Are men Obsolete?

[mosaik]

and is this columnist:

a.) on crack
b.) joking
c.) bat-shity crazy as possum fuck?

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0306 ... 3money.htm

One bad mistake the administration made in trying to return Iraq to civilization, according to Kenneth Pollack, was to disband the Iraqi Army. Why? Because, says Pollack, a widely respected Middle East expert, the last thing you want to do is let loose in the land a bunch of armed men trained only in mayhem. Iraq, of course, has special problems, but there is a larger lesson here. Not just in places on the margins of the medieval, but even in America, men are a perennial and perhaps deepening problem. To be sure, men--like women--aren't all alike. They vary greatly in the degree of their aggressiveness, need to dominate, and so on. Still as the social scientists say, certain "central tendencies" characterize the sexes, and in recent weeks, both Business Week and CBS's 60 Minutes have featured stories on the mounting maladies of maleness. "From kindergarten to grad school," Business Week reports, girls now outperform boys in grades, admissions, student government, and extracurricular activities. "Women are rapidly closing the M.D. and Ph.D. gap and make up almost half of law students," the magazine says. Meanwhile, boys dominate in such dubious categories as remedial education, stimulant-drug prescriptions, and suicide.

School isn't life, of course, and boys may well find their footing as they progress through the labor markets, especially at the higher reaches where daring, assertiveness--and connections--can pay off big. After all, at least for a few centuries, men have found productive niches in industrialized society, building roads, bridges, and communication networks, and founding (and periodically bilking) massive conglomerates, while contributing to the sciences, arts, and humanities. But even during these periods of industrial growth, the great majority of the male species contributed far more muscle than mind to the commonweal.

Exporting men's work. And now, in our globalized economy, many of those jobs in factories, mines, and repair and maintenance shops are fast disappearing, fleeing to foreign shores. "Manufacturing continues to hemorrhage jobs," said National Association of Manufacturers President Jerry Jasinowski recently, as he noted the 34th consecutive month of job losses in the sector, losses that extend well beyond the assembly line. A new NAM study by economist Joel Popkin points out that manufacturers now account for nearly two thirds of all private research and development and averaged twice the productivity gains of their sectors in the past two decades. But 83 percent of U.S. jobs are now categorized as "service providing." While many of these require the spatial and mathematical skills at which males still excel, the great bulk rely on the sort of diligent, low-ego, cooperative effort at which females traditionally shine.

All of which prompts the question: What shall we do with all the men? Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, was surprised when his son, a software developer, said he was considering buying a snow-removal company out west. "They can't move the snow to India," he explained. But at best that's a seasonal occupation. Sports and entertainment are other possibilities, but to make a living at them requires rare skill. Leisure is an option for those of independent means--or with productive helpmates. But women tend to excel even in non-market domains, at least at such harmless pursuits as flower arranging, shopping, and, of course, child rearing.

There remains, to be sure, one large sector in which men retain unquestioned domination: crime. In 2001, the FBI reports, men arrested for violent crime outnumbered women by roughly 5 to 1. (For murder the ratio was 7 to 1.) Even in nonviolent categories males prevailed (11 to 1 in illegal weapons possession; 5 to 1 in drunken driving). Indeed, aside from prostitution, only in the categories of fraud and embezzlement have women begun to close the gender gap. And even in these officebound areas--witness the latest round of corporate scandals--when it comes to big-time booty, the boys are still way out in front.

Unfortunately for the career aspirations of those skilled in outlaw pursuits, popular demand for the fruits of their labors is negative. No surprise then that popular prophets have foretold the coming of a male glut. In his book Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut paints a world in which computers have taken over planning, production, and much of science. War has been abolished globally, but America retains a large, if pointless, standing army. Others among the idle are enrolled in the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps (aka the Reeks and Wrecks) and spend most of their days leaning on shovels. Everyone is very depressed. Or, if you prefer, there's the Anthony Burgess dystopia of The Wanting Seed. In this not so future world, surplus males fight endless wars against unnamed enemies--who turn out to be themselves. But then, that would never happen in America.

[happening fish]

Uh.... what? this person is basically saying that because women are making up "almost half" of the high end jobs (note that there are actually more women than men in the states) this somehow makes men stupid... because they are losing their powerful advantage over the other sex? Huh?!

[mosaik]

yeah. i think it's the crack, that she was smoking, that made her bat shit crazier then possum fuck.

[joe_canadian]

well that cinches it. I am a stupid, useless piece of evil scum.

it's so clear now, how could I have ever thought otherwise?

[Sufjan Stevens]

It's people like this douche bag that make me hate feminism, and for the most part, any woman that wants change. That's all I have to say about that.

[I AM ME]

wow, that's really sickening. She's no better then the men women fought for centuries to get freedom, simply put that makes her scum. I'm not trying to sound sexst either (because i'm obviously not) but she tries to say men have contributed very little in the field of thought in the last few centuries and it was more muscle work....................uh hello! can we even start naming all the inventors scientists and philosphers that were men? Infact wern't most of them men? (bad cicumstances or not)

[I AM ME]