A Mouse With Two Mothers
jabberjaw writes "Both the BBC and Nature are reporting that scientists at Tokyo University of Agriculture have used two sets of chromosomes belonging to a female mouse to create what are essentially fatherless mice. The process by which this was accomplished (parthenogenesis) does not naturally occur in mammals. The mouse used lacked a gene known as H19 which in turn activated the Igf2 which allowed this process to occur."
All jokes aside (as I am sure many "two daddy trailerpark" jokes are immanent) but this is indeed quite an advancement in biotech, because we may see future developments arrive in the development of cloning endangered species back from the brink of extinction; now species threatened from a lack of suitable mates, could be quite possibly saved, with the proper funding. The hard part would be digging deeper gene pools, enabling a true future for endangered species (although, I guess that's next week on /., right CmdrTaco?). Also, I wonder if it's possible to grow offspring with only two male subjects.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
is it still considered a bastard?
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Who's your daddy???
So does this mean we men have no use anymore?
"The process by which this was accomplished (parthenogenesis) does not naturally occur in mammals"
What about baby Jesus.
Damn you, Freud!
The virgin birth, now who is god? Mouse society must be up in cheese at the moment. Could this be the second coming of the Mousiahh ?
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
They dont need us anymore!
Panic!
Everyone loves lesbians! Even mice!
Oops.. sorry, didn't notice the post included link to BBC. But I did have something more to say besides the link :|
Seems that we'll see more and more this kind of news in genetic field especially. But it's still "hazardotech". Little Kaguya (name of the mouse) required even more unsuccessful materia/innocent mice to succeed than Dolly the sheep. So no mass production for awhile.
Because I always thought Heather Has Two Mommies
The phenomenon of parthenogenesis was discovered in the 18th cent. by Charles Bonnet. In 1900, Jacques Loeb accomplished the first clear case of artificial parthenogenesis when he pricked unfertilized frog eggs with a needle and found that in some cases normal embryonic development ensued
Artificial parthenogenesis has since been achieved in almost all major groups of animals, although it usually results in incomplete and abnormal development
The phenomenon is rarer among plants (where it is called parthenocarpy) than among animals
turn activated the Igf2 which allowed this process to occur.
Even though the uppercase "I" made me think of an "l", but why did that make me think "Lesbian Girl Friends 2"??? I must have been watching too much of The L Word recently!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Go ahead and mod me down as a troll, but why do I have this feeling we'll see a religiously-based backlash against this? Given the furor over stem cell research, cloning, etc., I'd imagine social conservatives would see this as yet another threat of some kind. After all, this is the holy grail in separating sex from reproduction. Hell, I could easily imagine them complaining about "them thar homo-shex-u-als" now being able to reproduce.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Quote from picture caption on web site:
Could human babies be born without fathers?
Unquote
I was there when my children were born but quite
often this is not true. Especially years ago.
Ahrr, you were faster. I was going to karma whore and say something that would get me moded up. Nevermind.
Doubt it. The Y chromosome is a mutation of the X chromosome and contains much less information. But let's see how this mouse goes. I've my suspicions that in addition to grand pronouncements we'll invent a host of new varients of immune deficencie and progeria like disorders before we've got the kinks more or less understood, let alone under control.
So as much as I'm looking forward to an all lesbian (but bi curious) amazon go-go dancer future where I'm the last man standing; this research and my time machine seem about equally incomplete. All for one and snu-snu for all.
We don't need you anymore.
Like the 486, cassette tapes and the horse drawn carriage, you are obsolete. Tomorrows world is ours!
-DenonGirl
Do you really have two mothers when they're both the same mouse?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
They only got a couple of eggs to work out of hundreds, and we still don't know the hidden impacts of such an abnormal mammalian progenation. What happens when this mouse breeds sexually? How long does it live? The whole thing could foreseeably collapse in less than two generations, or give rise to whole new genetic failures and degrading mutations in inobvious parts of the genome. I know this sort of research is promising, but it also scares me silly, because some whack-job is probably dying to try it on humans, no matter how risky.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
Fabulous - just one more nail in the hetero male coffin.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Parthenogenesis (straight from the Wikipedia Link): Parthenogenesis (Greek , "virgin", + , "birth") means the growth and development of an embryo or seed without fertilization by a male. In other words, an embryo/seed develops without receiving a second set of chromosomes from a 'father'. It doesn't matter if that second set came from a female or a male. When NPR covered this story, one of the scientists interviewed actually SAID this was different from parthenogensis, which had been demonstrated previously in many species.
seems to me this has occurred in rabbits already. Any biologists here correct me if I am wrong. I also think that pregnant rabbits, in some instances, when highly stressed, will literally reabsorb their foetuses.
Even though this is artificial, it seems
similar to that article a while back where
that woman had 2 sets of DNA.
(Cymera or something, I don't claim to be able
to spell).
do mice have mitochondrial DNA? that kind of DNA
is a maternal record right? So which "mother" passes on the mitochondrial DNA?
.. mice that walk around complaining all the time.
"You're not wearing that to the exercise wheel?!"
"You never give me fresh seeds anymore!"
"Ever since we had the brood you ignore me in the wood shavings!"
Trolling is a art,
Now, we will be running into a Moral debate over wether this is right or not. There will be homosexual couples pushing for this with people. If it gets to that then they will push for marriage saying they can have families. This could really open up a huge "can of worms" so to speak
Evolution or ID?
Story in The Independent is also a good read.
Now that women have this, combined with a device to open jars, we men are officially obsolete.
what does this have to do with this article?
But I would have thought that it also removed the possibility of men being produced by this method... I'm not a biology nerd, so I might be completely wrong, but I just can't see where the 'Y' chromasome would come from in order to be able to make a boy!
the spider in the corner will attest otherwise....
So now it's actually feasible for a purely lesbian society to exist and reproduce?
This should pose some interesting questions for the Christian right's arguments against homosexuality based on infeasiblity of universalization in nature.
May we never see th
Great, now women will finally realize that men ARE truly useless and rid the planet of us.
IIRC, parthenogenesis is what's known in laymen's terms as a 'virgin birth' phenomenon, in which an egg fertilizes itself after being tricked into believing that it has received DNA from another parent. There is only one contributor of genetic material, making the offspring a clone of the parent.
In this experiment, DNA was received from two sources, both of them just happened to be female. This difference is profound, because it produced the effects of traditional genetics, (hold on to those Punnett squares!) without the need for males.
-R
I for one support lesbian parenting.
I for one, welcome our new fatherless overlords
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
The Tokyo University Femputer order the mice to have snoo-snoo.
one of their executive members uses animal products contributing to animal research, testing and medical products through her insisting on taking insulin to stay alive, and they kill something like 50% of the dogs they take in a year. Ethical appearently means do as we say not as we do.
Yeah, yeah, there is a big difference, but in the extremes lies the truth.
Where the answers are
- as if that was anything. Balder the Asa had 9.
Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might recall me from such two-mouse-mother movies as Disney's "Minnie and Minnie" and "Danger Mouse meets Diversity"
Please dont tell the man haters about this, they are looking for any excuse to send us back to mars Woman are from venus , men are from bars
We, as a species (males) have to come up with something, ANYTHING to make women keep needing us.
Scratching yourself and burping doesn't count.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians!
So don't sweat it love.
o ry /0,6903,648024,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/st
Tomorrow's world belongs to the machines.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
OK, when they will do the same with two MALE mouses, I'll eat my shoe, I swear :)
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
...No more hitting up David Crosby for sperm donations (er, maybe we should all rejoice)
Sorry... I just had to be the first to say it... but I'm a slow writer so someone else is writing the same thing probably so I'm not actually the first... maybe...
I read on PopSci a couple months back that men are doomed to obsolescence... I guess it might happen sooner than they predicted.
.. you get is this is a brand new technology, but I had this memory of reading about it many years ago concerning rabbits. That's why I asked if anyone had better info, etc, to correct me if I was remembering erroneously. It's no biggee really.
If women don't need us for reproduction anymore, where will us straight guys get our sex?
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
They have names for it where I come from. "Friend" or "Sucker" depending on who you ask.
As for the question of whether males are now superfluous, the answer is: not quite yet. It's true that an all female population could reproduce itself, but the males would still be needed for opening those tough mayonnaise and jelly jars!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
We don't need the men.
We don't need to have 'em 'round,
except for now and then.
They can come to see us,
When we need to move the piano,
Otherwise they can stay at home
and holler at the Yankees.
We don't care about them.
We can do without them.
They'll look cute in a bathing suit
on a billboard in Madagascar
-Malvina Reynolds (who also authored "Little Boxes")
I see the same story on slashdot!
,sorry...this is slashdot japan
Oh
We can't have bastard mice running around!
796F75617265616E65726400
The process by which this was accomplished (parthenogenesis) does not naturally occur in mammals.
Nothing like stating the obvious.
You are receiving this message because your browser supports Slashdot Sigs and you have Slashdot Sigs enabled.
Imagine finally having The Talk with your pubescent kid. The birds and the birds? The bees and the bees... and the scientists??
Parthenogenesis... H19... Igf2... How would you explain it?
Q: Mum, where do babies come from?
A: Eh? What? Ask your OTHER mother.
((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
A consortium of greetings card manufacturers and florists. Or am I being too cynical?
Wake me up when they've created twin mice from one mother and many different fathers. The fathers must be smart... perhaps super-stars at navigating mazes, and the twins must be quite different. Perhaps one can be extremely strong, brilliant, and Austrian, while the other should be the genetic waste of the first making him short, bald, and Italian. ONLY THEN will you have my attention.
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
#
I think some one has been watching this movie too many times.
You won't even feel a little prick.
The information on the X chromosome consists mostly of "housekeeping" genes; the only one I remember offhand is an enzyme used in the Kreb's cycle.
The Y chromosome is almost entirely useless; the only gene found on the Y chromosome is TDF, Testes Determining Factor. As you know, female is the default sex in mammals; TDF activates partway through fetal development and tells the embryo to develop testes instead of ovaries.
I'm not sure about the Y chromosome being a mutant form of the X; AFAIK, the two are radically different and contain very little similar genetic information.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
There is STILL hope!.
I'd like to clarify this a bit. Many plants DO/CAN reproduce "sexually" without crossing with another individual, wheat is an example. They actually self-pollenate (self-mate), a fine distinction from parthenocarpy, which is fruit/seed production without any pollenation (fertilization). While the progreny of a selfed plant essentially have the sample genes, crossing-over and other genetic events usually result in the chromosomes not being identical.
To welcome our new lesbian overlords!
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Any of the four combinations of parents should be possible then. Its been known for some time that parental chromosomes retain parental markers. The two mother experiement made female chromosomes look male.
The recent book "The X Chromosome" has several interesting chapters about the slight differences between the parental chromosomes. The cells in a female body mostly disable the second X chromosome. The disabled chromosome actaully separates into a chunk called a Barr body. Most of the time, only one parental X is turned off. But in some cases a female is a genetic mosaic with the mother-X turned on in some tissues, and the father in the other. It is thought this might partly explain why females have a much higher incidence of auto-immune diseases like lupus: Some have two different genomes expressed and each side attacks the other.
A small fraction of children may have the wrong number of X chromosomes- from 1 to 4, plus maybe a Y. There may be some gender anomalies. But because the extra X's are mostly turned off, it is not fatal.
I am scared I truley am. God damn feminazis are going to use this to take over the world
Can you please read comments before moderating them offtopic? It makes you look like less of a retard when it comes to metamod. Ok thanks!
That should be, "What Have They Done to the Rain?"
I'm phase shifting and my brain is fuzzy. Time to go to bed.
KFG
Does this idea form a significant part of one of the sub-plots in Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love", the bit about the twin's brought up to be a breeding pair.
In case you don't know, Parrotfish (and Wrasses) are born female and become male after about 5 years (protogynous hermaphrodites, if you want the technical term). A rough guesstimate in human years, that's probably 30-40.
:)
:)
Women get what they want (30-40 year olds with experience) and men get what they want (young nubile females).
What more can you ask
Two drawbacks - craving for coral, and the lack of intercourse (males fertilize eggs that are laid)... I'm sure they could fix that somehow.
If that didn't work out, there's always Protandrous hermaphrodites (start as male, become female), but I think that mainly exists in some kind of worm (tapeworm or roundworm or something like that).
Another option is the gobie, which swaps back and forth. Not sure if that would work so well in people, though - I can see one big metamorphasis, but doing it all the time seems pretty extreme... then again, I do have a lot of stored calories I'd like to burn.
btw, I'm a diver, not a marine biologist or geneticist, so this could be a really bad idea. I'm just laying out the options
Does it worry anyone else that the already overpopulated Tokyo is looking for new and improved ways to make babies?
[Hey, I'm not starting an off-topic thread, I'm merely continuing it :-)]
Not only are the usual methods of getting children -- "unpleasant sex" and adoption, but this method will also be available to (at least) some homosexual couples.
The "Christian Right" (not just Christian, and not just "right") are correct in saying, it diminishes the traditional concept of marriage. However, IMHO, the concept is long diminished through other, perfectly heterosexual means. And it is not anyone's fault in particular. The economies have changed. A single parent can raise a child or two (even without government help). Having a good partner in life is not as important to survive as it used to be.
The "sanctity of marriage" is important for the Society only because it leads to more (and better) children. That's why the State affords special protections and privileges to married (as opposed to co-habitating) couples -- in inheritance, in not testifying against each other, etc.
Yet children tend to grow up better having two parents. There are no statistics that show, children in homosexual couples grow better or worse off.
Here is my proposal to the conundrum of gay marriage. Change all laws, that apply to "married couples," to apply to "any pair of people involved in raising children" (the exact formula should be phrased better, of course, it has to mention mutual devotion and loyalty -- borrow from the classic definition of marriage).
The actual acts of marriage should stop being administered by the State (both directly through mayors and through licensing). People, who wish to publicly swear their mutual love, respect, and devotion are still very welcome to do that (banning people of same sex from such expressions is directly against the 1st Amendment) in places of their choosing (including government buildings even), but it should not be the State's business.
The State's business only begins when a couple gives birth to (regardless of the conception method) or adopts a child -- that's when it qualifies for the privileges now afforded to the married only.
This way, the Society will reward exactly those it should want to, regardless of their sexual orientation, which is not, regretfully, a voluntary choice, it seems.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Or will be, once/if the technology get ready.
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2003
And on artificial wombs:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/st
So in 20 years or so, neither men nor women will be required for reproduction.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
How would this possibly be of interest to a Slashdot nerd?
I guess they'll have to deliberate over this one first.
Big Black Nemesis, parthenogenesis
No one move a muscle as the dead come home
Am I the only one that was impressed when a rock band worked the word parthenogenesis into a song?
Bloody great mondegreen bait.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Am I the only one that read the title and thought "what?? a mouse with two motherboards?? Eh?!?!"
and then read the rest =P
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Ahhh, that explains it.
The word in the bible is not supposed to read virgin, but H19 deficient.
Easy mistake to make.
Who gets to take out the trash?
I'm still waiting for someone to explain spontaneous parthogenesis in a human.
man.. women no longer need us.. men are becoming obsolete.. thats just fuckin great...
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
You should see that: http://imdb.com/title/tt0088083/
If they even get close to testing this out on humans, the Bible-thumping minority that run the US will ban it in a heartbeat. The so-called religious right has a conniption over just the idea of same-sex couples marrying. I can only imagine the hue and cry if lesbian couples could actually procreate without any need of a man whatsoever.
It will be national if that bastard Bush steals another election, but if someone else is President, the ban will probably just be in the oh-so-intolerant southern states.
Curse you, jelly jar! One of these days, I'll best you. One of these days...
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
As if being a geek didn't make getting women hard enough... Now what do they need us for?!
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
"Minnie Has Two Mommies"
Are you kidding me... where else could females find that friend to:
"Confide her intimate relationship problems in excruciating detail while at the same time telling you she wishes she could meet a 'decent' man"
Male nerds, don't tell me this hasn't happened to you.
Rosie O'Donnell is going to fave a field day with this one!
I don't think this will replace men. In order for this type of ARTIFICIAL reproduction to work in humans, or any mammal species, we would need to start genetically engineering women with eggs-that-think-like-sperm. Then those eggs would need collecting while they're still immature and stored away safely. Plus the article stated it took about 460 tries to get the process to work.
Start imagining the expenses of running groups of scientists working hard enough to equal or exceed the current death rate while creating new humans in laboratories using those eggs-that-think-like-sperm and eggs from the prospective mother (in this case the mother refers to the woman bearing the child). So to make one baby we need 460 eggs-that-think-like-sperm and 460 eggs from the mother in order to make 1 new human baby. And now we need to do that enough to equal the death rate or exceed it.
Plus if the offspring from this turn out genetically normal, that means these new women won't have eggs-that-think-like-sperm so we still need factories producing new baby girls with those eggs-that-think-like-sperm.
Now compare that with the cost of a good heterosexual f***. I don't think men are going anywhere for a very long time.
As if it wasn't difficult enough for a geek to get laid in the first place, now the chicks don't even need us for reproduction...
"Kaguya is one success from 460 attempts at growing embryos."
I like those odds!
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
looks like jurassic park might be possible.
Of course, this means we can bring back like the wooly mammoth as a whole. The current project was to use wooly mammoth dna and mix it with an elephant (probably the African elephant as they are bigger) and implant it in an elephant. Then take that and result and mix that with wooly mammoth dna and so on to reduce the "elephant" dna portion of it. But with this new technique, we can get a fully 100% wooly mammoth on the first try.
Other animals like the sabertooth, iguanadon, etc. can also be brought back, though I'd urge caution as this is another pandora's box.
First, the alternate mother was a mutant. As they started to mention, she had a gene knocked out - a gene that supresses the expresion of about 1000 other genes.
Second, an X from a female will not align with an X from another female (because of the above, and other reasons). What they effectively did was make a female mouse that could make X chromosomes that behaved in the same way that X chromosomes from a male behave.
To have this occur in humans, they'd have to figure out how to create a mutant human female that produced X chromosomes that behaved like the X chromosomes a male produces. They'd then have to take said X chromosomes out of her eggs, and match them with her partner's eggs, just like in this experiment. As such, this has absolutely no implications for lesbians, unless one just happens to be such a mutant already somehow (they aren't).
The research has little impact on allowing lesbians to reproduce. The process for doing that to two women, when neither is a mutant, is a wholy seperate process. In vitro fertilization is about as related to the eventual female reproduction potential as this experiement is (and this experiment is only that related simply because it *involves* IVF). This has no new implications for that eventuality.
I for one welcome our new female overlords.
So as much as I'm looking forward to an all lesbian (but bi curious) amazon go-go dancer future
Yeah, but the first time someone sees a spider or a centipede the whole society will fall with no men to get rid of the offending creepy crawlies.
"Why aren't there more guys like you?"
Translation: "Why aren't you hot and popular?"
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
My alleged mind recalls a 50's vintage science fiction movie, or Outer Limits where woman were able to reproduce without men, eliminating or converting male fetuses to female prior to birth.
Does anyone else recall this movie.. or was this somthing that was projected into my mind while I was sleeping on the slab, and I got a different revision of the playback than everyone else?
I should have taken the blue pill.
Ross Youngblood
Hehehehe ... yeah ... her and Ellen Degeneris both!
The bible thumpers really are a minority. If you asked identified "Christians" how many consider themselves "Evangelical" that might be a more reliable indicator.
That having been said, a larger slice of the population would have a problem with this situation, not just the hardcore Christians.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Well, this explains why the Japanese raided MS's offices. Not for any anti-trust information, but merely to find a template for cloning new little rat bastards.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I long dreaded the day this would come. Now it is official, guys, we are superfluous now.
That's it. Dead meat. Face it! What would the girls need a guy for. I guess now we have to come with something fast, or the guys born now will soon become the last of their gender. Please think of something quick.
And don't be so lame as to go: Spider Squashers (what do You think they will come up with next: Spider Squashing Robots).
Note to self: Learn how to give good backrubs.
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."
Parthenogenesis can only occur where a haploid individual is viable, such as in bees (that's how the drone males are produced). This is more closely hermaphroditic reproduction, similar to earthworms, where they exchange genetic material and both become pregnant.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Here's some spam that just landed in my inbox:
"Hot m0use lesbian action xisoofle345"
"These r0d3nts dont needd men 14erff34k"
"Minnie likes th3 1adiez bmw nixon"
Tokyo University of Agriculture did not get permission to try the same with two male mice.
Tokyo government agreed that this might form some sort of mighty-mouse.
There is no way to cage this product if it gets angry.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
It took me 5 tries to mentally pronounce this one correctly. I'de have just given up on Neoparthenogenesis and mumbled "neo*cough*pa*cough*esis" to myself as I read.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
(no, this is perfectly on topic, if you read the news...)
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
In an episode on Babylon 5, one species was dieing off because they wiped out another sentient species that they infrequently swapped genes with.
Even if they perfected Fem to Fem breeding, I suspect B5 concept of not knowing what gene's you'll need would come back to bite us.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
...trapped in a man's body.
...like a man needs a bicycle.
:o)
Men are good for lots of things:
- lifting up bonnets, taking sharp intakes of breath and muttering with arms folded.
- navigating unfamiliar terrain without stopping for directions, and in only twice the time a woman would
- weeing really really high against walls
- throwing.
- disposing of 2 day old takeaway food
Those are just a few of the things we're good fer, now quit yer yapping and get back in the kitchen
...puts a humorous slant on the needless idiocy and barbarism of the bible, here, but only just.
The surviving mouse was named Kaguya after that girl in the Japanese legend of a bamboo-cutter who finds a baby in a bamboo sheaf. He raises her (with gold he find in more bamboo sheafs later) to be a woman whose wit and beauty attract suitors from all over. She has no desire to marry and gives them all impossible tasks to earn her hand to get rid of them and catches all the frauds. In the end, she tearfully confesses to her father that she comes from the moon and allowed herself to be born on Earth to experience life here but must go back to her people.
It's a bizarre little legend.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How the hell am I going to get any if the women can screw themselves?
Damn you scientest people. First you give them vibraters now this. Damn you!
Well if the Women find Men Obsolete,
Time to build your girl robot!!!
(just not an armed fembot...)
That works out better... you get a good female friend, you can *both* complain about women, and you don't have to worry about mixed signals. Friendships between genders becomes mainly a problem in the "maybe" zone, or when mixed signals are coming across. Pretty hard to get confused when she's scoping out the same women you are :-)
http://www.ai.mit.edu/~shivers/rants/scum.html
The
SCUM Manifesto
by Valerie Solanas
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.
It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.
And it works ever more weirdly in social insects like bees. In those species the male drone doesn't have a pair of chromosomes at all. In bees the hive's queen was fertilized on her nuptial flight, and carries a lifetime's supply of sperm. The workers are virgin females. But, unlike what I was taught when I was a kid, they are not sterile. They too can lay eggs -- unfertilized eggs. And these unfertilized eggs, with only a single set of chromosomes, not a pair, can hatch, and grow to maturity, to produce the male drones.
Lol. It irritates me when fans of the Aliens movies refer to the worker aliens as drones.
Boys, you are as officially irrelevant, archaic and obsolete as eight-dot-three file naming. ;)