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12) Are Men Necessary? ...
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Well, are they?

A recently separated friend sniffed at the idea of a whole 600 words on the subject.

"Since the answer is `no,' " she said, "I don't quite see what you can do for the other 599." In fact, if men are on earth solely to preserve the species, there is already enough DNA in sperm banks to last for ages. Advances in cryogenics and turkey basting have rendered human males largely superfluous.

Other women interviewed defended their own irreplaceability — an artificial womb is still years off — but argued that men, though an anachronism, do have some impractical value.

"Geez, I'd miss sex," one said.

Another asked, "If there weren't gay men," who would help women check out the jeans-clad courtship displays of breeding males?

But the blunt fact is that human females rarely get to choose to eliminate males. The world is patriarchical because male aggression makes for a winning reproductive strategy, said Dr. Barbara B. Smuts, a feminist sociobiologist.

Male chimps, seeking many partners, dominate females who otherwise, Dr. Smuts argues, would accept sex only with the most qualified male.

In that regard, humans imitate chimps, not our other closest relatives, bonobos, whose females band together to fight off unwanted males.

Among lower animals and insects, as described by the evolutionary biologist Dr. Olivia Judson, the notion of "choosing" males is not so prevalent.

Insomniac male brown bats rape their way through hibernating roosts. Male honeybees explode upon climax, leaving their genitals behind in the queen as a chastity belt.

Male green spoon worms live inside a female's reproductive tract to fertilize passing eggs; they reach it by getting close enough to the females, who are 200,000 times their size, to be inhaled.

Male Australian redback spiders not only somersault into their mates' fangs to be eaten while copulating, they also fight for the privilege, pulling rivals from the females' jaws and hogtying them with silk.

The engine behind all this is the Y chromosome, which determines maleness. Scholars have recently mocked it as a genetic cul de sac.

Over the eons, more than 900 of its 1,000 genes have shifted to other chromosomes, and it could theoretically become extinct in 10 million years. "Man's defining structure is a haven for degenerates," Steve Jones, a geneticist at the University College London, writes in his recent book "Y: The Descent of Men."

But advancing chromosomal recombination is the point of sex, and advancing sex is the point of pheromones, courtship displays, the taking of female captives in war and romantic love. Consequently, said Dr. David C. Page, a specialist in Y chromosomes at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., without males there would not only be no war, but also "no poetry, literature, music, advertising or fashion." "A Thousand Clones" makes lousy drama.

That raises a question: sex, yes, but why separate sexes? Hermaphroditic California sea hares mate happily in chains — male end to female end to male end to female end — beneath the waves. Why can't we all?

The answer: no one knows. Above the fish-and-slug level, in reptiles, birds and mammals, hermaphroditism is almost unheard of, except for rare genetic accidents. Sexual dimorphism must convey some huge mysterious advantage. We are stuck with each other.

Party on.

In that regard, humans imitate chimps, not our other closest relatives, bonobos, whose females band together to fight off unwanted males.

Oh, I dunno - I'll wager every man has, at least once, had the fun of trying to separate the woman he's interested in getting to know from her chosen pack of screaming b*tch harpy girlfriends - the ones who have decided to "band together to fight off unwanted males".

Among lower animals and insects, as described by the evolutionary biologist Dr. Olivia Judson, the notion of "choosing" males is not so prevalent.

Well that makes sense, choosing lower life forms and insects as your role models. /sarcasm

Male honeybees explode upon climax, leaving their genitals behind in the queen as a chastity belt.

OUCH!

In fact, if men are on earth solely to preserve the species, there is already enough DNA in sperm banks to last for ages. Advances in cryogenics and turkey basting have rendered human males largely superfluous.

If true, this points to an incredile paradox. For all the accusations from men that feminism is trying to eliminate males from reproduction, it is men who ultimately enabled this to happen.

Over the eons, more than 900 of its 1,000 genes have shifted to other chromosomes, and it could theoretically become extinct in 10 million years.

Let's see who's laughing last(posthumously) when their mitochondrial DNA wears out 100 million years later! ;-)