Barbara Ellen Sunday October 28, 2001 The Observer
Could you imagine a world without men? We're being asked to by fertility specialists, who have managed to get a mouse pregnant with a cocktail of chemicals masquerading as sperm. And they say romance is dead. It could almost make you smile, picturing all the pregnant lady mice, giving out attitude, and yelling, 'You're not all that!' to the poor guy mice, glumly pondering their reproductive redundancy, in the next cage. Maybe the lady mice will be merciful, and keep the guy mice around for sex and laughs, or to deal with the plumber. And maybe when the day comes, human females will do the same. Or maybe not, and the panicking ethicists are right, and we could end up living in a society where chemically induced single mothers are the norm. A world where men are written out of the fertility equation, to the point where 'masculinity' itself becomes extinct.
I can easily imagine a world without men. It's the year 2061, and men have been barred from the reproductive process for 60 years. For 40 years, they've been banned completely, even as pets. We keep them in cages at Man Zoos, feeding them scraps, beating them when they complain. Occasionally, we take our artificially conceived girl children to Man Zoos to see what females used to have to put up with. There are only girls, because it has long been possible to choose the sex of the baby, and no one wants boys. What men still exist are in these zoos, and dying off, but it is considered unethical to breed them.
It's also possible to visit Man Museums where there are historically accurate exhibits called things like: 'Man in armchair in front of semi-final', 'Man asks where socks are' and 'Man rings home from pub, saying he's got to work late'. All the girl children gasp and sigh. They can't believe how their mothers, grandmothers and aunts used to suffer.
One very famous exhibit at the museum is called: 'Man dodging commitment'. It is notorious partly because it does not feature a man. Instead, it depicts a woman weeping in the company of her female friends. Press a little button on the front of the exhibit, and a taped recording will shout in sequence: 'Bastard, bastard!' 'Five years, I've given him, five years!' and 'Hear that noise - it's my biological clock ticking.' This is followed by wailing, interspersed with the sound of wine bottles being uncorked and matches struck.
The guide explains to the astonished girl children that this is how some women used to live in the old days when men were needed for 'relationships and breeding purposes'. It goes on to explain that this exhibit is particularly important because it signifies the period in history when women first decided men were surplus to requirements, and turned to science for alternatives. 'This,' she says, 'is what is known as the beginning of the post-Bridget Jones age.'
I am still alive, an old woman now, a relic from the past, with my naturally conceived daughter, and memories of 'heterosexuality', which I am frequently asked to give lectures about in halls full of shuddering, disbelieving students. I have to do it. I've been virtually unemployed for the past half a century because, with no men around, there's no longer any market for my journalistic speciality: 'Carping About Men'. I tried to scratch a living, writing about music, but, with testosterone outlawed, many types of music went with it. Oasis were captured in the spring of 2010, hiding out on the moors. They were placed in Man Zoos, but had to be taken out, because they were upsetting visitors with their bravado displays of 'Mooning'. Eminem is still at large, as are Nick Hornby, Martin Amis, Russell Crowe, Tony Blair and other male luminaries. Salman Rushdie was spotted hiding out in a Welsh cave in 2017, moaning to his companion: 'Not again!'
Since men were banned, there has been no war, just endless international bitching sessions, with entire countries refusing to speak to each other ever again. It's nice to have no war, not so nice to have no men. Some activists think that men have been treated shamefully, and should be given back their liberty, but few women are prepared to go back to the way things were. Why should they, when their reproductive autonomy has given them the world? That still doesn't stop some of us adhering to our (whispered) maxim that absolute reproductive power corrupts absolutely. We meet secretly, and sigh: 'Some of them weren't so bad were they? Quite fun really.' However, like the men in the cages at the zoo, we are dying out, taking with us the knowledge that, as predicted, the world without men was a changed world indeed. Just not always for the better.
barbara.ellen at observer.co.uk