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For a bunch of people who are supposed to be so weak, inferior and unnecessary, we men seem to have done remarkably well. The way some people go on about us it's a wonder we can get out of our beds in the morning!
Taking all the points in the article in sequence:
"men already have higher rates for all major causes of death" - this is hardly surprising, given how little is spent on men's healthcare and how little men are encouraged to value their health. This can be fixed.
"shorter life expectancy" - but the life expectancy for both men and women has been on the rise for some time. If men are lagging behind women, that probably has something to do with the first point.
"women can now do their jobs just as well" - oh really? I know we're supposed to say that women can do the job as well as (or better than) men, but that doesn't make it true. Also, women show a surprising reluctance to enter professions that are dirty, dangerous, or demand the kind of all-out commitment that men seem to be good at.
"There is a sustained increase in psychological disorders in men, including alcohol and substance abuse, mid-life crisis, depression and domestic violence" - aren't women drinking more and more these days too? And aren't they smoking more while men are smoking less? And what about all those work-related stresses we hear about from time to time? As for the 'mid-life crisis'; why shouldn't a man take stock of his life in middle age and decide to do something new? Is he supposed to trudge from the cradle to the grave? As far as depression is concerned, we need to look at why men are getting depressed and do something about it. And domestic violence; do I need to say anything about that? Women batter men, women batter children.
"men's increasing aggression also remains an unsolved health and societal problem" - I wasn't aware that men's aggression was increasing. However, the same thing applies to this as to depression: look at why and do something about it.
"Over 30 wars and conflicts rage around the world are, mostly created, maintained and aggravated by men." - what's that got to do with anything? What are these men actually fighting about? Are women in an equal position to initiate wars? How many of these conflicts are actually justified or necessary in some way? And since we're talking about things largely done by men, how many good things around the world are done largely by men? Did three hundred women rush into the twin towers to save the lives of others? Duh... I don't think so.
"With the advent of sperm banks, in-vitro fertilisation, sex sorting techniques, human cloning and same-sex marriages, it is reasonable to wonder about the future role of men in society." - sperm banks, in-vitro fertilisation and sex sorting all require men to provide the sperm. No spunk, no deal. Human cloning is illegal, carries unknown risks, and is a lot less fun than sex. And as for same-sex marriages; was that thrown in as a joke? Not only are homosexuals a tiny proportion of the population, but the number of them who want to get married is miniscule. It's the kind of thing that gets media attention precisely because it's so unusual, not because it's so common. If you're a heterosexual man or woman, same-sex marriage isn't much use to you. As for men's role in society, the whole point of 'equality' is that you don't have a preset role on the basis of your gender. Women have no role, as such. They can create one, as can men. The idea of the 'redundant male' is a fallacy based on the assumption that if men have no use to women they have no use at all. So, how does that work for gay men? How does that work for men who have friends and enjoy their careers and personal pursuits? How does that work for single fathers? How does that work for men who are happy not to be in a monogamous relationship with a woman? How does that work for men who are loved by their children? Redundant my arse.
The mock-hysteria over the survival of men is a product of minds so boxed in by feminist 'thinking' that they can't respond in appropriate ways to information they are presented with. Instead, everything must be made to fit a warped and rigid template of perception. To a normal mind, men's health issues require funding, research, action and a sympathetic attitude. To a mind lost in the feminist labyrinth men's health issues must be viewed in relation to women, usually in a negative way - they'll take attention, money and sympathy away from the female. Feminism also encourages oppositional thinking. If women's health is a serious issue, men's health must be a trivial one. If women deserve the best health care, men must deserve the worst. If women are victims of their health issues, men must somehow be guilty of theirs. And so it goes on. Of course, this is usually not thought through in such direct terms, rather these attitudes have been absorbed over many years and have become part of a person's matrix of thinking without them realising it.
At least there are some positive things in this article amongst all the hooey. It's good to know that there's an International Society for Men's Health, a European Men's Health Forum, and a Men's World Day. How sympathetic and truly pro-male these things are is another matter. It's organisations and events like these that the men's movement needs to make inroads into.
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Anymore, I tend to dismiss a "professional" opinion offered by anyne with a 'Dr.' in front of their name. I do this regardless of what side of the issue they are on. Not that I ignore them completely, but I regard their opinion as no more valuable than my own. The reason for this is that I've observed educated people taking some very silly and poorly-supported positions lately. I note this especially among educators and psychologists. Hmmmm... Could it be the institutions they were brought up in?
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Oh, please. If it's true that men are headed toward extinction, then it's only because we did such a fine job of advancing society that human labor (from both sexes) is decreasingly necessary. And remember - any major disaster could rip through our society and destroy the resources which afford such scientific and technological conveniences. I hate to imagine it - but it's always possible that the human species could be nuked, quaked or hurricaned right back to the Stone Age at virtually any given time. And women might be looking for us, then.
Also, while I generally try to abstain from gloating about the largely male face of those scientific and technological advancements which apparently must be in place before women can lay claim to their rightful supremacy, the paperwork seems to show that any contemporary male "redundancy" is not the result of weakness, but brilliance on men's part. Was it largely male or female scientists who made it possible for there to be conception without intercourse? Was it mostly men or women who invented most of the labor-saving devices which make it possible for women to perform all tasks "just as well" as men? And if you want to talk about war - rather than looking at how war is ruining the world, why don't we look instead at how war has stabilized the world? What if WWII had not been fought? Would women in the western hemisphere be so poised to take over the reigns of society had their grandfathers been pacifists?
The one, basic thing that we all seem to keep forgetting is that the human species has probably changed little in thousands of years. It's the society we live in that has changed dramatically. If men are becoming redundant, it's not because we have become incompatible with society - but because society has become incompatible with us.
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The idea of the 'redundant male' is a fallacy based on the assumption that if men have no use to women they have no use at all.
How very, very, very true. The worry here is that men are no longer needed to make babies... well, that's not a man's only function, now, is it? Men can and have done many things besides impregnating women. And some men nowadays (myself included) are deciding against having children anyway. Gee, I guess we're just a bunch of useless human chaff, then?
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I like much of the logic I see written here, Hawth's comments above especially. Is there some way we could torture the rad-fems by forcing them to read it without being able to respond? (He asked rhetorically...)
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We should be able to torture rad-fems in any way we choose - in court we could argue pre-emptive self-defense. The judge would laugh and set us free. Well, it's a thought...
Who cares if some women want to eliminate men from their lives? These don't sound like the kind of women any man in his right mind would want to be around. Most women aren't like that. And as far as reproduction goes, I'm sure men have the ingenuity to devise a way of having children without women being involved, perhaps making use of genetically engineered animals to gestate the foetus. Best of all, because men's genetic code contains both X and Y chromasomes it should be possible for men to produce both male and female offspring, rather than endless clones of themselves. One day it'll be like raising sea monkeys; just add the powder to water and watch your children form before your eyes.
All we need to do now is find the gene that causes manhating...
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I'm sure men have the ingenuity to devise a way of having children without women being involved, perhaps making use of genetically engineered animals to gestate the foetus. Best of all, because men's genetic code contains both X and Y chromasomes it should be possible for men to produce both male and female offspring, rather than endless clones of themselves.
The technology to develop a fetus outside a mother's womb (or a human fetus in an animal's womb) is already in developmental stages, according to some. I've not seen any media on it, nor scientific papers, but I've heard that the process is being examined. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Perhaps one day there will be artificial wombs.
One thing, Uber: even though we have both X and Y chromosomes, if we're fertilizing eggs with ONLY our own chromosomes, and ejecting the mother's chromosomes from the egg in the process, then we would be creating clones of ourselves, regardless of their sex, because the offspring would be made up of our chromosomes alone. To not be considered cloning, the chromosomes of two people need to be involved.
You are correct, though, that women reproducing without men can only produce women, even if there are two of them involved. With an artificial womb and a woman's chromosomes ejected from the egg, however, two men could produce either a female or a male from that egg, because men have both X and Y chromosomes.
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I neglected to mention that two women can, theoretically, reproduce without cloning. The process is called somatic cell transfer, and it's the same process to which I was referring when I said that two men with benefit of an egg depleted of the woman's chromosomes and an artifical womb, could produce a child.
An human egg contains half of the chromosomes to create a person. In mice, scientists have discovered that they can take ANY cell (not just sperm) from another adult (male or female) and transfer it into that egg, completing the number of chromosomes and causing the egg to develop into an embryo.
Likewise, these folks have discovered that they can EJECT the original chromosomes from an human egg and replace them via somatic cell transfer with the chromosomes of another, meaning that the producer of the egg would not be the mother of the child.
Use somatic cell transfer to add either another set of chromosomes from the same adult (cloning) or another set of chromosomes from another adult (reproduction), and you (theoretically) get a child.
Whew. Think about high school biology is going to be like in 2050! ;)
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For some interesting stuff about men and war, check out this link I found on angryharry.com:
http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990814/books/books8 .html
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There is no underground movement to make men extinct. Five women holed up in a bunker in Montana does not a movement make.
Articles like this burn me up because they are using scare tactics to try to turn people against these new, wonderful technologies. Look back through history. Whenever a new technology has come out, a bunch of doomsayers (many affiliated with the Religious Right) have jumped on it, claiming that said technology was inherently evil, and would bring about The End of the World As We Know It if it were not stopped. This happened when blood transfusions were first proposed, as well as antibiotics, vaccines, organ transplants and a host of other beneficial medical procedures that no one questions today.
Cloning and genetic engineering are simply the newest targets of the Religious Right and other doomsayers. No, cloning is not going to make men extinct. Here's what it WILL do, eventually:
* Allow someone dying of heart disease to clone a new heart from their own somatic (body) cells.
* Allow someone who's lost both legs in an automobile accident to clone new legs.
* Allow someone paralyzed by a spinal cord injury to clone new nerves and nerve endings so that they may walk again.
All of these will be inherently safer than current organ transplants from another donor, because your new parts will be made from your own body tissues, eliminating the chance of rejection and the need for a lifetime of powerful anti-rejection drugs.
Genetic engineering of babies will allow parents who carry genes for horrific diseases to make sure they don't pass on those genes to their offspring.
Genetic engineering will allow cancer to be cured easily. Doctors will be able to extract cells from your body, genetically alter them to fight cancer, and inject them back into you to go to work. Instead of having to have your prostate removed because it's cancerous, the genetically-modified cells will attack only the cancer, sparing the healthy cells...and your body part.
The same concept will be applied to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterrorism weapons, rendering them little more than an annoyance and therefore useless to terrorists.
This doesn't even scratch the surface of how all this technology will someday be applied. The potential in agriculture (read: our food supply) is endless. Fewer animals will be needed to produce the same amount of milk, meat and by-products. More produce will be grown on less land. All food will be of higher quality, and safer from pathogens.
These are the things cloning and genetics will be used for. Somehow, I doubt the Religious Righters, as much as they object to it now, will refuse to make use of it when they're the ones who need a new heart, or who've been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
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A man cannot produce a female "clone" of himself.
Yes, men carry x and y chromosomes, but they are split ONLY in their gametes--the reproductive cells. Unlike somatic (body) cells, gametes have only half the genetic material needed to create a new person, 23 chromosomes instead of 46. Some male gametes are "x" (female sperm), some are "y" (male sperm). In natural reproduction, the sperm gamete joins with the egg gamete, providing the offspring with a 50-50 genetics split, and 46 chromosomes.
The cloning of people or animals cannot be done with gametes. It must be done with somatic cells, so that the offspring is ensured its 46 chromosomes. Your somatic cells carry both an x and a y, and they can't just be separated...at least not yet. The technology is advancing at such a tremendous rate that I'm loathe to totally discount anything.
That probably wasn't a very good or clear explanation, but I've only had very basic education in genetics so far. I'll be able to explain it better in a few years. ;-)
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In birds, it is the female, with a YZ, that decides the gender of the offspring. Male birds are ZZ.
Furthermore, birds have only one opening, called the vent, from which urine, feces and your breakfast eggs all emerge. Good thing eggs have shells! %-)
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Well, it is true, though that TWO men could (theoretically) reproduce either male or female offspring with one of them providing X and the other either providing X or providing Y, yes? That is, if an artificial womb were available as well as an egg from which the woman's X had been ejected?
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In other words... what if we took the X chromosomes from the gametes from one man and the X or Y chromosomes from the gametes from another man and injected them both into an egg from which the woman's chromosomes had been ejected?
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I don't yet know enough about the biology of reproduction at the cellular level to theorize if this would work. But even if *current* theory says it wouldn't, like I said, I'm loathe to totally discount anything. These are very exciting times.
This wouldn't be cloning, because the offspring would have two parents. This would be a good thing; it would allow for heterosis ("hybrid vigor").
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Wait, wait, wait. Before I give up on this, something doesn't ring right about your chromosome splitting thoughts.
A couple of months ago, media reported all over the world about an Australian scientist who had "taken men out of the baby-making process" by taking the somatic cell of one adult and injecting it into the egg of another adult, thus creating an embryo.
Now, if we can't split the chromosomes in a somatic cell, are the mouse embryos she "fertilized" growing now with 69 chromosomes??? I recall reading in that story how one set of chromosomes was split/ejected when the "fertilization" process occurred.
So, if we can do that, then it IS theoretically possible for me to clone a female version of myself by taking two of my somatic cells and splitting them, OR one of my somatic cells (split) and one of my gametes, and injecting them into an egg... perhaps?
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Well, I'm not certain these fears of the extinction of men are exclusively the domain of the "Religious Right" or those unwilling to embrace science, considering I am neither religious nor fearful of technology (it's part of my job), and I have--many times--wondered about the fate of masculinity in the face of reproductive technologies which exclude it. I will also be the first to admit that some great, great things can be the fruit of this technology.
However, because I am part of the media, I am also familiar with many of the results of studies conducted after sex selection was announced. A wide majority of couples, when asked whether they would choose a boy or a girl, chose a girl.
Now, let's say sex selection becomes a fad (like plastic surgery or some other such thing) and becomes inexpensive. Well, if all those folks who really want girls get their way, then masculinity is threatened because the ratio of men to women will be so far skewed.
It's not the five women in a bunker that concern me. I know there's no plot to destroy men that amounts to anything. It's the devolution that may result from "designer babies" and these other reproductive technologies. Just like attention spans have devolved as a result of television. :-)
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True, There is no underground movement to make men extinct. The movement to make men extinct isn't underground. See how many places on the web you can find the SCUM manifesto, which describes men as a distorted form of women. There have been websites like "All men must die". There is one currently that says "all men are filth". Numerous women are quite happy to state that men are or should be redundant (as if we have to justify our existence to them). Anyway, cloning wouldn't matter in a world where men were treated as equal and important in themselves. If that were the case, then cloning would remain a laboratory curiousity.
Your forecast for cloning is hopelessly naive. You're going to get a new heart if you have a heart attack. Only if you have the money! I bet it's at least a million for a new heart. And all these doctors are only going to work on the most uplifting projects that benefit the human race. What was that I read recently? A doctor used IVF and fertitility techniques to give a 60 year old woman a baby by her brother. Their noble reason for doing this? To meet the terms of a will, so both she and her brother would inherit some money.
If someone turns up and asks for blonde blue eyed babies? I'm sure they'd be turned away :-).
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See how many places on the web where you can find sites dedicated to necrophilia, beastiality and pedophilia. Be careful where you click. Some of those sites are very scary. Scarier yet, there are thousands of them.
Does that mean there are huge, organized movements of people who enjoy having sex with corpses, pets and children? Of course not. You cannot take the pulse of society according to what you see on the Internet. If you do, you'll end up with an incredibly bleak outlook. A world full of necrophiliacs is pretty bleak to me.
The Internet, by very its nature, attracts the disenfranchised, the disenchanted, and complete freaks who wouldn't dare spew their views in real life for fear of getting lynched by the majority of the populace, which finds their views bizarre and disgusting.
I am not being naive. I am being realistic. If you look back at history, people went absolutely beserk over the prospect of vaccines, antibiotics, blood transfusions and organ transplants, along with all other scientific novels. They predicted horrible outcomes, yet all of these technologies have ended up making us live longer, healthier lives, and we no longer question any of them.
Of course there are people who will abuse these technologies. They have always been among us. They always will. There's nothing we can do about that. Fortunately, they are a tiny minority, and we certainly shouldn't BAN cloning and genetic engineering to "protect" everyone from abuse perpetrated by a tiny minority.
In fact, by doing that, we are literally killing potentially millions of people under the guise of "protecting" them. That to me is a far scarier prospect than the SCUM Manifesto, necrophilia, sex with children and beastiality combined.
Also, as technology gets better, prices go down. A new heart won't cost a million dollars once the technology is perfected.
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Well, if all those folks who really want girls get their way, then masculinity is threatened because the ratio of men to women will be so far skewed...
My sincere hope is that - if such a "fad" did get underway - there would be some kind of legal statute put in place to limit sex selection so that it wouldn't disrupt the ratio of males to females in the population. Ironically, though, such a statute would more likely be instated with the protection of females in mind - since, ya' know, the world hates girls so much.
Still, the possibility you raise brings us to the realization that the real purpose of the men's movement is not so much to protect against the oppression that exists today, but to protect against the oppression that could exist tomorrow. What's unsettling is that the cultural antipathy toward males which exists today is coming along at pretty much the same time that we're careening into this techno-future where humanity will have more power to tailor society to conform to its "fads" than it ever has before. No, as yet, there is no real movement afoot to eliminate or degrade maleness. However, careless experimentation and a general lack of give-a-damn about how the male population might suffer for these new experimentations could do the trick just as well, if unintentionally.
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Men are not heading for extinction, regardless of what geneticists get up to. Generally people's health and longevity are increasing, and the gap between men and women is due to the better care afforded to women, rather than any kind of 'self-destructiveness' on the part of men. My concerns are not about science. Scientists have to meddle with things they don't understand, it's in their employment contract. What concerns me are social systems and attitudes, because that's where the real evil lies. Men aren't denigrated beacause of anything science has done, they're denigrated because of a corrupted sociopolitical ideology called feminism, which is itself a corruption of a sociopolitical system called Marxism. Science is ultimately accountable to physical reality and economic necessity, whereas feminism is accountable only to nothing and no-one. In a sense, the purpose of the men's movement is to make feminism accountable.
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uno
not only is "self-destructiveness" ubiquitous in males, particularly in american men, it is a psychological condition carefully inculcated soon after birth, useful and profitable to certain elements of the social order
cirucumcision is an excellent example of such tactics -- a message is implanted, later amenable to manipulation
dos
the potential for the "extinction" of men indeed exists -- although if it occurred, i would term it rather a retraction or release of spirit from the planet
if masculine "extinction" were to manifest, it might begin with the erosion and destruction of the most recent forms of human male development -- fatherhood and masculinity
we could expect to see the most masculine elements of the culture in the most extreme circumstances of marginalization, and the weakest elements elevated to power
tres
masculinity is not conferred automatically with maleness -- masculinity is an amorphous, very late development in the species, arising out of a long period of what today would be called "oppression"
the bible tells the story backward (eve from adam's rib) because the old testament is an attempted refutation by emerging masculinity of long psycho-social domination by the feminine
quatro
in matter the feminine precedes the masculine, son from mother, and it is entirely possible that men, in a strictly material and social sense, are variants of women
as we are now well into the process of recapitulating the matriarchies, it is possible that males as incarnated entities will be folded back into the feminine
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