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Incredible Shrinking Y (Maureen Dowd, New York Times, 7/10/2003)

The darlings have been fretting for some years now that they may be rendered unnecessary if women get financial and biological independence, learning how to reproduce and refinance without them....

[M]y jittery male friends are not paranoid ...

Dr. Judson writes about powerful babes, noting that females in more than 80 species, like praying mantises, have been caught devouring their lovers before, during or after mating. "I'm particularly fond," she told me, "of the green spoon worm. . . . The male is 200,000 times smaller, effectively a little parasite who lives in her reproductive tract, fertilizing her eggs and regurgitating sperm through his mouth."

And then there's the tiny female midge, who plunges her proboscis into the male midge's head during procreation. As Dr. Judson told the journalist Ken Ringle, "Her spittle turns his innards to soup, which she slurps up, drinking until she's sucked him dry."...

The news that Dolly the sheep had been cloned without masculine aid sent a frisson through the Y populace, [Steve Jones] writes, because men began to fear that science would cause nature to return to its original, feminine state and men would fade from view.

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court reaffirmed that our Constitution enforces what Justice Scalia termed the "sweet-mystery-of-life" dictum from Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992):

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

In short, we shall be as Gods, defining good and evil ourselves, and our right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.

The Court has not yet addressed whether this Constitutional right extends to the bio-engineering of small parasites that can generate sperm from within a woman's reproductive tract, or to the production of quasi-males who can be eaten during procreation. But is there any doubt that imagining these possibilities sends a frisson through Maureen Dowd?

Posted by Paul Jaminet at July 10, 2003 12:35 PM