A World Without Men

AlexKellyOC today mentioned the idea of a world without men, and that scientists are working to make it possible. It’s an interesting subject. In 2011, Prof. Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University succeeded in creating ‘primitive sperm cells with female embryonic stem cells’ (see Prof Karim Nayernia:Sperm cells created from female embryo):

The University of Newcastle team that has achieved the feat is now applying for permission to turn the bone marrow of a woman into sperm which, if successful, would make the method more practical than with embryonic cells.

It raises the possibility of lesbian couples one day having children who share both their genes as sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilise an egg from her partner.

Yes. Soon the only need the world will have for men is to open jars.

But what would a world without men really be like?

Recently I reviewed Alana Munro’s Women Behaving Badly, which discusses how women are trained from birth to be ‘nice’:

Little girls are inherently smart, they learn very quickly – in order to be acceptable – they must push their negative emotions underground and learn to be more passive.

As a result of this gender conditioning, girls learn to conceal, manipulate and keep the peace a lot quicker than their male counterparts.

In a world without men, such gender divisions would become irrelevant. There wouldn’t be so much pressure on women to be passive, pretty, perfect princesses waiting to be chosen by a man. That same pressure that makes shaming such an effective weapon for controlling women. Nine Deuce (Rage Against the Man-chine) says it better:

Slut-shaming is one of the chief ways that women attempt to compete with each other for male approval in a patriarchy that defines women’s worth by their physical attractiveness and limits their ability to distinguish themselves by other means.

But if you take patriarchy out of the equation, if you take the whole gender divide out of the equation, then just imagine the possibilities.

There would, of course, be cultural variations, different systems of morality, religious beliefs, the usual political interference, but all of that is cosmetic. More fundamentally, you would have those women who are attracted to women, and those women who are not.

A significant proportion of women would not be able to form romantic attachments with or experience sexual desire for another woman. They would still feel loneliness but would seek out friendship rather than romance, and their sexual needs would be satisfied through masturbation.

I’m being very binary here for simplicity. I’m just wondering about a society divided into those who can fall in love, and those who can’t.