This Just In From TIME Magazine: 'Men Are Obsolete' 1): It’s the end of men because men are failing in the workplace. Over the last few decades men’s incomes have been slowly declining and women’s have been rising. This is partly because the economy is changing quickly, but men aren’t. Meanwhile, women are moving in the opposite direction: In 2009 they became the majority of the American workforce for the first time ever. (Wait – so what about all gibberish about “glass ceilings” and the Republican “war on women”? 2) It’s the end of men because the traditional household, propped up by the male breadwinner, is vanishing. For the first time in history women all over the world are marrying down, meaning marrying men with worse prospects than they have. We have a new global type, for example, called the alpha wife, a woman who makes more money than her husband or boyfriend. (Okay, I get it: the whole war on women thing is definitely D.O.A.) 3) It’s the end of men because we can see it in the working and middle class. The working class feels the end of men the most, as men lose their jobs and lose their will to be fathers, and women do everything alone, creating a virtual matriarchy in the parts of the country that used to be bastions of good old macho country music style values.(What?!? Men “lose their will to be fathers”? Are you sure it’s “the working class” you’re talking about, Hanna?) 4) It’s the end of men because men have lost their monopoly on violence and aggression. Women are becoming more…aggressive and violent in both good ways and bad — that is, going to war, going to jail, and in the case of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, beating up anyone who knocks a drink out of their hand. (Shocker: Guess what? I’m with you on this one.) 5) It’s the end of men because men, too, are now obsessed with their body hair. (I think I’ll just leave this one alone.) Ah, the musings of a feminist. Much of it somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course, but you know what they say about humor: Those who find it funny also find truth in it. And the liberal media wonders why it’s hanging by a thread. Go figure. http://www.ijreview.com/2014/01/105655-just-time-magazine-men-obsolete/
I touched upon this in a post I made during the whole Incognito bullying scandal.... Progressive liberals and especially bra-burning feminists want there to be no such thing as Masculinity or Feminity anymore in terms of their hegomonic meanings (i.e. men being breadwinners, wrestling bears, drinking beer and watch football while women know their role as cookers of breakfast and scrubbers of floors). The shift is now that there are "masculinities" and "femininities" meaning that there are multiple, spectrum-like definitions of each gender-type. (ex. feminine hipster pansy-boys to grandpa the retired war veteran for males)
I don't know if Men are becoming obsolete, but men are definitely becoming more like women and women are definitely becoming more like men. We are meeting in the middle. Call me old school, but l like the emphasis on gender differences. In another Time Magazine issue a few weeks ago, there was an article about Sweden and how they are trying to become a "post-gender" society and almost do away with the idea of genders all together. They have a neutral pronoun to go with "he" and "she" called "hen".. they have gender-neutral preschools where boys and girls are not discussed separately at all and they share toys.. books contain pictures of boys feeding baby dolls and girls shooting nerf guns.. Parents won't disclose the sex of their child for as long as they can because they don't want people to "project gender bias" on them.. that's all way over the top if you ask me. The article talked about the silent objectors, those that think it's a little over the top but become chastised as "anti-feminists" if they disagree. to me that's scary. We should embrace gender differences. I'm not saying little girls shouldn't be able to play with dump trucks, or that women should make less in the workplace but there is a line here. I worry that in the struggle for women's rights they are destroying what it is to be a man. One thing that I have noticed in my experiences in the workplace as well is that women don't like to be treated differently then men - - unless they WANT to be treated differently then men, depending on the circumstance
The X chromosome carries 1400 genes. The Y just 45. Whether or not you believe that men are obsolete or that the male role is in decline the facts are that the female makes 94% of the continuing genetic contribution from generation to generation. A while back it was in vogue to suggest that the male chromosome was rotting, since both X and Y carried the same number of genes in early mammals 200 million years ago and in the interim the X has become absolutely dominant in primates. It was with some relief that I read recently that the degeneration in the Y chromosome in terms of genetic contribution peaked about 25 million years ago and only a single gene has been lost over that time span. The reason that the Y has degenerated and X has not is that the Y is a single chromosome, left on it's own to fend off mutations and other forms of loss. The X is paired, with two X chromosomes that copy each other and this presents a safeguard against loss of information. I think the odds are pretty good that the Y will go extinct at some point, however we're likely talking billions of years down the road, instead of the 5 million that people used to bandy about. There is one situation however in which it could happen much quicker. That would be if a natural or man-made event that specifically attacked the X and Y chromosomes occurred. In that situation the Y would be very much endangered with the X less so due to the natural backup available in the pairing of two X chromosomes. Of course in that situation we'd likely all go extinct anyway since without a natural adaptation to the loss of the Y chromosome the human reproductive system would likely collapse. Over billions of years nature would find a way to manage the process but in a short catastrophe would be likely unable to do that.
There aren't just two genders anymore. It's not black and white, it's a gray continuum. That being the case someone is always gonna be offended by defined roles for persons in life.
I guess I understand that blogger's sentiment, but man... talk about some ignorance. Just a few points: The glass ceiling refers to how high women are/were able to rise in the workforce (by job position), and there is still a disparity in pay between men and women when looking at the same job type/level. There is also a severe disparity between men and women when it comes to finding jobs. Did you see that study whee some researcher sent out identical resumes, one with a masculine name and one with a feminine name? Guess who got DRASTICALLY more follow-up calls for interviews? If there are more women than men in the workforce right now, that is doubly damning for men, not some proof that all is right in the world. Because the existence of something is the same thing as prevalence? Man, this guy is really reaching. This seems to be happening DESPITE all efforts to keep it from happening. Again, this is evidence in FAVOR of a "war against women" (as much as I hate that phrase). This has been (more or less) borne out in I don't know how many studies. Maybe it shouldn't be called "losing their will," but the working class family structure most definitely feels this strongly... and sees the highest percentage of single-mother families. Not single-FATHER families, mind you. This IJ blogger just sounds kind of butt-hurt, frankly... and the commenters even more so. Fortunately, your scenario is more or less a fantasy. It's really, really, really, really, really (read: pretty much impossible) to affect the sex chromosomes specifically. If there was something acting on that level, we'd all go extinct in a matter of weeks/months, since I don't think there are any small molecules that exist that can affect sex chromosomes on that level without also affecting the somatic chromosomes. In other words, anything that would harm something in a sex cell (sperm or egg) would also harm similarly structured nucleic acids in body cells.
I agree with most of this. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which a low intensity burst event of some sort damaged the X and Y chromosomes on a wide scale without also doing much worse things to people in the process. So the natural process seems unlikely other than as an extinction level event. Human beings are really kind of screwed up however in the intensity with which they seek ways to harm each other. It seems unlikely that they could target individual chromosomes without causing major collateral damage, however that probably isn't stopping a half dozen entities from looking for that kind of stuff all the time.
