What would the world really look like without men?

I was imagining a scenario where there was a plague that wiped out 90% of men (as well as 30% of women) and rendered the rest of the former sterile. After the world reels back from the severe population decline, there would be technology that would allow a sort of parthenogenesis where women would still be able to have children without men (although there would still be the need of gene mixing to prevent inbred genetic abnormalities or susceptibility for wide populations to disease.)

What I'm wondering is would this world be any different that it is now? Feminism books would claim that the world would be without violence or conflict, while other more chauvinist articles (I'm thinking of the Greeks and their conception of the Amazons) would have a world where there is stagnation or ruin. but honestly I think that's just wishful thinking. I honestly don't think the world would be any more peaceful or worse than what we have now.

I got this idea from this yahoo question article, which I think is frankly biased on what women can and can't do (doing hard physical labor while taking care of children).

There would be a lot of unhappy women.

Thus, scientists would start at once working feverishly to bring men, or at least some lookalikes, back.

Work-side, I don't see a problem. Yeah, being heavily pregnant would interfere with some necessary physical jobs, but it's not like all women are pregnant all the time; and people have been doing physical labor while taking care of children since the origin of humankind.

But I also don't see the world becoming one without violence or conflict because of this. Women can be just as aggressive and nasty as any man; and here you'd have a situation in which resources would be likely stretched very thin, at least the beginning, societies as we know them would have probably collapsed (bringing down supply chains with them, most likely) and with, not to stress this point, a lot of very sexually frustrated people.

That's not a recipe for utopia.

edited 30th Sep '12 9:34:50 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I actually considered the possibility of a biological weapon that caused the miscarriage of male embryoes 90% of the time to be one of the horrifically effective ways of solving most of the world's problems, provided you deployed it sometime in the 70s. The sheer population drop would help with the conservation of a lot of natural resources, even if this only lasted for two generations of humans. It would also mean a considerable likely increase in the standard of living for the poorest around the world, simply because of the ripple effect from investing resources in improving the lives of girls (see here). And as a side effect, it would be a death knell for the most retrogressive and damaging ideologies in the world.

That said? It's not a recipe for utopia by any means, like Carc said, and our species could be in trouble without men after two generations at most. Assuming we find a way around the population problems, I don't think society would be so different; men and women aren't so psychologically distinct. The sexual frustration could be traumatizing on a massive scale, though.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

A unisex society? Wow.

Should we assume that the women are already past the transitional stage so that the shock of that transition doesn't hinder the world?

Oh, and I really cannot tell if that article is more insulting towards women (who apparently are not capable of taking care of themselves without some strong man to help them) or towards men (whose value to the human species, apparently, lies in the fact that they are strong enough to be viable beasts of burden.)

I think that the sheer shock of such an event might well cause the creation of even more retrogressive and damaging ideologies, or of more extreme versions of the current ones. For example, in a culture that already values males far above females, such a disproportionate difference between male and female birthrates might actually increase their cultural biases, far beyond even the thinnest semblances of sanity...

edited 30th Sep '12 9:47:04 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

"And as a side effect, it would be a death knell for the most retrogressive and damaging ideologies in the world."

And the birth of many equally damaging ideologies.

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

I suspect it would lead to a rapid decline of civilization into a state of barbarism, from which it would take a very long time to recover, if it recovered at all.

edited 30th Sep '12 9:55:35 PM by Talby

Yeah, artificially causing a massive demographic shortage of something necessary for basic propagation is...not going to magically fix your problems. Ever.

Also, surprised nobody linked this.

Less surprised that nobody linked this, but it's for everyone that a) played it and b) bothered reading the manual. All both of you.

edited 30th Sep '12 10:00:52 PM by Pykrete

Gah. That many of my own gender? I'll either turn into a hermit or just become that crazy, bitter lady who tells everyone to stay the hell away.

The remaining men would turn into hot commodities, not people. Even those who wouldn't be sexually attracted to them could still want them as a resource.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

They wouldn't even be used for sex.

Just Semen farms.

Unless they're redheads.

now I have "death by snoo snoo" going through my head

Edit: redheads are awesome!

Of course you can collect sperm without sex. If they won't masterbate in the cup, there's always good ol' electro-ejaculation.

edited 30th Sep '12 10:37:27 PM by Gabrael

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Fun fact. You don't need sex to produce semen.

But in this case, what's the point? The original scenario has all remaining men rendered sterile. The semen would be useless. Any remaining men simply have a more convenient means of expelling urine than the ladies.

As for actual changes to society? Well, I don't see utopia coming from this (indeed, I see the overall nature of politics (internal and international) changing rather little). People will still kill each other, just as before. Religion and such will probably change, but in the scheme of things, life goes on, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.

edited 30th Sep '12 10:42:11 PM by Balmung

Did anyone else know you can get Sperm from a sterile man?

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

Alternatively, in that case, in a few generations, things return by and large to normal, though I'm guessing that we're looking at more sterile than CF. Probably more like total sterility. Say, no sperm left or something.

edited 30th Sep '12 10:44:24 PM by Balmung

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, can we use Stem Cells to recreate Sperm Cells?

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

After checking around, we may (soon) be able to.

edited 30th Sep '12 11:01:18 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

Aren't there like...entire storage facilities of semen? Like...barrels of the stuff?

I think it goes without saying that a generation or two without men would survive.

The opposite not so much.

edited 30th Sep '12 11:56:19 PM by Thorn14

"Aren't there like...entire storage facilities of semen?"

Only in the developed world.

Somehow I doubt there are many sperm banks in Afghanistan or East Timor.

"The opposite not so much."

Well we could always clone.

edited 1st Oct '12 12:22:40 AM by DeviantBraeburn

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

I think if it happened at this point in time we'd be extinct within two generations, at best. For one, sperm doesn't keep forever. For two, we're talking losing nearly half the world's population, with all the chaos that would bring. Half or more of our global leadership would be lost, half our workforce, interrupting all services, dead bodies everywhere because they're dying faster than we can bury them. Oh, and the MASS PANIC that comes with that many people dying within a short time frame.

By the time the die off was done, just about everything in first world countries would be utterly trashed. Less developed countries would probably have an easier time transitioning, actually, due to less reliance on technology to fulfill basic needs.

Any sort of survivable transition would have to be a slow die off of the male gender, with enough time for the rest of us to transition to using/storing sperm and cloning. We're nowhere near enough to being able to procreate reliably with methods that require a lot of technological support. So yeah, the men die off quickly and then the remaining ones go sterile pretty much equals chaos and extinction. Not any kind of global peace. Unless you're counting the After Mankind sort.

To be honest, tales and think-spaces like this always get me as being over-contrived to the point of being... well... pointless.

They tell you more about the people coming up with the questions than those dreaming up responses.

Extinction is a rather extreme prediction (although I will concede it as a possibility). If there is one thing humanity pries itself on its our ability to adapt.

I think a critical factor is the nature of the plague. If it takes its time someone is gonna come up with a contingency plan.

And technically us all being dead would achieve world peace.

edited 1st Oct '12 1:18:49 AM by DeviantBraeburn

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

Just a few things about the OP. I didn't yet read the replies.

You should add the word "straw" there.

Women can do that, as demonstrated by millions of women doing exactly that all over the world today.

I'll think of one later

If it's just sudden then yeah "sudden chaos cause HOLY CARP 50% OF THE WORLD POPULATION DISAPPEARED WHAT IS HAPPENING WHAT" and then the other problems involved with removing half of humanity that was equally distributed off the face of the earth.

Say after recover time? Nothing really that different, I'd say.

Reminds me of Y The Last Man (which takes place after this kind of event) where among other things, outcomes like Israel becoming a military power in the Mid-East and Australia becoming a naval power in the Pacific happen.

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ