Women Don’t Need Men
More than ever, “mankind” is becoming a misnomer. With advanced understanding, we now know that women are both necessary and sufficient for reproduction, and men are neither.
So says Greg Hampikian, a Boise State biology professor. Expounding in the Times on how much women — and not men — are needed to propagate the species, he offers examples like this:
Your life as an egg actually started in your mother’s developing ovary, before she was born; you were wrapped in your mother’s fetal body as it developed within your grandmother.
Wow! I had never realized that.
Then after leaving our mother’s body, suckling provided our nourishment.
But there’s more: Mom sampled our diseases by holding and kissing us and then countered our infections by making antibodies that she passed on through her milk.
The in’s and out’s of our dependence on mom contrast with our short encounter with dad, when our egg-selves met “some very odd tiny cells that he had shed.” Turns out, these same cells may be transmitted to mom via turkey baster.
Prof. Hampikian wondered if there was anything irreplaceable about men. A female colleague replied, “They’re entertaining.”
Amanda Marcotte, over at Slate, feels the fear is overblown.
What do men imagine will happen if we don’t need them anymore? Will we magically stop having boy children? Go on mass murdering sprees to rid ourselves of the burden of men? Are all women just one equal paycheck away from killing all the men?
More interestingly, she points out that this is not a new concern. The fear that women won’t need men always arises when women grow more independent. One blogger feels the whole right-wing obsession with controlling women is bound up in a worry that we don’t really need men.
The oddest concern I have heard came from a friend who belongs to the church I grew up in. There, all males get priesthood at age 12. Women never do. (And I have complained about this!) But my male friend worried that,
If women get the priesthood then they won’t need men, anymore.
Really? Then why do women from other churches – and women who don’t belong to any church – bother to love men and even get married?
So yeah, women don’t need actual men to create babies, given the sperm banks at our disposal.
But who knows, maybe guys do come in handy for love, relationship and sex. As Ms. Marcotte points out:
There are lots of things we don’t need but we still want: flat screen TVs, YouTube videos of cats, expensive microbrews, fathers. Doesn’t mean we don’t want them.
And why would you rather be needed than wanted, anyway?
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Posted on September 10, 2012, in men, relationships, women and tagged men, relationships, women. Bookmark the permalink. 29 Comments.
BroadBlogs 
The relationship between a man and a woman is more than just the necessary means of reproducing. With a dual gender relationship, the interaction is something that can’t be replicated with the same gender. With the right person, the interaction is better than the friendship with your best friend. But the emotional connection is just as good as your friendship with your best friend. There’s no hidden tension like what some girl friendships carry, and the relationship isn’t as surface-level as guys’ friendships are. (I’m talking about gender here, not biological.) Somehow, we level out each other.
A little while ago, my friend and I discussed on the thought of this – “The only thing separating a relationship from friendship is touch.” Touching, kissing, hugging, or just being physically intimate in general enhances some emotional aspect of our evaluation of the other. So there’s the additional benefit that also satisfies our biological desires. Although women don’t often view men as sex objects, when they have bodies that are nicely built, hugging them, carressing them, feeling them, will bring pleasure that other women’s bodies can’t ever provide.
constant hate speech? one extremist said “why are you blaming all women?” It means that men can live on their own without any assistance and they are saying women are the same way. Its not talking about wanting to get rid of the male gender. that would be stupid. women need men like infant need his/her mother breast, common let’s all face reality men can be compete dicks and so can women
well with so many women nowadays going for other women, that will certainly be a problem.
Really, it only seems so. Well, porn makes it seem so, anyway. The vast majority of women are into men.
There is some truth in that
http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Why-Women-Are-Leaving-Men-for-Lesbian-Relationships-Bisexuality/1
Here’s something I wrote about 18 months ago:
Must Sexual Orientation be Biological?
https://broadblogs.com/2012/02/03/must-sexual-orientation-be-biological/
I thought that sexual orientation is mostly constructed and I guess I kind of still believe that, but true stories like this one, make me have second thoughts.
I guess you must have heard about this story, it’s about a boy who was raised as girl without knowing it. It’s a sad story.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332396/Bruce-Reimer-Tragic-twin-boy-brought-girl.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11814300
Yes. One of the males raised female who preferred women.
I saw data somewhere that said if you try to change the child’s gender identity before 18 months there’s about a 50-50 chance you can do it. After three years old, forget it. They’re sticking with whatever they believe they are. This guy was 17 months old when his genderless was switched — or attempted switch.
So that means that sexual orientation is something that can be learned but it must be done at a young age. If the society taught children from a young age to be bisexual then the majority of people would learn to be bisexuals. It just needs to be done at a young age. And since nowdays bisexuality has become accepted and very popular in the media and children “receive” it at a young age thanks to the internet and tv, that means that the next generation will mostly be bisexual.
No. Gender can be learned at a young age.
On the other hand, males who are raised as females even from a young age still tend to prefer to have sex with females.
It’s interesting that you mention only males (straight and gay) as a paradigm for this.
Let’s leave that “bonobos research” aside. In your blog post “must sexual orientation be biological?” the evidence points out that males’ (straight and gay) sexuality is rigid and it’s difficult to change. That’s why gay men who are Christians and wish to change, they can not do it. But at that blog post that psychologist says that straight women are the exception and they are the only “group” that they have no preference at all.
So I will correct what I posted above.
So that means that (straight) women’s sexual orientation is something that can be learned but it must be done at a young age. If the society taught girls from a young age to be bisexual then the majority of women would learn to be bisexuals. It just needs to be done at a young age. And since nowdays female bisexuality has become accepted and very popular in the media and girls “receive” it at a young age thanks to the internet and the TV, that means that the next generation’s women will mostly be bisexual.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sax-sex/201004/why-are-so-many-girls-lesbian-or-bisexual
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/04/23/o.women.leave.menfor.women/
http://scarlettblack.hubpages.com/hub/The-Craze-Straight-Women-of-All-Ages-Experimenting-With-Other-Woman-Why
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/woman-magazine/The_paradox_of_straight_women_leaving_men_for_women-175035061.html
Who knows. There seem to be biological limits. I’m not sure precisely where they lie. But if a person doesn’t want sex with the same sex it makes no sense to call them either bi or gay.
As some have already pointed out, sperm still has to come from the man. In any case, at some point in the future technological advances may well reach a point where neither men nor women are needed to reproduce humans, at which point we all become redundant in the reproductive process, with the exception of the mad scientists.
As for now, human beings are far too myopic, narcissistic, selfish, dumb and weak to make the implications of these theoretical musings relevant. People don’t have children to propagate the species, so outside of the agenda setters, that is never a concern foremost in people’s minds. People have children for their own selfish reasons. The challenge of raising children also compels most people to seek a partner to do it with in order to share the burden. That’s where men come in for most women who want to reproduce and even those who don’t; emotional and material support.
It would take quite the revolution in the way society is structured, not to mention a complete paradigm shift in the motivations behind human conduct across the board to change these facts. Obviously, that isn’t happening any time soon or at all.
Just find it interesting that my step mom married my dad with no hope of childen, my mom married my step-dad with no hope of childen, my husband and I still have no children, yet we haven’t divorced each other.
This whole worry that women won’t need men, for whatever reason that is fabricated, just seems entirely overblown, and pointless.
Even when children aren’t involved, the desire for emotional and material support is still there.
Yep.
Heya! Just wanted to let you know that I’ve nominated your blog for the One Lovely Blog Award: http://cratesandribbons.com/2012/09/11/one-lovely-blog-award/
=)
wow, thank you so much!
So yeah, women don’t need actual men to create babies, given the sperm banks at our disposal.
Ummm. At some point in time you are going to need to refill those sperm banks, you know (which requires men). Unless in a couple of hundred years you want a world populated largely by hillbillies. Think about it 🙂
Sure, you can only put it off so long.
But as I said before, who cares? Women want men even if we don’t make babies with them.
Which leads me to my next question – sociologically, how many of the cultural constructs that define male\female roles have developed along the lines of male\female brain evolution? (e.g. men are hunters because they have superior “tunnel” vision, while women fulfill gathering tending roles because they have superior peripheral vision)
None.
Some social psych comes out of psych and some comes out of soc. evolutionary psych comes out of psych. Soc will give you a good critique of it. Here’s one of my posts:
https://broadblogs.com/2010/12/20/are-women-naturally-monogamous-2/
Right you are.
There’s a fundamental flaw in the “women don’t need men” perspective. Whether or not sperm is delivered by penis or by turkey baster, the source remains the same. It’s not as if sperm can be conjured out of thin air. So the need remains, even though the delivery method may vary. So, without men, there would be no babies, same as usual.
It may be said that we don’t need men for as much as we needed them years ago, but it cannot be said that we don’t need them at all.
True, women would eventually need men.
But who cares. We want them, regardless.
Nice 🙂
I found out about the eggs from the research for my novel.
I’ve written about ‘The End of Men’ satirically as a wake-up call because all the really bad things are sadly perpetrated by males – just as Jonathan Swift tried to scare and shake folk out of their torpor with his Modest Proposal.
However, I’ve found what seems to really scare people is to talk about there being fewer people in the future. I say, “We’re not talking about killing anyone, just having less kids…” but they react without thinking with stuff like, “If everyone stood close together we’d only cover California – so there can’t be overpopulation!” (honest) and “Women like having children…”
Ha!
I loved this blog. Very interesting! It points out a unique perspective that I never really thought about a lot. Keep up the good work!!! 🙂
Thank you!