World Peace Is Possible - Part 10
What is it about the male gender that is so important?
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Today we might take a closer look at a question that was raised at the beginning of this article series.
QUESTION: What is it about the male gender that is so incredibly important as to justify the vast scale of suffering which violent men inflict upon the world?
After writing about this for the last couple of years it’s become clear that some readers are deeply offended by the notion that maybe humanity would be better off without the male gender. This seems a fairly common reaction, so let’s take a closer look at it.
At no time have I ever suggested killing a single man, let alone 4 billion men. So it’s not murder that critics are outraged by, because that’s not been proposed. Instead, many readers seem upset by the prospect that the male gender might one day no longer exist.
This seems a bit of an odd concern, because these same outraged readers are typically not going hysterical about the 200,000 or so Russian and Ukrainian men who have been killed or injured in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine over the last year. Sure, they don’t like the war, but they aren’t yelling “GENOCIDE!!” at Putin like they are at me.
Whoops, my count is outdated. According to the New York Times, the killed and injured total for Russian troops _alone_ is now approaching 200,000, with many more to come. Putin is flooding the battlefield with untrained civilians and convicts, and using them to clear minefields and so on.
One explanation for the the outrage of “world without men” critics could be that Putin’s crimes in Ukraine are a completely normal longstanding part of the human condition, whereas a “world without men” ideas proposes what could fairly be labeled the biggest change in human history. So maybe it’s just the scale of the proposed change which freaks some people out?
Another possible explanation could be that, to my limited knowledge, no cultural leaders in religion, politics, science or academia are making this world without men proposal. And for a lot of folks, that alone will automatically be taken as proof that an idea is wrong. I would remind such authority worshipping fellow citizens that it’s these same cultural leaders who brought us the era of nuclear weapons, and then largely wandered off and forgot about them.
Critics seem to be assuming that the male gender is some precious asset which must be protected at all costs. If that’s what they’re saying, such an assumption raises this question for me.
Why Are Men So Important??
What is it about the male gender which is so important that it justifies the huge price tag which violent men inflict daily all over the world?
A world without men would still be filled with billions of human beings. Human culture can still go on, human progress can continue, human discoveries would still be made, babies would still be born, love and happiness would still exist. And actually, in a world without men all these longstanding goals of humanity would be enhanced by a radical reduction in violence.
What difference does it make really that such a new and far better world would not contain humans with penises?? Are the critics really suggesting that we should accept thousands of more years of violent horrors like what is happening today in Ukraine just to keep the human penis?
Men Are Victims?
Many critics of the world without men idea, who are typically men, seem eager to play the victim card, as if they were being personally assaulted. We might wonder, where exactly is the assault?
As reported above, I’ve never proposed killing any living man. We don’t have to. We can instead simply stop making men.
Also, it never seems to dawn on critics that a world without men would not happen instantly, but would instead be the end of point of a transition. And during that transition there would be fewer men than today, which would make it easier for those men to find that which matters most to men, a mate, or if you prefer a date. That is, sex.
Men Are Heroes
Those who wish to lecture us about the absolute necessity of maintaining manhood don’t seem to even really understand what manhood actually means. For decent men at least, for a very long time a prime function of manhood has been to protect women and children from those who would harm them.
Well, we’re doing a lousy job of protecting the innocent guys, as even the briefest exposure to the daily horror stories covered in the media should prove beyond any doubt. It’s actually not manly to be worried about the penises of men who haven’t yet been born, while casually accepting the unspeakable violence being routinely perpetrated on innocent women and children today, every day, all over the world.
The highest calling of men is to be protectors, heroes. And maybe we’ve reached the point in time when the most heroic thing we can do as men is step aside as a gender, and let human history continue on without us. And continue on without all our violence.
Maybe the most heroic thing we can do today as men is to usher in the era of world peace. That would be a very fine legacy to leave behind, don’t you agree?
So critics, if you so want to be a man, start acting like one.
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In an earlier comment I asked who would decide which men need to go. I see now that what you’re suggesting is that men die off slowly and we don’t make any more of them. … I would argue that violent men don’t need to be eliminated, they need to be humbled. Religion has the potential to instill that humility, though I realize that potential has not been realized. That said, eliminating men is the very opposite of humility. It assumes we’re far more competent than we really are.