By David Futrelle
So over on Tumblr, some people were having a nice little discussion of how amazing it is that our ancient ancestors were able to figure out some rather complicated sciencey things, like the circumference of the earth, without being able to just look them up on Google.
Someone mentioned mammoths, those oft-hunted beasts that not only co-existed with our hairier prehistoric predecessors but managed to survive, at least in some remote areas, for several thousand years after humans first became civilized.
Then someone called Brett Caton showed up. He began innocently enough.
“I find it utterly bizarre that humans saw these megafauna,” he wrote, before linking to a New York Times story about the last known population of mammoths that went extinct. According to one scientific paper quoted in the story, these mammoths, living on isolated Wrangel island in the arctic sea north of eastern Siberia, had “carried so many detrimental mutations [in their genome] that the population had suffered a ‘genomic meltdown.'”
Then Mr. Caton’s comment took a bit of a turn.
“That ‘genomic meltdown’ is one of the reasons feminism is so potentially lethal,” he wrote,
because they keep pushing for asexual reproduction, or trying to combine ovaries, when the most likely outcome is a population running about – unable to reproduce sexually since the whole “male genocide” bit – with incredibly damaged chromosomes.
Sex exists for a reason, and no, “because it’s fun” is not the answer, sorry. It works better than reproduction otherwise. Which is why every complex species uses it.
Intelligence requires a lot of things to be working correctly, and if you have an all female species that is over the tipping point of idiocy, then there won’t be enough people to maintain the technology to continue to reproduce. And humans will go the way of the Wrangel beasties.
Fortunately, feminists are horribly lazy bastards, so i doubt they’ll continue to get their way, but it does made for a decent plot for a dystopian fiction…
Mr. Caton’s comment raises a number of questions, including:
- Huh?
- What?
- What the hell?
- Does this dude think the Wrangel island mammoths were, like, the world’s first hairy legged feminists?
As it turns out, I’m not the only one with questions. Caton’s post has so far garnered 154,000 “notes” on Tumblr, and comes trailing a long and ever-expanding string of comments from other people as confused as I am. “Whaaaaaaaa???” wrote one. “W-what??” asked another.
Still another added:
I got to that point … and was like “wait What.” And then it just kept going and I was like “is this actually happening? Am I seriously reading this right now??”
It is. You are. Apparently we feminists extincted the mammoth to male genocide you.
These guys have no sense of proportion. They always jump straight to 11.
And evolution doesn’t work that way. The most successful trait not necessarily the best trait continues. Because sex is fun might indeed be the right answer as to why we reproduce sexually. And what feminist want to reproduce asexually? By combining ovaries? What? ??
I amend what I said earlier. Not only do they have no sense of proportion, they also make no sense at all.
Sign from “March for Our Lives”:
The ignorance is off the charts. This is a prime example of pattern recognition gone off the rails. He’s so far down the rabbit hole he’s gotten kicked out of Narnia and found himself in Monty Pythons flying circus
D-does he think the mammoths reproduced asexually somehow? Which feminists are calling for “combining ovaries?” How are the people who organized the largest single-day protest in American history “lazy bastards?”
What I would give for a look into this man’s brain!
But if we’re reproducing by combining the genetic material from two ovaries, then we’re reproducing sexually. ? That’s what sexual reproduction is, .5 + .5 = baby. ?
Wait lol, I lie. Lesbian sex isn’t REAL sex, lol. And now that I’ve trolled you all, I better go back to sitting here, motionless, in the wind. Waiting and waiting patiently for the pollen from my male to blow all over my open ovule, so that the pollen tubes that grow out of his pollen can penetrate my egg cells within one of my archegonia.
Yes, sexual reproduction is so hard for the female. But it is worth it, knowing that I will undo you feminists male genocide, one seedpod at a time.
PS. Honey bees, you say? LIARS! I would never CUCK my alpha with the likes of honey bees. Even if their large labium are elongated to form a tube and tongue, and they are so proficient at lapping up my nectar, and have such lovely hairy legs…. wait STOP IT!!! NO! I am perfectly happy with my male and his stamen blowing in the wind. All the male gametes will come to me!
PPS. If any if you call me an imperfect flower I will fucking cut you. See these thorns? Yeah that’s what I thought.
I am PERFECT. (Perfectly sarcastic)
A friend on the official Discord chat for Dreamwidth’s milliways_bar points out that there are complex species that reproduce perfectly well with parthenogenesis. It’s not ideal, but that’s how Komodo dragon populations got started on some small islands. (To say nothing of the whiptail lizard.)
She also asked “where did this guy get his ideas about what feminists want?” I’m wondering that myself, but not too hard; after all, when you ask a question like that, you run a very real risk that someone will answer it.
dawnpurityseeker, you win all threads forever.
@Austin Loomis, you beat me to it! Several species can asexually reproduce through parthenogenesis.
This post has me in deep confusion.
Smashing ovaries together is the one and only item on my feminist agenda.
@EJ
Thank you for recognizing my perfection. Those Floriculturists are such simple-minded omegas.
You seem cool, but we can’t be friends. Since you’re a feminist, you can only be a prostitute Orchid, Ophrys apifera. But good luck with your treacurious deception of the dim-memoried honeybee, feminist! May your colors be bright and your honeybee pheromones be sweet.
[This post still contains SARCASM. I’m sure you’re not a deceptive, lying flower EJ. ?]
Well, a few years back some scientists managed to create mice that had two biological mothers by putting DNA from one egg cell into another egg cell. I’m not sure what their reason was other than “for science”, but a lot of newspapers made silly headlines afterwards about how “men aren’t needed any longer”. So that’s probably what this dude is thinking of.
Still, even if we imagine an absurd world where all men died out and we had billions of (cis) women reproducing through this tech, it would still, technically, be sexual reproduction, because reproduction would still mean combining the DNA of two different individuals. We’d still not be like, say, those lizard species where the entire species is female and reproduction is basically through a sort of natural cloning process.
dawnpurityseeker all this talk of stamen is making my ovipositors twitchy.
@Dvärghundspossen
It would be a way for a mother with some kinds of mitochondrial disorder to have children without passing the defect on. There might be other kinds of genetic issues that could be avoided too, but I’m hazy about what those might be. In any case, the egg would still need to be fertilized by a sperm, I believe.
Considering how incels and mgtows like to fantasize about artificial wombs (and of course, sex dolls) to make women superfluous, I quite enjoy their indignation at the idea of science replacing men instead.
I’m sure to this dude women are all the same. Therefore reproduction combining the genetic material of two ova would be the same as one cis woman cloning herself.
On another topic, Taylor Swift came out in favor of gun reform and the March for our Lives campaign. I wonder if that’s going to cost her any of her Nazi fans?
@Pie: It was no sperm involved in creating that mouse, that’s why it made such headlines. And apparently it was way earlier than I thought! It was way back in 2004, and the scientists made 460 (!) embryos that didn’t survive before they managed to create a litter of ten mice with two biological mothers and no biological father. Of those, only one survived into adulthood.
I guess we haven’t heard any more of this because they never quite got the hang of it? I mean one out of 460 isn’t great. So we seem to be pretty far from the dreaded point in time where da feminazis have made this the standard method of reproduction.
https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040422/full/news040419-8.html
Nobody tell this guy about New Mexico whiptail lizards, it would blow his monkey mind.
But hey, he’s not ALL wrong about feminist mammoths – they were, after all, matriarchal like modern elephants!
Catfish, wouldn’t be surprised if he’s read an article about them and that was part of the inspiration for this disjointed rant. After all, biologists often say that female-only species can be very evolutionary successful in the short term, but it’s hard for them to adapt to changes in the environment since they don’t mix and shake things up genetically through sexual reproduction.
@Viscaria:
That might be a great use for all the big particle accelerators left over from the Higgs Boson experiments.
@dawnpurityseeker:
I am a flower who does not want to be fucking cut, so I shall ensure my complete truthfulness, and shall keep my stamen to myself.
What, just the one?
So only men have genetic variation, and women would be sterile mutants without constant infusions of fresh sperm. Got it.
What’s the inbred feminist version of the Hapsburg Lip? The Equal Pay Canthal Tilt?
wwth said
Oh I hope so! Nazi tears are sooooo delicious!
I went to the March for our Lives rally in my town this morning. I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout* in our little** conservative bedroom suburb! I met some great people, including two ladies who are interested in maybe carpooling to some rallies that are more far-flung. Also, a fair number of cars honked in support. Of course there were detractors, too; one guy in a big pickup with both a US flag and a Gadsden flag in the bed had to roar by twice to drive his point home. 9_9
*at least a couple hundred; we covered all four corners of the major
intersection just off the interstate.
**roughly 225,000 between two adjacent communities and surrounding environs
I’m still working on a primary theme song
For this lively lil’ blog
You can guess what the chorus would be
Don’t even have to commit any memory
But this came along and may inspire a fork
In the bare code of that future tune
For now, it’s lazy Saturday
At least outside ain’t looking too grey
To misquote Ivan Stang, proof once again that certain forms of extremist thought have much the same effect as methamphetamine.