Is there any way to make males less expendable?

[Le Jacquelope]

What would it take to make a man's life perceived as valuable as a woman's?

I hear sperm counts are dropping. Maybe if men could only breed once or twice a year, making them the reproductive bottleneck, there'd be more pressure to keep them alive?

There's got to be some kind of solution. The senseless waste of male lives reminds me of the ancient old Catholic question of whether women have souls.

Do men have souls? Or is the gratuitous waste of male lives a sign that they don't?

 

[3113]

What would it take to make a man's life perceived as valuable as a woman's?

As valuable as a woman's life...? You mean you want men's lives to be as valuable as women so that grooms are murdered instead of brides like in India? So male fetuses are aborted as many times as female in Asia? So that men have to wear burkas like women, can't drive, can't go anywhere without female escorts as in many Middle East countries? You mean so that men who can no longer father children are kicked out and replaced with younger men by their wives?

I'm sorry. Which valuable women's lives do you want men's to be like?

 

[Le Jacquelope]

As valuable as a woman's life...? You mean you want men's lives to be as valuable as women so that grooms are murdered instead of brides like in India? So male fetuses are aborted as many times as female in Asia? So that men have to wear burkas like women, can't drive, can't go anywhere without female escorts as in many Middle East countries? You mean so that men who can no longer father children are kicked out and replaced with younger men by their wives?

I'm sorry. Which valuable women's lives do you want men's to be like?

Every example you brought up was of one of the Eastern nations which have precious little in common with Western values.

Perhaps if you felt this badly about those cultures maybe you would join me in opposing any trade with these nations, as every time you buy a Chinese DVD player you give a Chinese family money to kill a baby girl.

I'm all for totally cutting off trade with cultures like that of which you speak. In fact I've been bringing up their treatment of women as a justification for doing such for quite a while.

Here in the Western world, though, it is men who get kicked off more than women. Which is why our lifespans are so much shorter.

 

[3113]

our lifespans are so much shorter.

From USA Today, 2006:

American men now live just five years less, on average, than women, closing a gap that once approached eight years. Male life expectancy hit a record 75.2 in 2004, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced.

Nice work, guys. CDC data suggest you did it by smoking less and taking other steps to reduce the risks of cancer and heart disease.

Once again, I ask, which valuable women's lives do you want men to be like? According to this two year old article, the gap between life spans is closing, not widening and, as of that article, was only 5 years.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

From USA Today, 2006:


Once again, I ask, which valuable women's lives do you want men to be like? According to this two year old article, the gap between life spans is closing, not widening and, as of that article, was only 5 years.

Okay, I will stick solely with the facts. If anyone steps up to say I am wrong in ANYTHING I say below, I will more than happily go back and solidly document every ounce of what I am about to say. But for now I'm being nice to bandwidth.

Supposedly, since men are always fertile into their old age, and women are fertile less often, the human species suffers less with the loss of males than females. If you want, I can point you to one or two AHers who have said this and no one had any criticism about it then.

How expendable are men? Guess who got sent off against their will to die in Vietnam. Guess who has to sign up for selective service now (that's a big fat "hello" to the "but the draft ain't active" crowd). Guess who got the lifeboats on the Titanic.

Which gender it is where only 40% of their membership ever gets to breed?

Which gender it is that people say "their brain doesn't mature until age 30" and all those other manner of broad brushing slanders?

____ are stupid, throw rocks at them. Fill in the blank.

Are ___ Necessary? Fill in the blank.

The majority of homeless people are ___. Fill in the blank.

I'm just sticking to the facts here, not attacking anyone. Just the solid, cold hard facts.

Now, for my opinion.

I think it's a big fat mistake of nature that men are fertile beyond the fertility expiration date of women. That's a large part of why society feels it is okay to waste so many men's lives on dangerous endeavors and no one sheds a tear when some don't come back. Our infinite fertility has created a sense of male redundancy in which Western society thinks it can get along with more dead males than dead females.

Now, I ask you again... are you up for joining me in eschewing any trade whatsoever with the Eastern world, which puts an even LOWER value on women than is put on men in the Western world?

Deeds, not words, I say.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Simple. Reduce our numbers. Then we'll be viewed as more necessary. The parity of the ratio of the sexes is a historical anomaly, resulting in a surplus of men.

Solution? War. Worked in the past 10,000 years.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Simple. Reduce our numbers. Then we'll be viewed as more necessary. The parity of the ratio of the sexes is a historical anomaly, resulting in a surplus of men.

Solution? War. Worked in the past 10,000 years.

I'm talking about making it so that every male is considered as important as every female, on a 1 to 1 basis, in Western society.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I'm talking about making it so that every male is considered as important as every female, on a 1 to 1 basis, in Western society.

Not gonna happen, because males view each other as competition. Females have value to them, to us, whereas other males are only in our way. It's a Darwinian struggle to breed more than the next guy.

Deep down, we're still apes.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Not gonna happen, because males view each other as competition. Females have value to them, to us, whereas other males are only in our way. It's a Darwinian struggle to breed more than the next guy.

Deep down, we're still apes.

Oh, women have a part in that, too. They choose the biggest baddest ape in the bunch.

But if guys only breed twice a year and is infertile after 50, now she has to get while the getting is good. Now you have a new party that is highly interested in keeping as many males alive as possible.

Granted, if you increase the birth rate of women to 300% that of males, you also have the same thing. But we are not yet genetically advanced to put this ratio in place and more importantly we are nowhere near advanced enough to embed that ratio deep enough to kick Fisher's Principle to the curb.