"If men are the only group one can joke about exterminating, ... perhaps it means that antimale bigotry, especially among the narrow elite, has reached potentially dangerous levels." James Taranto

bikemaul · 2012-08-27T22:32:22+00:00

Text of the article below break for those who may not have access to WSJ:

Here's a thought experiment about thought experiments. Suppose someone submitted an op-ed piece to the New York titled "Jews, Who Needs Them?" The piece asks the reader to consider, as a thought experiment, what would happen if "all the Jews on earth died tonight." It then proposes a "cost-benefit analysis," which leads to the conclusion that the effect wouldn't really be all that dire, although it would be a shame inasmuch as Jews are "entertaining."

The tone of our hypothetical piece is facetious, not hateful, and its thought experiment is meant to illustrate some broader point about Jewish culture. (We can't imagine what that point might be, but this level of detail is sufficient for our purposes.) It wouldn't stand the slightest chance of getting published in the Times, would it? Nor would any respectable paper consider it.

Try the same experiment with other minorities, and the result will be the same. Except for one group: males. Here is where our thought experiment ends, for the Times actually did publish a piece over the weekend titled "Man, Who Needs Them?" The author, Greg Hampikian, a professor of biology and criminal justice at Boise State University, actually did write these words:

If a woman wants to have a baby without a man, she just needs to secure sperm (fresh or frozen) from a donor (living or dead). The only technology the self-impregnating woman needs is a straw or turkey baster, and the basic technique hasn't changed much since Talmudic scholars debated the religious implications of insemination without sex in the fifth century. If all the men on earth died tonight, the species could continue on frozen sperm. If the women disappear, it's extinction.

Ultimately the question is, does "mankind" really need men? With human cloning technology just around the corner and enough frozen sperm in the world to already populate many generations, perhaps we should perform a cost-benefit analysis. Hampikian proceeds to do just that and quickly ascertains that women can do anything men can do. He then asks a female colleague "if she thought that there was yet anything irreplaceable about men." Her reply: "They're entertaining." His conclusion: "Gentlemen, let's hope that's enough."

If men are the only group one can joke about exterminating, perhaps it means that we really do live in a male-dominated culture--one in which men are the only group about which such a joke runs no risk of being taken seriously. Or perhaps it means that antimale bigotry, especially among the narrow elite, has reached potentially dangerous levels.

In any case, Hampikian's broader point is somewhat true. In the narrow terms of biological reproduction--as distinct from the social and economic functions of the family--he only slightly overstates the case when he declares men superfluous. The man is necessary to the reproductive process only at the very beginning; and a society with a low sex ratio (few men relative to women) is likely to be more fertile than one with a high sex ratio.

But as we've noted before, high-sex-ratio societies also tend to treat women better than low-sex-ratio ones do. That's simple economics: Men value women more, and therefore do more for them, when they're in short supply. Hampikian's hypothetical society, with a sex ratio of zero, would be a dystopia for women, and not only because they'd be deprived of entertainment.

In a review of Hanna Rosin's new book, "The End of Men: And the Rise of Women," Heather Wilhelm gets at the reason why. Rosin's thesis is that the successes of feminism have made men increasingly superfluous socially and economically as well as reproductively. "Having it all" actually means doing it all:

Taking on increasing levels of paid work, housework, and childcare simultaneously--as studies demonstrate many women are doing--is far from empowering.

Surveys show that even busy career women have increased, not decreased, their child care time, and despite their supposed liberation, today's women rate their happiness as no higher than their supposedly oppressed 1970s counterparts. Even in today's higher-income, double-earner "seesaw marriages," which Rosin heralds as a more flexible roadmap to gender equity, women often run themselves ragged. Marriages where a successful female can quit her job and stay home, meanwhile, are labeled a "tragedy" for female advancement.

In Hampikian's world without men, every last burden would rest on women. And good luck finding a plumber.

fontus · 2012-08-28T03:49:25+00:00

What really bothers me about the rebuttals to the biological continuation of the species without men is that not one has included the amount of genetic variation you get from the reproductive process. Sustaining the human race on a couple samples of men would ruin the gene pool.

notheanix · 2012-08-28T05:10:15+00:00

About making jokes.

Nobody gets an exception.

Especially not white Jewish Mexican nigger fag Nazi fatcat cloacae. ;)

HolyCounsel · 2012-08-28T01:30:30+00:00

Men have been under attack for decades; finally they are waking up and, one by one, speaking up.

Equa1 · 2012-08-28T04:05:11+00:00

Who would we blame for all the world's problems if there weren't any men around?

2012-08-28T03:22:12+00:00

If all the men on earth died tonight, the species could continue on frozen sperm. If the women disappear, it's extinction. (author, Greg Hampikian, a professor of biology and criminal justice at Boise State University)

This man really ought to be removed from his position.

NOT just because of his misandry.

But because he is obviously ignorant of larger realities of the world.

The species could not survive for very long on "frozen sperm", and IMO it would not survive at all; said frozen sperm would never even be used.

Why? Because maintaining "frozen sperm" requires the maintaining of ALL of modern civilization, including very advanced refrigeration systems, the electrical grid systems supplying them, the fuels that power them, the transport that moves said fuel from source to destination, etc. Women (and ignoramuses like this "professor") can pretend and imagine that they can "do everything that men can" all they want; the plain fact of the matter is that they DON'T do so.

Ergo, "if all the men on earth died tonight" civilization as we know it (and as it is necessary to maintain "sperm banks") would probably collapse within less than 24 hours; and the remaining "female" human race wouldn't survive long enough to even worry about reproducing (by which time all those "frozen sperm" would have thawed and be entirely useless)... game over.

Now, conversely... if all the females were to die tonight; there would be at least a remote chance that the men would be able to keep civilization going long enough -- and on a high-enough potential morale basis of a well-publicized, well-funded "initiative" to create some means of using "frozen eggs" in combination with artificial wombs, or use of some other species' wombs (female chimps perhaps?) that could then be artificially inseminated... at least sufficient for the creation of a small number of a subsequent generation of female humans. In short, with such a DRIVING motivation, men would probably solve the problem within a year or two (at least with a short term quasi-solution) and then long term within another year or two. And in the face of such a dire situation, standard "morals/ethics" that currently impede work on things like artificial wombs would be tossed out the window; so progress on dozens of fronts would proceed at a rate never seen before.

cahpahkah · 2012-08-28T03:44:05+00:00

I especially liked how you had to slice up the quote in order to get to your circle-jerk incendiary headline...

"If men are the only group one can joke about exterminating, perhaps it means that we really do live in a male-dominated culture--one in which men are the only group about which such a joke runs no risk of being taken seriously. Or perhaps it means that antimale bigotry, especially among the narrow elite, has reached potentially dangerous levels."

Nice job, that.

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