Well, boys do feel this way, and after considerable experience with boys, I really don't think it's from a venal desire to crowd girls out of doing the fun stuff. I hold to what might be called the Gilder-Gallagher thesis: girls have lots of ways to rehearse and develop femaleness, and boys not nearly so many means of working out their maleness. Since hunting animals for food or breaking sod and cutting hay have dropped out of the realm of practical pursuits for most people, distinctively masculine activities for boys have tended to be marginalized into things that are either wicked (seducing girls, for example) or leisurely and rather irrelevant (like watching sports). If we don't want a society full of men who are simultaneously insecure and self-indulgent, we need to address this lack of male identifiers, and certainly not let feminism co-opt any more of them. I think it stands to reason that we don't want a priesthood full of pleasure-seeking namby-pamby types, and to this end altar service ought to be returned entirely to men and boys.