Are Women Necessary?

Vance

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Magatsu's note: I use AD's search feature but didn't find any... this article is quite old but I want to know what's your (especially women) reactions will be when you gals (or guys) read this article. But one odd thing.. this seems to be written by a woman. Read on:


November 11, 2003
... Are Women Necessary?
By NATALIE ANGIER

bundant evidence suggests that females are the first sex, the ancestral sex, the sex from which males are derived.

Boys owe their lives to their mothers in more ways than one. Yet recent experiments with stem cells hint that women, not men, may eventually prove obsolete.

Granted, a post-feminine future sounds far-fetched. In many species, including our own, the fundamental body plan is female, with maleness being a bit of window-dressing tacked on at the last minute.

Some groups of insects, fish and lizards consist entirely of females, which give birth only to daughters. By contrast, no self-sustaining, boys-only population has ever arisen in nature, the efforts of certain Southern golf tournaments notwithstanding.

Indeed, males are famous for their cheap, abbreviated gametes, and their poignant need for the warmth and wealth of the comparatively massive female sex cell to realize their dreams of immortality. You'd think they would be humble, grateful, even obsequious. But it seems that somewhere along the way those slippery flagella figured out a possible pathway to go it alone.

Here are the unnerving results that threaten the matriarchy: last spring, after years of effort, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere announced that they could grow working egg cells in the laboratory if they started with embryo tissue taken from either a female or a male mouse.

These hothouse eggs and their accompanying follicular matrix were so persuasive they even secreted and responded to estrogen, the archetypically "female" hormone.

In September, Japanese researchers said they could create robust little sperm cells in the lab, too ? but only if they began with the embryonic stem cells of a male animal. It turns out that the program for making eggs is stored on the chromosomes that males and females share. To manufacture sperm, however, you need that truncated, genetically penurious Y chromosome that only a male can claim.

In theory, then, male starter cells could be used to make eggs and sperm, and those eggs and sperm could be mixed together to yield a new generation. This would not be parthenogenesis as seen in whiptail lizards or Nature's other little sororities, with the parent capable only of spawning more of its own sex and hence being limited in its power to genomically outfox parasites.

This would be like old-fashioned, shake-'em-up, male-female sexual reproduction, a meeting of eggs and sperm. You could mix and match your fabricated eggs and sperm to generate boys and girls alike.

Except why bother with girls, if you don't need mothers to lay those little egg cells in the first place? You could have robust diversity in the human gene pool without the need for pesky separate restrooms.

True, women at the moment remain useful for their possession of another baby-friendly device, the uterus. But how long will this anatomical detail be an impediment to complete female obsolescence?

Already, researchers can keep baby goats alive in an artificial uterus, a big fishbowl of bubbling fluid, for weeks at a stretch. A full-term, full-service exoamniotic cocoon cannot be far behind.

Given such recent and imminent developments, Rebecca West, journalist, novelist and companion of H. G. "Doomsday" Wells, was eerily prescient in her observation that motherhood is "like being one's own Trojan horse."

Yet as women contemplate their pending irrelevance, they can take heart in a more immediate lesson to be gleaned from the latest experimental results. If inside every man's genome is a little mother yearning to be free, well, then, no more excuses when it's time to change the diapers.

Source: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00E12F73A5D0C728DDDA80994DB404482 (registration required)


o_O *eye twitchs*
 
[laughing!]
Wow, this is some serious material here with a drop of sarcasm. It does make you wondering what is our purpose on the planet if we do allow machines deciding the gender, doing the process of pregnancy, and whatnot to spare us the suffering, pains, time-comsuming and health risks... What the? It is better to let the natural selection occuring-- the very fundamental idea is: if you cannot live through the process of developing an offspring, out you go. What can you use with your body? You are eating up and wasting our resources. After all, every means of surivial for all species bolt down to whether you can give an offspring, a copy of your DNA, to mutant and success in the animal kingdom. It is quite competive in the kingdom especially with those pesty yet highly productive insects!

Which newspaper/journal did you excerpt this from? I am quite curious to see what other reading materials they carry.
 
Heh. I actually enjoy reading your post as usual, Gnarly. btw, where you have been lately? And how are you doing so far?

Back to topic. It is New York Times but I got it from anime community, that member never provided the source/link.. I have to google and found the link as source so I am afraid that I don't know anywhere to find for you. I can try to look a bit more and see if I can find some more reading materials for you to look up.
 
there you go

gnarlydorkette said:
[laughing!]
Wow, this is some serious material here with a drop of sarcasm. It does make you wondering what is our purpose on the planet if we do allow machines deciding the gender, doing the process of pregnancy, and whatnot to spare us the suffering, pains, time-comsuming and health risks... What the? It is better to let the natural selection occuring-- the very fundamental idea is: if you cannot live through the process of developing an offspring, out you go. What can you use with your body? You are eating up and wasting our resources. After all, every means of surivial for all species bolt down to whether you can give an offspring, a copy of your DNA, to mutant and success in the animal kingdom. It is quite competive in the kingdom especially with those pesty yet highly productive insects!

Which newspaper/journal did you excerpt this from? I am quite curious to see what other reading materials they carry.
dont let him smooth talk to you!hes just alll talk PERIOD i wouldnt even bother this.
 
harleymn, do you know how stupid that sounds like? Gnarly and I 'practically' know each other.

buzz off, loser.
 
Magatsu said:
harleymn, do you know how stupid that sounds like? Gnarly and I 'practically' know each other.

buzz off, loser.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: gotta love magatsu hehehe
 
SpiceHD said:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: gotta love magatsu hehehe
Sorry about my post above but his trolling is totally unnecssary :/

Gnarly, I found it interesting that there is another newspaper agenda that published this article... I am not sure what going on but you can read some informative posts at: (forums) http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=141&t=2279&s=

but I read some of these posts, it appears that some of them are intelligent-challenge folks... Again, I will try my best to find the reading material for you. Again, sorry about it :/
 
Mag... you should be a politician or something....
why are you wasting your time on this forum?
You got talent.
 
Magatsu said:
Sorry about my post above but his trolling is totally unnecssary :/

no neccessary for apology you made me laugh because u were right.. his trolling is not neccessary :-P
 
SpiceHD said:
no neccessary for apology you made me laugh because u were right.. his trolling is not neccessary :-P
Glad that my post has entertained you ;P

Gnarly, I looked and looked... seem so far that two possible sources: New York Times and China View.
 
Miss*Pinocchio said:
Mag... you should be a politician or something....
why are you wasting your time on this forum?
You got talent.


he is not wasting his time on this forum.. he is enjoying meeting people.. and making new friends.. he has made a great friend in me.. :P

he is on his way to becoming a fine doctor.. so polictics are out of the question for him... why don't you and mr ravensteve become politicians? :D
 
zesty said:
he is not wasting his time on this forum.. he is enjoying meeting people.. and making new friends.. he has made a great friend in me.. :P

he is on his way to becoming a fine doctor.. so polictics are out of the question for him... why don't you and mr ravensteve become politicians? :D

i agreed with you. :) He's a fine man and good guy to chat with.
 
there is a lot of really good people on this forum, and Mag is definitely one of them!
 
Thanks-- I am surprised NY Times will publish somewhat like this. But then, they are trying to stir up anything to get folks reading their materials. Thanks again, I am passing it on to my friends to raise some eyebrows. ;-)

EDITED: never mind, Gatsu already posted the link to the article at NY Times. It does require you to pay some if you want the whole article. The abstract is only shown.
 
Miss*Pinocchio said:
Mag... you should be a politician or something....
why are you wasting your time on this forum?
You got talent.


another thing i forgot to add.. why are you wasting your time posing as TTT?? hmmm.... guess you got a talent for that!! :D
 
Who needs women?
Lol, going off topic here, but we need to bring back the good old days when women had the right curves in the right places, no modern beanpoles please.
http://www.retrocrush.com/babes/babes2005/burlesque/index.html

But on a serious note, I have heard that it is MEN who are not really needed, something to do with chromosomes being easily replicated.
Whatever.
 

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gnarlydorkette said:
Thanks-- I am surprised NY Times will publish somewhat like this. But then, they are trying to stir up anything to get folks reading their materials. Thanks again, I am passing it on to my friends to raise some eyebrows. ;-)

EDITED: never mind, Gatsu already posted the link to the article at NY Times. It does require you to pay some if you want the whole article. The abstract is only shown.
Yeah me too. I was surprised that NY Times actually published a article like this.. I am even more surprised that author like Natalie Angier would write this article (Are Women Necessary?).. She wrote several excellent articles about conservatives and Bush. A example of her work: http://www.all-creatures.org/aip/nl-27nov2002-dominion.html.

But the more I read this article... the more I start to think that was full of sarcasms. I am not quite sure yet, I definitely have to read her works bit more... but so far I read her works, she is on our side. *shrugs* I dunno really.

About article & fee, yeah I haven't pay... I copied directly from one of anime communities but I can make a payment to get it since it costs only small fee and I am a huge fan of NY Times anyway. Once I did, I will send a full article over.

People, heh thanks for compliments! ;) but I just do what I am best at. That's all.
 
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Good thread!
Here's a good site explaining my position that men are a dying species, lol.

http://www.yfke.co.uk/ychromosome.pdf

I am not trying to steal your thunder, Magatsu, I am sure you know that, lol. Just providing a sort of counterpoint is all.
 
Beowulf said:
Good thread!
Here's a good site explaining my position that men are a dying species, lol.

http://www.yfke.co.uk/ychromosome.pdf

I am not trying to steal your thunder, Magatsu, I am sure you know that, lol. Just providing a sort of counterpoint is all.
No problem :thumb: I am glad that you posted that one! That article is interesting!
 
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