GAIA DOWNSIZING THE MALE POPULATION?

Is this a ridiculous question? I hope so. I sincerely hope so. And while in the past I have been hesitant to bring up the subject of recent biological changes in men because it makes both men and women uncomfortable. But Gaia seems to be insistent by throwing the subject out there with her responses to the chemicalization of industry.


Sun Peaks, Shuswap Protest 2004

And the issues Gaia raises are now being briefly mentioned in some newspapers and more briefly on TV and radio. The media is necessarily brief because they don't know for sure what the stats mean and their suspicions are too horrible to think about. The scientists seem equally horrified and don't insist that the public
be informed of some of the ramifications of the recent drop in male sperm count. But the message is this: increasing numbers of couples in the western world are having trouble conceiving. In the States, one couple in four are having trouble conceiving and we can only assume it's roughly the same in Canada and other western countries. I think we can assume this because of the drop in all western countries populations and their increasing reliance on immigration for their work forces.

Of course, none of the western nations have discussed the problem in terms of the rapid changes in male biology. All, without exception, explain their problems with declining populations in terms of affluence. When populations become prosperous so that children are fed properly and can be expected to reach adulthood then women don't have so many, they reason. And with increasing participation of women in the work force, declining populations is just the natural outcome of economic prosperity.

But is the population decline in the western world only caused by affluence? Are we to believe that working women and later births and more money are the cause of this? If the human sperm count has dropped fifty per cent in the last fifty years, are we to believe that national decreases in sperm count have nothing to do with the dearth of babies? That the billions of dollars being spent annually on medical professionals by couples trying to conceive with low sperm counts has nothing to do with the sperm counts? Give me a break. And let's consider this ourselves if the media is not going to.

A fifty per cent decline in male sperm count in fifty years and still declining is not just a STATS to toss around at some party. Nature doesn't just arbitrarily cut in half a reproduction strategy that she has evolved over millions of years. Anything that has to do with the reproduction processes of any species changes slowly over eons. And it isn't just the fifty per cent drop. Something is happening to the chromosomes that makes up male sperm.

Historically, one hundred and four males are born to every one hundred females. By giving males a numerical advantage, nature recognizes that more males die before reaching adulthood, either by illness or reckless behavior. So the ratio between males and females rather evens out in adulthood, with females retaining a slight edge. As far as anybody knows, this ratio has been the norm from the beginning of humans. But now this ratio is rapidly changing. Most researchers writing on the subject attribute this change to how chemicals in male bodies affect the chromonsomes of the sperm. They believe that chemicals that mimic the female hormone estrogen is not only the main reason for the decrease in sperm count but is messing with the chromonsomes that make up the sperm.

How are hormone disruptures and mimickers from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries messing with the chromosones of men's sperm? By feminizing the sperm. Now there seems to be more female chromosones in the sperm (XX) to male chromosones(XY) than ever before which is resulting in a change in the rate of girl babies being born to male babies. Recently some researches are claiming that males are losing their historical numerical advantage. In fact, that males have already lost half of this advantage, and it's still on the way down. Why aren't men out there screaming in the streets?

I would be the first to admit that there might be some social advantages to having fewer males in the world such as less crime and less need for police, less corruption, less religious fanaticism, less violence, less cruelty in the world. But this wasn't Gaia's intent obviously, she wanted a balance or she wouldn't have designed a balance. And I don't want a world with less little boy sweetness in it, less male strength. I just wish men would stop being distracted by games, cars, porn, and electronic toys and put their minds to what is happening to them biologically. We should all be screaming in the streets.

WE? US? THEM?

Has anybody noticed that when heads of corporations and governments speak publicly after their corporate decisions have caused some disaster, that they become so fond of the pronoun "we?" And how in their utterances of defense for their choosing profit over human lives that somehow their "we" becomes "us, the public?" How by their careful use of the pronoun "we" corporate and governmental messages gets translated into the public being responsible for whatever horrible thing that has occurred? That we, the public, are somehow responsible (through the public election of former governments less crazed by privatization if nothing else) when newly privatized ferries sink, when newly privatized trains full of toxic materials fall off their tracks into pristine lakes and rivers, when newly privatized provincial record keeping results in records being found in dumps, and most ghastly of all, when serious government cutbacks results in the deaths of children in care, loggers and truck drivers, not to even mention deaths on the street. Oh, yes, when disaster strikes, all of our corporate managers, including Gordon Campbell love the pronoun "we".

Politicians and corporate heads are studiously aware of the power of language. Just last year, Gordon Campbell tried to privatized the public forests of BC simply by changing the name of our public forests to "Working Forests". And he'll be back with this. He understands language very well. And while I acknowledge the argument that maybe the public is to blame for the disasters following privatizations because they elected the government doing the privtizing and therefore agreed to it all, I don't buy that argument. But it sticks in public consciousness. I hear people say things like "Oh yes, I know we're logging out our kids futures in our public forests, yes, we're killing our fish stocks in the process along with ruining our water supplies, in fact, we're killing the earth by just getting up in the morning, in the eating, breathing, trying to regulate our body temperature, trying to get our kids an education or get one ourselves, or a job, any kind of a job to pay the bills, trying to just live we're doing terrible things to the environment."

And my heart sinks when I hear this self blame. Because while it is true that much human suffering has resulted from using the chemicals of industry and just from the very proliferation of products it isn't true that the public has made informed decisions, even made important decisions at all. The public does not make the important decisions that are killing the earth. Not yet. Heads of government and corporations make them. And these are a peculiar kind of people.

The Bushes, the Blairs, the Gordon Campbells, the Stephen Harpers, the Ralph Klines simply trust money and power more than they do actual humans, especially ones outside their own economic and social class. And they have no feeling or connection to the natural world. Even their games are played on golf courses heavy with insecticides and herbicide, or on cemented squash and tennis courts, or enclosed gym rooms. This is a peculiar way to experience the world. And these people are also peculiar in that they have no scruples about using humankind's own best impulses against humankind. In doing so right wing corporate and government heads do not represent the highest type of humanity. Yet they wield this power over us. But let's get it straight. It's not "we" who are trashing the world. It's "them." Our responsibility, in my opinion, is to resist "them." And we can best do this when we realize fully who "them" actually are, and who "we"are.

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