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Comment by sridca | Hacker News Reader

> sexist societies will continue to choose male children even when women are scarce

The preference for a male child over a female child is not limited to what you dub to be 'sexist societies'[1] (thus inadvertently revealing your selective antagonism towards the said societies--India and China). It is actually global phenomenon, the USA included: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_selection#Preference_for_s...

> If you really want to fix humanity, I'd advise getting rid of men.

This strange advice of yours depends on the fervent belief--a sexist one, I might add--that women are incapable of the wiles of humanity.

[1] It would be far more reasonable to suggest instead that this preference is but the other (evolutionary) side of men being the more expendable sex (i.e., the more expendable they are, the more of them need to be birthed to account for their greater number of deaths)

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> This strange advice of yours depends on the fervent belief--a sexist one, I might add--that women are incapable of the wiles of humanity.

Are facts sexist? Men tend to be much more violent than women. Nearly all rapes and homicides are committed by men, men are much more accident-prone, and men make up nearly all the fighters in wars. With advances in biological technology, humanity may no longer need men to survive. If we were to re-engineer humanity with harm reduction as a priority - and that is one big 'if', but it's your premise, not mine - there is a case for phasing out males.

I'll just leave this right here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_...

For the TL;DR crowd:

"In asking 40,000 households about rape and sexual violence, the survey uncovered that 38 percent of incidents were against men."

"A recent analysis of BJS data, for example, turned up that 46 percent of male victims reported a female perpetrator."

"Women were more likely to be abused by fellow female inmates, and men by guards, and many of those guards were female. For example, of juveniles reporting staff sexual misconduct, 89 percent were boys reporting abuse by a female staff member. In total, inmates reported an astronomical 900,000 incidents of sexual abuse."

I believe women are just as violent and competitive as men. Due to reasons of biology, the aggressive behavior of women just manifests itself differently. While men are more inclined to express it physically, women are more likely to express it through spreading harmful gossip or political maneuvering.

I don't have any data to back up what I just said, but if you are a woman, and you are saying we should "phase out males", then this extremely aggressive suggestion would strengthen my belief.

"Females were actually more likely to engage in delinquent acts if they reported higher levels of emotional intelligence."

The research is referenced by the article. http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/11/dark-side-of-emotional-...

and here's a PDF link to the paper:

Sex differences in the relationship between sensation seeking, trait emotional intelligence and delinquent behaviour https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264956539_Sex_diffe...

> Are facts sexist?

No, but yours is not a fact; it is a belief (if it was a fact, it needs no believing in). Your belief is that men are solely responsible for the wiles of humanity, hence your advice being to get rid of them in order to “fix humanity”.

> Men tend to be much more violent than women.

If--note ‘if’--men tend to be much more violent than women, as you say, it does imply that women are capable of violence. Thus a society of full of women is no solution to fixing the wiles of humanity as their female denizens are still capable of violence. If I may ask? Since both men and women are capable of violence, why not get rid of all humanity?

> Thus a society of full of women is no solution to fixing the wiles of humanity as their female denizens are still capable of violence.

As ever the perfect is the enemy of the good. A male-free society would be expected to have a much lower violence rate.

> Since both men and women are capable of violence, why not get rid of all humanity?

A robot assigned with the task of setting the harm to humanity to zero would probably recommend this (and so would an anti-natalist philosopher like David Benatar). We have "humanity has to continue to exist" as a boundary condition.

> As ever the perfect is the enemy of the good. A male-free society would be expected to have a much lower violence rate.

How about we consider a different demographic group? It's well known that African-Americans are disproportionately responsible for violent crime in America. Would it be "good" to get rid of them too?

There's no point in responding seriously to this inflammatory post. Sex-selective childbirth (which is legal in the US) and genocide are a false equivalence.

You didn't mention sex selection in your previous posts. You said:

"Labs can make sperm from stem cells, so there's really no need for us anymore."

That statement is ambiguous. You could have been referring to how a post-male, post-genocide society would be able to function.

I agree that sex selection is a much less radical position to take. It's still wrong.

American society is becoming more and more multi-racial. It's not hard to imagine future parents selecting for phenotypes that are strongly associated with various racial groups today. Blonde, or curly black hair, for example.

Do you think it would be advisable for parents to use contemporary crime statistics to decide which "race" they want to pass on to their children? Do you understand why some people who are already alive might consider such rhetoric dangerous?

We're talking about the biodiversity of the human genome here. It shouldn't be winnowed so carelessly based on current societal conditions.

> A male-free society would be expected to have a much lower violence rate.

I did gather that conclusion from your "Men tend to be much more violent than women" belief ... yet, a conclusion stemming from a belief is no more valid than the belief itself. Try contemplating on the nature of violence itself ... as a starting point, look up 'female aggression subtle' on your favourite search engine. Here is just one article picked from a cursory glance: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201401/...

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