The End of Men

Excerpted from Stupid White Men ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation by Michael Moore

EARLIER THIS YEAR, my wife and I attended the baptism of our new nephew, Anthony. Our teenage daughter had been asked to be his godmother, a job that would require her to be there for little Anthony should he need to be burped, or raised Catholic, or both.

The baptism ceremony, we discovered, has changed a lot in the Catholic Church. Instead of just “hurry up and pour a little water on his forehead before we lose his soul to Satan,” the Church now makes it a joyful event during Sunday Mass.

About halfway through the service, Father Andy asked the entire extended family to gather round the big baptismal font while little Anthony Proffer was submerged in the holy water and then wrapped in a pure white garment. The priest then held Anthony up for all the congregation to see, and everyone in the church applauded enthusiastically.

No one was applauding louder than me. For this was the first time in thirteen years a BOY had been born into our family. Thirteen babies in thirteen years in our family. That’s eleven girls and two boys. Now I think most of us would agree that having a girl is, well, a little less work. Not that we love boys any less; and with a strong health insurance plan that covers broken arms, teeth, and collar bones, with additional coverage for fingers caught in car doors and personal injury claims from neighbors who allege our dear sweet little boy torched their Celica “just to see how fast Toyota paint burns,” they’re no more difficult to raise than girls.

I have lived my entire life in households where men were decidedly in the minority. I have no brothers, but two wonderful sisters. Between them and our mother, they made sure I did all the “woman’s work” in the house, while my dad was granted occasional leave to watch a Sunday golf tournament. I tried to even things out a bit, claiming I deserved more of a say because I was the oldest, but that only galvanized my sisters’ childhood feminist majority. To this day, as testimony to their assertive behavior, those who meet us when we're together are convinced that my sisters are older than I am, and that I’m the baby of the family.

I now live with my wife and my daughter. Outnumbered again. Whatever frightening male habits were not exorcised by my sisters and mother, these two have been merciless in finishing off. The latest was breaking me of spitting toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror while brushing my teeth. That one only took nineteen years. They tell me the list is now down to a single page, with only three or four appalling behaviors left to annihilate (balancing my Big Gulp in the open space on the steering wheel while driving; leaving permanent ink stains on the arm of the chair I fall asleep in; snoring—though I fear this one may ultimately only be corrected by a pillow being “accidentally” slipped over my face and mysteriously held there, tightly, for a good three to five minutes).

Truth be told, I am a better person for having lived my life surrounded by strong, intelligent, and loving women. It just would have been nice to play catch. Once.

My parents have no grandsons. My sisters and I have only daughters. My wife’s parents had four daughters and only two boys. They, in turn, produced eight more girls and only two additional boys. My wife’s two brothers and I have only girls. Our family hasn’t seen a game of tackle football or mumblety-peg since high school. This sacrifice appears to have gone unnoticed by nearly everyone involved.

I offer this little glimpse into the gender makeup of my family to point out a much larger discovery I’ve made. Pondering this lopsided ratio, I began asking around to find out if other people were experiencing the same thing—more girl babies being born than boy babies. Much to my surprise, I was not alone.

Lately, when I’m asked to speak at a university or community group, I leave the prepared agenda for a moment to ask how many in the room are seeing more girls being born in their families than boys. Scores of hands always shoot up.

Countless people began sharing their secret with me—that the ranks of boys are dwindling. In some families, it seems, they’re altogether extinct. I always reassure them that there’s no need to feel any shame in their inability to produce male offspring.

Then it hit me ... something is up.

And sure enough, something is. The Census Bureau confirms that the number of male babies being born has beendeclining every year in the United States since 1990! Plus, women are living longer and longer: 80 years, on average, versus only 74.2 for men. When I was a kid, the country seemed pretty much 50-50 male-female, with women maybe holding a slight lead. Then the ratio went to 51-49, with women in the majority. Soon it’ll be 52-48.

So I have come to one ugly but irrefutable conclusion:

Guys! Nature is trying to kill us off!

Why is Mother Nature doing this? Are we not the carriers of the seed of life? What have we men done to deserve this?

As it turns out, plenty.

In the early years of Man, we served a critical and necessary function in the growth of the species. We hunted and gathered the food, protected the women and children from larger animals conspiring to eat them, and helped the number of Homo sapiens multiply rapidly through a lot of random, unrestricted sex. It’s been downhill for us ever since. In the past few centuries, things seem to have taken a fatal turn for our gender. As is our wont, we commenced work on a series of projects that stank everything up and made a mess of our world. Women? They deserve none of the blame. They continued to bring life into this world; we continued to destroy it whenever we could. How many women have come up with the idea of exterminating a whole race of people? None that I’ve met at the gym. How many women have spilled oil in the oceans, dumped toxins in our food supply, or insisted that the new SUV designs had to be bigger, bigger, BIGGER? Hmmm.

Let me see.... Of the 816 species that have gone extinct since Columbus got lost and landed here (another man who wouldn’t ask for directions)—most of which are necessary links in our fragile ecosystem—how many do you think were eradicated by women? Once again, I think we all know the answer.

If you were Nature, how would you respond to such a brutal assault? And what would you do if you noticed that it was one particular gender of humans that was going out of its way to destroy you? Well, Mother Nature has a habit of cutting to the chase. She’d defend herself by any means necessary, that’s what she’d do. She’d pull out every stop to save her life, to survive at all costs, even if it meant eliminating one half of the very thing that was supposed to keep her most advanced species going.

Yes, Nature had graciously granted our species the highest form of intelligence and entrusted us with her future—but suddenly it looked like one of the genders had decided to throw the kegger of all keggers on Mother Earth’s watch. Now, hung over and cranky, Mother is pissed at whoever slipped the mickey in her drink.

The culprit has a receding hairline, a potbelly, and never screws the cap back onto anything.

Yup, guys, we’ve been fingered; there’s no way to hide from Nature’s wrath. We can’t pin any of this on the women: it wasn’t a woman who dropped napalm bombs, or who invented plastic, or who said, “Dammit, what we need is a beer can with a pop-to!” Unfortunately, every bit of plunder and pillage, every attack on the environment, everything that has brought horror and destruction to all that was once pure and good has come from hands that, well, when they aren’t busy bringing pleasure to oneself, are working overtime to wipe out this beautiful, wonderful home we were given free of charge—no security deposit required, no background check needed.

No wonder Nature is getting rid of us.

If we men had any sense, we’d try to get Nature to forgive us by cleaning up our act. You know, do the obvious stuff: quit desecrating the Arctic wilderness, pick up after ourselves, stop throwing Whopper remains out the car window.

Nature would probably put up with a lot of our guff if we still served some important purpose. For eons we had two things women didn’t have that made us a necessity: (1) we provided the sperm to keep the species going, and (2) we were able to reach and get whatever they needed off the top shelf.

Unfortunately for us, some traitor guy invented in vitro fertilization, which means that now females only need the sperm from a few of us in order to have babies. In fact

someone (probably a woman) in Arizona has announced that science has found a means of human reproduction that doesn’t even require sperm to fertilize an egg—now they can do it with DNA. No longer do women have to crawl out from underneath some slobbering man with his

face buried in the pillow simply because they wish to have babies. All they need now is a test tube.

The other invention that did the male population in was the stepladder. The portable, easy-to-carry aluminum stepladder, to be precise. Who was the bastard that came up with that bright idea? Now what possible excuse can we have for sticking around?

Nature has a way of getting rid of its weakest links, those that no longer serve a useful purpose, the dead weight. That, my friends, is us. Reproductive science and three little aluminum steps rising above the earth’s surface have made us guys about as useful as an eight-track tape.

Well, look at the bright side: We’ve had one helluva run! Thousands of years of total domination over the social order

and still going strong! Think about it—there has not been a single day when we weren’t in charge, when we weren’t calling the shots and running the world! Not even the Yankees can claim such an unbroken reign of unchallenged power. I mean, here we are, the minority, and yet we men have ruled over the female majority since time immemorial. in other countries we call that apartheid; in America we call it normal. Since the birth of this country, for more than 225 years, we have seen to it that not a single woman has held either the number one or number two offices in the land. For the better part of that time we’ve made sure that damn few of them have held any office at all. In fact, for the first 130 years of presidential elections, it was illegal for women even to vote.

Then in 1920, just to show women we’re good sports, we gave them the right to vote. And guess what? We remained in power!

Go figure. Suddenly, women had more votes; they could have thrown our collective male ass into the political trash heap. But what did they do? They voted for us! How cool is that? Have you ever heard of any group of oppressed people that suddenly, by their sheer numbers, takes charge—and then votes in overwhelming numbers to keep their oppressors in power? The blacks of South Africa, once free, did not continue apartheid by voting for whites. I know no Jews in America who voted for George Wallace or David Duke or Pat Buchanan (Florida debacle included).

No, the usual thing a sane society does is give the boot to the boot that’s been on its neck for umpteen years.

Yet more than eighty years after they gained the right to vote and—despite the growth of a massive women’s movement —here’s where we stand:

• Not a single woman has been on the ballot of the major parties for President or Vice President in twenty of the twenty-one national elections since 1920.

• Currently there are only five women governors in fifty states.

• Women hold only 13 percent of the seats in Congress.

• 496 of the top 500 companies in America are run by men.

• Just four of the top twenty-one universities in the United States are run by women.

• 40 percent of all women who are divorced between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four end up in poverty, compared with only 8 percent of married women who live below the poverty line.

• Women’s earnings average 76 cents for every $1 earned by men—resulting in a lifetime loss of over $650,133.

• To make the same annual salary as her male counterpart, a woman would have to work the entire year PLUS an additional four months.

Sooner or later, women are going to figure out how to seize power—and when that happens, let’s pray for mercy. After all, they are the stronger gender. Contrary to popular myth, it is men who are the weaker sex. Consider the evidence:

• We don’t live as long as women.

• Our brains are less well formed and shrink at a faster rate than women’s as we age.

• Proportionately, we are more likely than women to suffer from catastrophic illnesses such as heart disease, strokes, ulcers, and liver failure.

• Men are more likely to carry sexually transmitted diseases (which they pass on to their unsuspecting wives and girlfriends).

• Men’s major body systems—our circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and excretory functions—are all likely to break down long before women’s (though I guess the breakdown of the excretory system was no surprise, considering the case of air freshener you’ve got under the bathroom sink).

Only our reproductive system—the ability to produce sperm—lasts longer than a woman’s ability to produce eggs, but our delivery system peters out years before a woman discovers the benefits of enjoying a warm bath and a good novel.

• Men are unable to give birth, to keep the species going.

• Men lose their hair.

• Men lose their minds (we’re four times more likely to attempt suicide than women).

• Men are three times more likely to die in an accident than women.

• Men are just not as smart as women: girls generally score higher than boys on the elementary school tests—and face it, we don’t get any smarter with age. Perhaps there’s no logical explanation for this disparity. Maybe, as the nuns taught us, it’s just all part of God’s plan. But if that’s the case, why did God make women so much better? The nuns must have had the inside dope on this—after all, they were all women themselves. They knew God’s secret, and they certainly weren’t going to share it with the likes of me. It is my belief—and this is purely from my personal observation of the woman I live with—that when God was creating the world, he spent the better part of Day Six creating what women would look like. I mean, you can’t help but notice the skillful craft of an artisan at the top of His field. The shapes, the curves, the symmetry, all constitute extraordinary art. Their skin is soft and smooth and perfect; their hair is rich and thick and vibrant. I am not speaking from a prurient perspective here—these are simply the conclusions of the art critic in me. Women—I think we all agree—are stunningly beautiful.

So what happened to God when it came to usP It’s like he used up all his best tricks inventing women. By the time he got to us, he was obviously ready to get it over with, move on to something more important, like that seventh day of rest.

So men ended up like Chevys, rushed off the assembly line and guaranteed to break down after limited use. That’s why we try to stay in our Naugahyde recliners as long as we can—the exertion required to pick up after ourselves can lead to an early coronary. Our bodies were built to lift, carry, haul, and throw, but for a limited time only. And, I have to say it, what’s with this extra thing we were given? Well, let me put this as delicately as possible: In God’s rush to finish up, it looks like he just grabbed a stray part he had lying around in the shop and stuck it on us—’cause it sure as hell don’t look right. If you took an item like this and glued it on to a lamppost or a tree, you’d say, “Naww, I don’t think so.” But nobody questions its presence on a guy. Like a creature from Alien reupholstered by Frank Purdue, the male organ is testimony to the fact that every now and again, as with the floods in Bangladesh or the teeth of the British, God just fails to get it right.

Saddled with the odds against us, some men have simply gone insane and taken to fighting back any way they can. If Nature is going to favor women, they figure, then they must take matters into their own hands. Their attitude: If we can’t beat ‘em, let’s beat’em.

These days, the tendency of men to injure, maim, or murder women is seen by most as “politically incorrect,” and laws have been strengthened to protect women from us. But as we know, laws are only made to exact punishmentafter a crime has been committed, Few laws have stopped those men who are intent on wreaking their vengeance on women. Women know all too well that 911 is only there to notify the police that they’d better bring a body bag and some strong cleanser to mop up the mess, because by the time they get there that restraining order the court issued to keep him away will be stuffed in her mouth and rigor mortis will be setting in nicely, thank you.

Men gifted with more subtlety often resort to means other than outright murder to even the score between men and women. For instance, the tobacco companies (all run by men) have been extremely successful in convincing women to smoke—at a time when the number of male smokers is declining. Thanks to all this new female smoking, lung cancer has now surpassed breast cancer as the leading cancer killer of women. Total number of women eliminated each year by smoking: 165,000!

Denial of treatment is another trick men employ in paring down the female population. If you need an organ transplant to stay alive, you’re 86 percent more likely to get it if you are a man. Men suffering from heart disease are 115 percent more likely to undergo a heart bypass than women with the same condition. And if you’re a woman, you’re more likely to pay higher insurance premiums than men for this shoddy care.

Of course, when all else fails, you can also go back to murder. It usually works. A woman is five times more likely to be killed by a husband or boyfriend than a man is likely to be murdered by his wife or girlfriend.

Keep that up, and we might just make it after all.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 862