The End of Men (at The Atlantic)

My friend Hanna Rosin's new book, "The End of Men" (you can conveniently buy it here)  is officially out today, and I think I'll be posting on it quite a bit, in part because it's beautifully written; in part because she makes some hugely important points about the rise of women in the new automated and post-upper-body-strength economy; in part because we're colleagues and the book has its origins in her famous Atlantic cover story on the subject; and in part because she is a leader of the global conspiracy by women to steal the precious bodily fluids of men, replicate these fluids in a laboratory setting, mass produce them synthetically, and then, once there is no further need for man-based sperm, cull the male population until such time as every single Atlantic cover story is about women. Which, if you read The Atlantic, you already know is not too far off.

This last business, about the sperm conspiracy, is more conjecture on my part at this point.  Hanna and I have already sat down for one conversation on the subject, which I will soon share on Goldblog, and I hope eventually to get to the bottom of her motivations. But she's cagey about her ultimate goals.

In the meantime, read the book; it's excellent.

And by the way, I addressed the issue of the sex imbalance here at The Atlantic in my advice column, What's Your Problem, not so long ago. The reader's question is followed by my answer:

First The Atlantic tells us that it's the "end of men." Goodbye, men. Then we get a cover story about the benefits for women of staying single--that they don't even need men. My question is not why The Atlantic has become so seriously feminized. My question is, how can you, as a male writer, stand it?

B.P., Baltimore, Md.

Dear B.P.,

Actually, I stand it just fine. It turns out that men don't need testicles for very much at all. And emasculation has various benefits. For instance, you should hear the Atlantic All-Male Castrati Chorus in action! Our interpretation of Handel's Giulio Cesare was the talk of the NOW convention, and we've just been invited to be the opening act for a special run of The Vagina Monologues at Caesars Palace. And by the way, it's not as if we've given up our testicles permanently: Human Resources keeps them in a humidor upstairs, and they promise to return them to us if we move on to jobs at other, more masculine magazines, such as Cosmo.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/the-end-of-men-at-the-atlantic/262229/