The Irrelevant Man
by Larry Wall
(Denison, Texas)
Retirement? I am a male that enjoys tongue-in-cheek humor and I have already retired.
But I have an announcement. I have been considering a sex-change operation.
I realize it may seem abrupt and irrational, but I have been mulling it over for awhile now.
You see, men are rapidly becoming irrelevant!
After considering how people lived at the time of some of my very recent ancestors (to include even some that were living during my own lifetime), and then considering how people live today - I have come to a stark realization!
In today’s times and with modern technologies, certain physical traits of men are no longer necessary to ensure adequate provision for the family.
Families no longer require male strength and endurance as the principal characteristics needed to sustain their livelihood. In fact, today women can perform most paying jobs that men perform.
So if they wanted, women could now just corral some number of men - and at arm’s length use medical techniques to occasionally harvest a little sperm. It would not necessarily require a large number of men to perpetuate the species. And men could even be bred to produce better sperm, in the same less-than-enthralling manner that bulls are bred to enhance their sperm.
And why wouldn’t women do just that? Even though most men think otherwise – I often hear that males are the inferior, lesser needed and more troubled half of the two sexes. And that they tend to be problematic, more barbaric, less trustworthy, more violent, less sensitive, and more selfish than females. Besides all that, I personally have noted that most women generally smell very good - and men just stink!
So I think it might be in my own self-interest to just go ahead and have a sex-change operation. And then maybe I can avoid life in the corral – or even worse.
And let’s also consider this. It will get worse!
Because it’s fact that women by and large have more emotional capacity than men. Today men joke and scoff about women’s emotions, but the truth is artistic processes and other such creative endeavors feed off of the available emotional content. Without an emotion-based “feel” for certain things, creativeness is nil - and the result is just another left-brain cookbook recipe. No innovation can occur.
Thus women more and more are beginning to lead the field in process innovation - where creativity becomes the primary resource needed. Females are just typically more core-qualified than males to do this work – a gift from nature.
Of course, there are exceptions. But by and large, women are by far the more emotionally gifted of the two genders.
Therefore the role of the sexes in society continues to change at a rapidly increasing rate. And the talents needed in these roles are definitely slanting more and more in favor of women. No one is doing it deliberately. It is just the continued implementation of technology and innovation - and how that fits with what women can naturally do better than men.
Today more women are employed in this country than men, and the gap is certain to continue to widen at an even more rapid pace - as technology and innovation continue its accelerating rate of growth. Strength and endurance are out of fashion - and creativity is in.
As a result of all this, the age-long traditional culture of most men working and most wives staying home has forever changed – and this has all mostly occurred within my lifetime!
I liked the traditional culture. In fact, I have personally only lived within the traditional culture. My spouses never had paying jobs. Most men usually prefer it that way. And the traditional system was set up for that very reason. It was important to us guys, in order to amply feed what nature gave more to us than she ever gave to women. Big Egos! And being King of the Castle really tickles the ego! It feels good.
And what does an oversized ego do to benefit males? Well, for one thing, we are really good at making war. We get to do battle against each other and be the biggest, best, and meanest.
So comparatively speaking, it appears men are typically overstocked in ego content - and women are typically overstocked in emotional content.
Maybe the central question should be: what is more important for a stable, improving human society – creativity, or neurotic compulsive war-making?
And that is one thing that really worries me if we ever have mostly well-balanced women as world leaders. We men would really miss playing at war, I think. As it is now we get to preen, strut, and look really menacing. It’s like a strutting peacock getting to play the role of the Terminator. Who would want to give that up?
It sounds like the feminist movement should hire me, doesn’t it? Well, I will admit to a bias. I will admit to being a fan of women. I like and admire all their qualities - not just their physical qualities (though I am certainly a fan of those as well). So maybe some of you ladies will give me a break, O.K?
We men should all just admit that civilization has changed, and the option for women to play a stronger role has already been exercised. It is well underway and unstoppable. Maybe it’s for the best. Women are unlikely to perform worse than we have thus far. And if men will agree not to fight the inevitable changes, maybe we can negotiate a better deal than just a few of us ending up in corrals.
LDW
