"I actually don't see myself as being special', because I'm not." "Not really." "Uh, these are green peppers." "Uh, sage." "So I try not to think about it and I just go about living my life." "Look at this one." "See that?" "It's a nice one." "It's not something I'm ashamed of or anything like that." " But it's not something I'm proud of, either." "Because I had nothing to do with it." "You don't get to choose when you're born." "And as you can see here, the waxing gibbous will be taking us toward the weekend." "And then on Saturday, we'll have a full moon, and that's a perigee for this orbit." "So just keep that in mind as you're planning your weekend." "Family dinners may be a little more quarrelsome than usual, especially if you've got some menstruating teenagers around the table." "Andrew's been working for us for almost three years now." "And I've really come to value him." " Hi, Andrew." "Good morning." "Good morning." "Heading out?" "Because he's good at his job." "It's that simple." "The lamp in my bedroom needs a bulb." " And the fact is..." " Okay, yeah, I can replace it." "...a lot of people we know can't find men to do the job anymore." "So they're having to hire women, which is obviously a lot more expensive." " Good morning." " Good morning!" "Maybe it's because he is so much younger than the other men we've had working for us," "but I do worry about the impact his presence has on our kids." "Really, you got a fever?" "It's not that I'm worried that he's corrupting them or anything like that." "It's more that having a man like him around might make them yearn for something they can't have..." "Shouldn't have." "I like the kids being exposed to a man like Andrew." "Someone who's more in his prime, more vital and active." "I think you're gonna be late for school and you should go get ready." "What are you doing?" "I mean, I know it's not a very popular thing to say, but I think it's enriching their lives." "Nine minutes." "All our lives." "Yeah, I suppose from a historical point of view, there's some truth to that." "Seventy-five years from now, our daughters will be able to give their daughters and granddaughters a firsthand account of what men were really like." "Yeah, I think that's important." "It's nature's way." "Praise nature." "My name is Andrew Myers." "lam 37 years old, and I'm the youngest man in the world." "In 1953 I was a young priest, just out of the seminary." "I was blessed with the good fortune of being assigned to the Vatican to work for an order known as the Congregation of the Causes for Saints." "It was our responsibility to investigate events that were so extraordinary that they could be deemed a divine miracle." "Every year, there were many claims made." "Stigmatas, apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the healing of deadly medical conditions and, of course, virgin births." "In a typical year, there would be no more than three or four reports of virgin births that warranted any attention." "But in 1953, there were 67 virgin birth claims." "You have to remember that fatherless pregnancies first began more than half a century ago." "This is back when Abrahamic religions dominated the world, and Christianity, which had nearly two billion worshippers at that time, regarded virgin birth as one of its most sacred tenets." "Christians believe that a virgin named Mary gave birth to their Holy Prophet, Jesus Christ, and that he was fathered by their God." "So you can see why the Church was so concerned about the sudden profusion of virgin birth claims." "Because if they were true, and the Vatican could not prove otherwise, then they would have to be considered miracles." "Except miracles, by their very nature, are extremely rare events." "of course, it wasn't just women who were virgins that were making these claims." "All sorts of women were coming forward." "But there was no way to scientifically validate the claims." "There was no DNA testing back then, and the blood testing that we did have could only prove that a particular man wasn't the father, not that there was no father at all." "You see, like all mammals, humans could not procreate without intercourse between a male and a female." "It was scientifically impossible." "So despite the growing number of women making fatherless pregnancy claims, the only logical conclusion was that they were all lying." "My doctor was the one who told me." "That's how you found out back then." "This was 1953, and I might have been young, but I wasn't stupid." "I knew the signs." "I felt awful." "The problem was, there was no possible way that I could be pregnant." "Richard, he was my husband, he insisted that I get retested because he knew the same thing I did." "We hadn't been intimate for over a year." "As soon as the doctor walked in, I knew what he was going to say." "That there was no mistake with the test." "There was no mistake with the test." "Your wife is pregnant." "Richard demanded to know who I'd been with." "Who were you with?" "What's his name?" "I swore to him that!" "hadn't been unfaithful." "I haven't been with anyone." "But he didn't believe me." "Of course, you have." "You're pregnant." "I tried to explain to the doctor that this was impossible." "He just looked at me like I was a child." "Do you understand how procreation works, how babies are made?" "You see, when a man and a woman have sexual relations..." "It wasn't until 1988 that they had these tests that could show that I was telling the truth, not that it mattered by that point." "It was obvious." "But back then," "nobody believed me." "The harder I tried to convince people I was telling the truth, the crazier I seemed." "And pretty soon, I began to wonder if I was crazy." "How else could you explain something like that?" "It's outlandish." "Not even worth discussing." "But, Senator, you must admit these statistics are compelling." "United States, 10,000 claims." "Great Britain, 6,000 claims." "India, 20,000 claims." "Even Soviet women are claiming to have become pregnant." "We all know that women, by nature, are very impressionable and prone to hysterics." "It's a known fact." "Now perhaps the hormonal changes involved in pregnancy amplify this hysteria and their own gullibility." "And then, you see, they hear about another woman's bizarre claim about her pregnancy, and suddenly they're all doing it." "They cannot help themselves." "It becomes a fad." "Here we have the major developed countries that existed at that time." "What's interesting is that governments all over the world, with every different kind of political structure, remember this was before unification, when faced with fatherless pregnancy claims, they all reacted the exact same way." "I've been very preoccupied with other matters for a while." "I'd have to ask a little more time." "Sir, will you be able to have an opinion" "a little later on?" "I'm not sure." "It has certainly been a surprising spectacle." "They pretended like it wasn't happening." "But this is not so hard to fathom when you consider that at that time, every one of those governments was run by men." "Personally, I can understand the position the authorities took." "It would have been irresponsible just to come out and say that a growing number of women were procreating without male insemination." "On the whole, men are rational beings." "But we have egos, too." "And nobody likes being told they're becoming obsolete." "Obviously, it's not for everyone, but I still look forward to going to work every morning." "There's not a lot of guys who can say that." "Not anymore." "Come on, I'm gonna tell Mommy." "Come on, you." "There's lots of things I like about him." "He's fun to be around." "And he's caring, he's easy to talk to." " Andrew, I can't see." " Okay, let's take a break." "If we still had fathers, he'd definitely be the kind I'd want for Violet." "What's that word they used to say about a man who looked appealing?" "Handser?" "Hands..." " Handsome?" " Handsome." "Yeah." "Well, that's what they would have said about Andrew." "That he's handsome." "Parasitism, competition" "and mutualism." "Right there?" "This is actually the third household that I've worked in." "And they've all been different." "Describe species." "Got some more bread." " Anyone want some?" "Thank you." "This one definitely keeps me on my toes." "There's six kids, six months to 17." "But that's okay." "I prefer it that way." "It's better to stay busy." "I think someone's gonna go to bed." "So everyone say good night." " Good night, sweetheart." " Good night." "What makes the job a Jot easier, though..." "Hey, everybody, gather in." "...is when you genuinely like the women that you work for." " Okay, is everybody here?" "Hey, Luna, how's it going?" " Hi, Violet." "Hey." "Doesn't look like you're gonna be cold today." "Iris is really easygoing and kind." "And she has this way about her that..." "Balls, we need balls." "It's hard to describe." " See your sister?" "Hi!" " Over here." "All I know is that when I'm around her, I feel at ease." "Saffron, move in!" "Tends more conservative." "She likes to do things by the book." "Remember the play, girls, just like in practice!" "So when she's around, I tend to keep a low profile." "I do my job, and I stay out of the way." "Because at the end of the day, no matter how emotionally involved I might get," "I'm an employee." "And it's good to be reminded of that every once in a while." "There he is, the whippersnapper." " Hey, Jim, how are you?" "Good, good." "You know Reggie?" "He works for Holly Dawson and Ivy Chan up on Verona." "Sure, yeah." "And my bosses want me to put on a magic show to boot." "Can you believe that?" "As if I can just summon up balloon animals." "I want to say, "Ladies, I put on a magic show for you every single day." ""I toilet trained your daughters, for God's sake."" "Excuse me?" "Can you keep your voices down?" "Nobody wants to listen to a bunch of manosaurs." "It's so annoying." "Sorry, we were just talking." " Yeah, relax." "Don't tell me to relax." "You're not even allowed to be here." " It's okay, we're actually working." "It doesn't matter." "You can't congregate in groups of more than two." " Or have you forgotten that?" "Oh, come on, seriously?" "Those are the rules." "Are you going to follow them or not?" "It's okay." "I got to get back to work." "No, no." "Don't go." "Stick around." "It's okay." "It's not worth it." "It was good seeing you." "I'll see you soon." "See you later." "Maybe if things had turned out differently," "I'd be a pilot or an architect like my mom." "But there's no point in dwelling on that." "I'm gonna make the best of the opportunities that I do have, because things aren't going to change." "Not back to the way they were." "That's just a fact of nature." "Even though more and more women were coming forward with fatherless pregnancy claims, they weren't taken seriously." "So things seemed to carry on as they always had." "I think there was a sense that it was pointless." "We tried to tell them what was going on, but they didn't want to listen." "They never listened." "But if you'd looked a little closer, you would have seen that beneath the woman's dutiful, prim and proper exteriors, there was a simmering anger getting ready to boil over." "And then Sister Isabella came along." "She was living in a convent in the hills outside of a small town in Northern Spain." "Men were strictly forbidden from entering the convent, and even if she had wanted to break her vows, given the remote location and the watchfulness of the other nuns, it would have been impossible for her to sneak away." "Yet, Sister Isabella discovered, to her utter dismay" "that she was pregnant." "One could argue that if this had happened in a different time, the Church may have very well embraced Sister Isabella, canonized her as a living saint, and perhaps even looked upon her baby as the return of their Messiah." "But then again, she had a daughter, so that would have thrown a wrench into the Biblical narrative, wouldn't it?" "All we do know is that the Church wanted nothing to do with Sister Isabella." "The Congregation of Causes of Saints was ordered to destroy the report they had written, and deny that they had ever heard her claim." "They told us it was for the best." "In the tiny village of Burgos, Spain, a group of nuns are telling a whale of a story." "Meet Sister Isabella." "Though it's hard to tell with that habit on, she's pregnant." "And guess who they're saying the father is?" "No one." "That's right, it's another so-called fatherless pregnancy." "The last thing the Catholic Church expected was that a devout order of Spanish nuns would not only break their vow of silence, but start talking to anyone who would listen." "You people think that this is a joke, but it is not." "It is happening more and more, and the government needs to acknowledge it." "They need to wake up and take these claims seriously or they are going to be sorry." "We would like women everywhere to know that despite the world's scientific community being unanimous in their belief that fatherless pregnancies are impossible, we intend to study this matter vigorously." "And I have no doubt that, one way or another, we will be able to put this whole matter to rest once and for all." "For as long as history has been recorded we have seen, with civilization after civilization, that once a group attains power, they are very reluctant to give it up." "But history also shows us that eventually they are always forced to." "Tell us what you saw earlier." "Well, really it's what I didn't see." "When I came into work this morning, there were no secretaries, which is unusual, given how many of them we have." "And since there was no one to make me coffee," "I had to go all the way down to the lobby." "But then it took me 20 minutes to get service because the waitresses hadn't shown up for work there, either." "Afterwards, it was referred to as a strike." "But it wasn't an organized event." "My mother wasn't even aware that other women were doing the same thing." "One night, she just decided that she'd had enough." "My father and brother and I were in the dining room waiting for dinner to be served." "And I noticed she wasn't in the kitchen." "And it didn't seem like any food was being prepared." "Then she appeared with a coat on and her purse in her hand and said..." "I'm going out." "I don't know when I'll be back." "If you want dinner, you'll have to make it yourselves." "I think there's some ground beef in the freezer." "And it was really out of character for her to be doing something like that." "But it wasn't until I turned and saw the look on my father's face that I realized that something significant was happening." "I have to admit, I was impressed that he was able to swallow his pride and ask me to take him back." "But then I suddenly had this realization that!" "had absolutely no use for him in my life." "I love everything Iris paints." "I always have." "But I'm biased, because we're so close." "And when you really like someone, you tend to like everything they do." "Uh..." "Am I as crazy about this man phase she's been in?" "Maybe not." "But they're still beautiful paintings." "I don't think people acknowledge the issue enough." "I mean, most don't acknowledge it at all." "But painlessness is something that really concerns me, which, I guess, is why I've been making it such a part of my work lately." "Because I want to keep the issue alive." "I guess it's my way of making people confront what's going on." "The paintings don't sell nearly as well as my other pieces." "Actually, they don't sell at all." "Nobody wants a picture of a man hanging over their fireplace." "It isn't Andrew's age and what that represents." "He just..." "He has this way about him that I like." "I notice her staring at him a lot, but it kind of makes sense." "If you're gonna spend all that time painting someone, you should probably really like looking at them." "You think I'm obsessed with him." "I'm not." "It's just part of my process." "It doesn't matter what my subject is." "Mmm." "It's good." " Are you being serious?" "Yeah, it's good." "And it's not like there's a lot of other men around for me to paint." "And he does live with us." "Here is it." "I did it for art class." "Um..." "It's not perfect or anything." "I wasn't concerned with likeness so much." "I was more interested in his body, his muscles, especially in his arms." "I really like his arms." "My grandma used to say about my grandfather that it wasn't his looks or even his personality that caught her attention at first, it was his spirit." "And that's what I'm trying to capture in my paintings," "Andrew's spirit." "And maybe, by extension, the spirit that exists in all men." "As the number of fatherless pregnancy claims continued to rise, we discovered that the number of normal pregnancies, in which a man impregnated a woman, was plummeting." "In fact, by the end of 1957, three out of four babies born were coming from mothers claiming to have had a fatherless impregnation." "What was even more alarming, though, was the fact that every one of those mothers gave birth to a girl." "Parthenogenesis." "It's the reason why we get called." "You know, instead of how it used to be when you needed to be with a man to get pregnant." "What?" "It's true." "That's disgusting." "Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction in which an egg is the sole source of genetic material for the creation of an embryo." "But this mode of reproduction was only known to occur with insects and certain types of reptiles." "With mammals, however, an embryo could only develop if the egg had been fertilized by a male," "bringing together the genetic components that make life possible." "But with parthenogenesis, since all the necessary components needed for reproduction are produced by the egg," "sperm are rendered obsolete." "Not only that, but we discovered the sperm could no longer penetrate the wall of the egg." "It was producing a new protein that hardened the membrane." "The sperm were literally being shutout." "Even when a sperm was injected into the egg artificially, it was almost immediately rendered inert." "When you take sperm out of the biological equation, there are no longer any Y chromosomes being introduced into the embryonic process." "So every embryo has two X chromosomes and every child is female." "And thus, no more males." "It wasn't hard for them to figure out that I was the last one." "I was actually the only boy born that year in the entire world." "But they didn't make it official until a few years later, when they were sure that there wasn't any more of us coming." "When I started school, I got a lot of attention." "I was kind of like the class pet." "Not in a bad way." "It wasn't like I was being kept in a cage like Mr. Chips." "He was the actual class pet." "High school was more of a challenge." "By that point, girls were so used to not having boys around that the idea of being attracted to one was completely alien to them." "Don't get me wrong, there were some crooked girls, um, more than there are now, I'm sure." "But they weren't accepted by the other girls." "But neither was I, so we got along just fine." "It really wasn't until I finished high school that I realized how different things were going to be for me, compared to the girls I graduated with." "That's when it finally dawned on me that" "I wasn't gonna have the same opportunities that they were going to." "They were going down one road and I was going down another." "I, Eleanor Marie Hamilton, do solemnly swear..." "That I will faithfully execute..." "That I will faithfully execute..." "The office of the President of the United States." "The office of the President of the United States." "And with the best of my ability..." "If you had told someone in the early 1960s that a woman would be the next President of the United States, they wouldn't have believed you." "It may seem ridiculous now, but at that time, people thought they'd have to wait 10, or possibly even 15 years, before that would happen." "The changes weren't that drastic, at least not at first." "It's not like they came out and declared war on men or anything like that." "But I don't think it would be a stretch to say that there was an element of payback in their governing agenda." "We very much appreciate the historical contribution that men have made to our civilization." "But the facts are the facts." "Women make up 62% of the population." "And that..." "Actually, Senator, it's 64% now." "Right." "And that ratio needs to be represented in all levels of society." "But isn't your worker replacement program" "a little harsh?" "These statistics..." "Worker assessment program." "We only allow male employees to be replaced if, after a very thorough assessment, they are deemed to be less capable than an equally qualified female." "It's simply a weeding out process." "And there just happens to be a lot of weeds." "My grandfather, he warned that this would happen." "He said we never should have given women the vote." "He said, uh, "You give them an inch, and they'll take your soul."" "You know what?" "He was right." "Generally speaking, men did not react well to female-led governments." "More and more of them began to opt out and move to rural encampments in what we now refer to as "the Exodus."" "We are not welcome here, so why stay?" "You know?" "We'll see how they get along without us, because I don't think it's going to be too long before they realize the mistake they made and then beg us to come back." "Hey, jackass!" "You forgot your coat." "Kind of an important item to leave behind when you're gonna live in the woods." "I was living with these three women, and they were all beautiful and free loving." "Then they started treating me like a sex object and their errand boy." "By the mid-1970s, it was clear that women were doing just fine without men in charge." "This caused a lot of the men who had left to rethink their positions." "Some returned and took on more subservient roles." "But a core group dug in their heels and refused to accept the new world order." "It's simple, okay?" "Power, respect." "That's what's been taken away from us, and that's what we intend to get back." "It's not called "womankind." It's called "mankind."" "And there's a reason for that, because for the last 200,000 years, men have been keeping civilization afloat." "We've been steering the ship." "We built the ship." "And now they want to chuck us overboard because their eggs have gone haywire?" "Not bloody likely." " What do we want?" " Respect!" " When do we want it?" " Now!" " What do we want?" "Respect!" " When do we want it?" "Now!" "The protests tied up traffic throughout the city, which is believed to be what ultimately sparked the violence." "Women just started getting out of their cars and coming at us with this..." "This look in their eyes." "Get out of the street!" "I was trying to get to work, but the traffic was stopped dead." "And then I saw the men blocking the road and chanting." "And I snapped." "Protest marches took place all over the world that day." "At first, it was thought that the violence was connected to parthenogenesis." "That nature was compensating for the loss of men by making women more aggressive." "But in fact, it was PMS." "By 1975, women represented over three-quarters of the world's population." "This triggered what's known as "menstrual ovulatory synchrony,"" "which is a phenomenon where the menstrual cycles of women become synchronized." "So essentially, the world became like one big sorority house." "This is just the tip of the iceberg." "First their bodies get in sync." "Pretty soon, it'll be their minds." "Telepathic communication." "How do you contend with that?" "You can't." "You can't compete with the hive mind." "The protest marches and the ensuing violence turned out to be a watershed event." "It was the catalyst for creating a monthly, three-day statutory holiday we now know as "Menses."" "But more importantly, the protests happened right after unification." "So it was the first test for the newly formed World Governing Council." "And everyone was watching very closely to see how they would respond." "First of all, I want to make it clear that the World Governing Council, above all, listens." "We want men's groups everywhere to know we have heard you." "We acknowledge your plight and we're going to help you." "As part of our commitment to ensuring the safety and comfort of men everywhere, the World Governing Council has set aside vast areas of land for the creation of male sanctuaries." "These exclusive communities will be located all over the world, including the entire continent of Australia." "Men who live in these sanctuaries will be provided all the services they require, including medical attention, nutritious meals, clean clothes, and of course, entertainment." "We believe that the remaining men should be kept as comfortable as possible as they live out their lives." "And that their contribution to humanity must be, and will be, respected and honored." "But, at the same time, we must respect and honor nature's actions." "Praise nature." "Do they think we're children?" "Offering us food and a bunch of silly conveniences." "It is a blatant attempt by this female regime to pacify us." "We're not stupid." "They can ply us with all the comforts in the world, but it will not change our resolve." "Because they may have taken away our rightful place in society." "They will not take away our dignity." "While there's no question the MLO had a defiant spirit and were very vocal about their intentions, they actually didn't do much once the Governing Council established the sanctuaries and began providing services." "That's rubbish." "Living in the sanctuaries has not made us weak." "What it has done is given us the ability to plan our resurgence as the dominant, superior sex without the hassle of having to prepare meals or take care of ourselves." "Don't you see?" "The joke is on them." "All this time, the regime have believed that they've been weakening our resolve." "But what they've actually been doing is allowing us to focus on our plan of attack." "And it won't be long before we're ready to strike." "I don't think the issue is whether or not the MLO is an effective organization." "It's the fact that their central goal can't be achieved." "Not when the government firmly believes that there's no solution to the problem." "They don't even see manlessness as a problem." "To them, it's simply an evolutionary event, an act of nature that's beyond our control and should never be questioned, because nature is sacred." "Notice the energy rising up your body, higher and higher." "Feel the power flowing up through your fingertips." "Breathe it in." "It wasn't enough that they took away our jobs." "They went and fired God, too." "Worshipping the sacred cycles of her forces." "Replaced him with a sheila." "That's nature flowing through you." "Praise nature." "But you can't question her actions, because everything she does is a blessed gift." "Influenza was an act of nature." "So was malaria and cancer." "But they're not around anymore." "And not because nature eradicated them, but because the government spent trillions of dollars developing vaccines." "I'm not suggesting that the Governing Council has been avoiding dealing with the painlessness issue on purpose as a way to maintain power, even though having men die off would certainly achieve that goal." "But I do think it's worth asking the question." "Why haven't more resources been put towards it?" "There's no doubt in my mind that the government have been deliberately ignoring the problem." "They're using nature as an excuse to push their number one agenda, doing away with men." "They go on believing that they don't need us, but that's just another example of their reckless, short-term way of thinking." "Being women, they can't think strategically." "They're incapable of seeing the big picture." "I'll give you an example." "In 1960, the U.S. Defense Department was all set to fund a program that would allow the computers all around the world to connect with each other." "They'd have been linked together in a massive communication web." "Could you imagine if all our word processing units could talk to each other?" "Bloody amazing, right?" "Well, women take over and guess what?" "The U.S. Defense budget gets stuffed." "Don't even getting me started on space exploration." "They gutted NASA in the early 1960s, and the Russian program didn't stand a chance, either." "I really don't understand this obsession they have with putting a man on the moon." "We all appreciate the important role it plays in our lives, but do we really need to go to the trouble of sending someone up there to stand on it?" "I don't think so." "Now, if we had a way to put all of the men on the moon..." "So what do we have to show for all these massive spending cuts and program cancellations?" "World peace and electric cars." "Big bloody deal." "True progress only comes about through conflict." "Used to be a time when one country fancied another, they'd invade it." "War was declared, and they battled it out until one of them was defeated." "And a bigger, stronger nation was born out of it." "Dale?" "I was just fixing my hair." "Used to be a time, if a man fancied a woman, he'd court her, tum on the charm." "...but I'd rather look at you." "You're beautiful, Connie." "Until she had no choice but to fall for it." "And they'd get together, and they'd have sex." "Intercourse." "That's a form of conflict." "And out of that came children." "True progress." "NOW?" "We live in a world where there's no wars, no." "I remember when my parents told me I was the last boy." "I started wondering if maybe I was the cause of the problem." "That somehow I had stopped any more of us from coming out." "Like maybe I had broken the machinery or something." "Uh, or that God had taken one look at me and said, "That's it, I'm done with males."" "Even though we still don't know for certain, a consensus has emerged as to what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs." "The same will be true with men." "Until the cause is discovered, a dominant theory will emerge and become conventional wisdom." "My personal feeling?" "It's evolution." "Humans evolved from the apes and now we're evolving further into a single sex." "But why?" "Why would nature do that?" "We just don't need them anymore." "That's all." "It's not as if we're a hunter-gatherer society." "We don't need men to protect us or hunt for food or build shelters." "And since they aren't needed anymore, nature just stopped producing them." "It's nothing personal." "It's the penis." "It was responsible for the skyscrapers, the missiles, the oil drills, and eventually all of that aggressive, phallic energy had such a corroding effect on the planet that nature had no choice but to extinguish it." "You know what a NEO is?" "Near Earth object." "Now normally, they're comets or asteroids." "Well, in 1952, astronomers recorded one that they thought was an asteroid." "But due to an unusually large cloud of solar debris that was surrounding it, there was no way to be sure." "Nine months later, the first so-called fatherless baby was born." "Women have two X chromosomes, men only have one, which would be okay if our Y chromosome had something to offer." "But the fact is, it pales in comparison." "It only carries a tiny complement of genes and it offers no protection against genetic mutations." "It's kind of a runty little thing." "And I suspect that's ultimately what's doing us in." "Why wouldn't there be female aliens?" "A race of asexual, female aliens that come to Earth to hijack our reproductive system." "And do you want to know why the government doesn't have an explanation?" "Because if they admitted they knew what the cause was, they'd be that much closer to being able to fix it." "So either they don't want to know and they've got their heads stuck in the sand, or they do know and they're hiding the truth from us." "Either way, they're avoiding dealing with the situation." "Men aren't like that, are they?" " No." "No!" "No." "When we see a problem, we attack it." "We tear it apart until we know everything there is to know about it." "And then what do we do?" " We fix it!" " We fix it!" "We don't form committees or talking circles or go on listening tours." " We fix it." "MEN"." "Fix it!" "Fix it!" "And that's exactly what we're gonna do." "We're gonna get back into power and put an end to painlessness." "Fix it!" "Fix it!" "Fix it!" "" " Fix m Fix m Fix m" "Fix it!" "Fix it!" "Fix it!" "I just received some very important information." "They're sewing tenderloin in the mess hall tonight and they're sewing it right now." "Come on!" "Let's go." "I realize now it was a kind of survivor's guilt that I was feeling." "And even though it's totally crazy, I still feel twinges of it." "It's usually when I see other men looking at me, and I think they blame me for being the last one out the door." ""What did you do?" "What did you do?"" "I don't feel good about it." "But I don't feel bad, either." "It's not like they're being massacred." "They're just getting old and dying off." "It's like, I remember reading in the paper a while ago that the last surviving member of this rock band had died." "They were called The Raymonds, I think." "The Ramones?" "Right." "Anyway, I remember feeling sad." "But not for all the members of the band, or because they wouldn't be producing any new songs, but because someone had died." "That's always sad, but that's also a part of life." "Nothing is forever." "You're comparing the extinction of men to a punk band from the '70s?" "It's actually kind of the same thing." "One day, I'm going to open up the paper and find out that the last man has died." "And I think I'm going to feel the same way that I did about The Raymonds." "Hi, I'm so excited to meet you." " I loved your book." "So nice to meet you." " Nice to meet you." "What's your name?" "Imagine if the entire planet was exposed to sunlight 24 hours a day." "It would never get dark, so we wouldn't have any use for the word "night."" "The same is true for the word "gender."" "Once men are gone, it will cease to have any meaning." "And good riddance." "It's the most divisive word in human history." "But doing away with gender does not mean we have to do away with sex." "Despite what the government would have us believe, women still crave sexual intimacy," "just as we're still instinctively pairing off in order to raise our children." "Because without intimacy, the bond that holds a couple together will eventually start to disintegrate." "And then their families will disintegrate, and then where does that leave our society as a whole?" "But the government hasn't embraced this rationale." "In fact, the members of the Governing Council are these out-of-touch conservatives who harbor an irrational fear of a male resurgence." "And this paranoia has trickled down into the bedrock of the government's social policy, which explains why it's so extreme." "They've turned their fear of heterosexuality into a fear of any kind of sex at all." "Mom, can I ask you something?" "of course, dear." "What is it?" "Is it strange that when I touch myself, you know, down there, that it feels really good?" "Have you found yourself in this situation?" "or perhaps it's a conversation you're dreading?" "Well, don't worry, you're not alone." "The fact is, as girls reach puberty, the joy and excitement of impending fertility can often be accompanied by the confusion and perils of sexual arousal." "The Department of Health has produced this video..." "I think what you have to understand is that these are confusing times." "We are still in a period of evolutionary transition." "Sexual urges are still present, yet sex is no longer necessary." "Nature will eventually eradicate these impulses, but until then, until we have become fully evolved, the Governing Council needs to ensure that young women don't get caught up in the futility of erotic pleasure." "We're not supposed to talk about it." "We're actually not supposed to even know about it." "Especially the old kind of sex." "You know, intercourse?" "And now there's all this worry about urges." ""Are you having urges?" "Don't give in to the urges."" "Next they'll be telling us that if we get an itch, we shouldn't scratch it." "It's not physical, it's psychological." "So you just need to not think about it." "I mean, if you were to have those feelings..." "Thoughts." "They're thoughts, not feelings." "Which I've never had." "We are not trying to discourage intimacy." "At least not emotional intimacy." "It is critical that young people be taught to nurture meaningful and deeply fulfilling non-sexual bonds, because they need to grow up believing in love." "We all need to believe in that." "(LAUGHS You're a funny little thing, aren't you?" "Would you like me to tell you another story?" "All right." "Well, once upon a time, there was a fair maiden..." "Hello." "Oh, Your Highness." " Oh, I'm sorry." " It's all right." " I certainly didn't mean to startle..." " I just wasn't expecting..." " You." "You." "Jasmine and I, my best friend, we've talked about it." "And we both like a lot of the same music and we get along really well." "But I'm just not sure I want to spend the rest of my life with her." "We've known each other forever." " Not quite." " Well, since high school." "Grade 11." "TERRA"." "Ah, that's when I had Dahlia." "I had partnered up with a friend of mine, but that didn't work out." "Then Iris got called, and we were both looking to pair off, so it was just great timing." "And we've been together ever since." "I think it's proof that you can partner with someone without there having to be that intimacy." "Because you can't force someone to feel that way." "Terra and I are good friends, we're partners, we're raising our kids together, but it's not anything more than that." "I think it's worked out really well for us." "Right?" "Yes, yeah, of course." "It's been great." "But you know, I also think it's easy to understand, given the circumstances, why someone else might want a..." "I don't know, a deeper bond with their partner." "I'm not saying it should be sexual or anything like that." "Of course not, it shouldn't be." "But that doesn't mean it can't be something more meaningful or intense." "But there are men still out there." "Some of them aren't that much older than you or I." "So it's not completely hopeless." "It just bothers me the way that people talk about men like they're already gone." "They're not." "They're still here." "One of them is, anyway." "She's talking about Andrew." "Okay, yeah." "Andrew is a good example." "And I'll admit it, I'm very fond of him." "Can we, uh..." "Could we just take a small break?" "I just need to..." "Excuse me." "It's not like I didn't know there was something going on between them." "The way they look at each other, and Iris' paintings." "But I assumed..." "I hoped it was a harmless flirtation." "But it's not." "I can see that now, it's obvious, they're intimate." "It's not like we were planning for it to happen." "The more time he and I spent together, we just..." "It happened." "Everything's gonna change now with Terra and I, and Andrew." "She likes having this aura of mystery." "It's part of being an artist, right?" "Being provocative." "But I never believed she was actually crooked." "I just thought it was an act." "Surprise, surprise, right?" "You only see what you want to see." " I have no idea what to do." "it's going to be fine." "No, I don't think it is." " You sure?" "Yes." "What are they doing?" "What's going on?" "Okay, okay, back in the house." "Now." "Everyone, come on, go, go." "Can you turn it off, please?" "Excuse me?" "Now, please." "Of course there are still women who are attracted to men and don't want them to perish." "We understand that." "But they are a small segment of the population, maybe 10%." "And like the men they're pining for, they're a dying breed." "Which is why we think it's best for the population as a whole, and for young people especially, to prohibit opposite sex unions and to encourage all the remaining men to go into the sanctuaries, so we can focus on the next stage of our evolution" "without any unnecessary distractions or confusion." "So, this is it right here." "People are always expecting a big electrified fence or something, but you have to keep in mind that this particular sanctuary is over 300 square kilometers, and it's one of the smaller ones." "So a fence just isn't an option." "Of course, the service roads are all gated." "We patrol the entire perimeter." "But to be honest, we don't really get many men trying to escape anymore." "That was more of an issue 10, 20 years ago." "Hurry!" "Back then, they were wandering out all the time." " Are you getting him?" " Yeah." "SANCTUARY GUARD"." "Mostly looking for female contact." "Mom!" "There's a man outside!" "Just get out of here!" " Hey, no." "It's okay." " Shoo!" "It's okay." " Get inside the house right now." "it's okay." "Don't come any closer." "It's okay." "I just want to talk." "What's your name?" "I'm Kirk." "I already called the police." "You're very pretty." "Get inside now!" "They just couldn't help themselves, of course." "It's just part of their nature." "Border patrol agents quickly arrived at the scene and then surrounded the man when he climbed up into a tree." "I wasn't doing anything!" "Just leave me alone." "Not you, you're cute." "After a lengthy standoff, the agents were forced to use a tranquilizer gun to sedate the unruly man." "They then returned him to the nearby Northbrook Sanctuary, where he is no doubt rethinking any future plans to venture outside the perimeter." "Like animals." "That's how I'd characterize it." "Except when animals are endangered, everybody's all up in arms." "Committees are formed, monies are raised." "Can't do without those Tasmanian fruit bats, can we?" "But what do they do when it comes to men?" "They take away our livelihoods, shove us out into the wilderness, erase us from their books and movies." "And just for good measure, they basically go and castrate us." "I'm not joking." "This is evidence, undeniable proof that what we've been suspecting for years is actually going on." "The report clearly states that they are lacing our food with estrogen, which is the girly hormone." "Smith claimed the document, which he says is an internal government memo, clearly shows that the Governing Council has been carrying out a program intended to, quote, "kill their boners."" "A man's sex drive is his life blood." "You take that away from him, you might as well kill him." "So I am hereto tell you that we will no longer eat the food." "We are now officially on a hunger strike." "They might be able to strip us of our dignity, but they will never take away our manhood." "The problem was, other than that memo, which the government claimed was just a discussion paper, there was no proof." "They had found a way to put a synthetic hormone into the food without there being any way to detect it." "Which just shows, once again, how capable their scientists can be when they put their minds to something." "Thanks, Dawn." "Speaking of things that are short-lived, the Male Liberation Organization announced today they are ending their hunger strike after only a day and a half." "Darius Smith, the group's leader, would only say it was due to "circumstances beyond their control."" "What were we supposed to do?" "When a man gets hungry, he has to eat." "That's just the way it is." "Does that mean we failed?" "No, not in the least." "Now the world is aware of the lengths that this authoritarian regime will go to denigrate men." "But you're still eating the food." "Couldn't you have grown and prepared your own food?" "Yes, of course we could have grown and prepared our own food." "But we've deliberately chosen not to, out of protest." "Because if we'd refused the tainted food, the story would have gone away." "People will forget what their government did to us." "But by continuing to eat it every day, the world is constantly reminded." "They have to live with it just like we do." "I'm not at liberty to go into many details about that, but I can say that we did add estrogen to the sanctuary food." "But only until 2008." "At that time, we realized the initiative was no longer necessary due to the increasing age of the men." "They were losing their sex drives naturally." "That's a load of crap." "Of course they're still lacing the food." "It's bloody propaganda is what that is." "We're not so old either, you know?" "No harm in showing this now, I guess." "People assume that because I was the last one born, that I'm very involved in the cause." "I get approached all the time by pro-male organizations, the MLO, Man Up, Penis." "They all want me to use my notoriety to help raise awareness, to lobby the government." "But that's not who I am." "I'm not the activist type." "Believe me, there are others who are way more effective at that than me." "You know, leaders." "I'm just a guy." "I don't know." "It's hard to see how we can be together now." "The government would never sanction it." "Being intimate with your employer doesn't look good on your record." "I guess I just got to stay positive." "I'm not gonna say it's a terrible place." "Excuse me, are these lima beans in the quinoa salad?" " No, they're split peas." "Oh, yeah?" "It's not." "They treat us well." "But it doesn't matter how comfortable a place is, it can still feel like a prison." "They say the trick is to fill your days up as much as you can." "To try to enjoy yourself." "But I can't seem to do that." "My mind is always somewhere else." "Back at the house with Iris." "That's not what it's like for most of these guys." "They've gotten used to it here." "They like it." "But then again, most of them have no reason to want to go back." "I do." "Oh, that's gorgeous." "Hold that..." "That will look wonderful on you." "Here we have the guest of honor, the oh, so lovely Olive, who, as you can see, is celebrating her first moon." "'l ay!" "I guess on the surface, things went back to normal." "How does it feel to be a woman?" "Uh, tingly?" "But it wasn't the same after Andrew left." "And here we have the proud mother." "Terra and I, we just couldn't recover from what happened." "She felt betrayed." "Let's get a picture of the two moms." "And nothing I could say was gonna make her see things differently." "Um, Harold, can you move?" "Harold." " What's that?" "Can you move, please?" "And the kids really missed Andrew." "Especially Dahlia." "For my part, I tried to move on with my life, but I couldn't." "I couldn't stop thinking about him." "Oh, baby, talk to me" "Oh, please, talk to me, yeah" "What really got to me was when I stopped and thought about how I was going to be there for the rest of my life." "It was like being on the deck of a ship that was sinking really slowly." "And the women have all left on the lifeboats, but the men are just sitting there." "Waiting to meet their fate." "Oh, she just don't want to read me" "That's kind of when it hit home." "How when I'm gone, we're all gonna be gone." "I knew I couldn't just sit there waiting." "I had to do something." "I had to leave." "They don't make it easy to do that, though." "I left in the middle of the night and I ran as fast as I could." "But it didn't take long before they found me." "He didn't think I was gonna be there." "I was praying that she was going to be there, but I had no idea if she got my message." "He was just staring at me with this stunned look on his face." "So I said..." "You just gonna stand there?" "Or are we gonna get out of here?" "I think that we were so determined to be together that we never really stopped and thought about all the implications." "They were gonna be looking for Andrew, and we couldn't go into hiding." "What kind of life is that?" "I mean, we'd already been hiding." "Pretending like we weren't involved." "This was gonna be a lot harder." "It just seemed so unfair, because what we wanted felt so natural." "To be together, to marry, to have kids." "And none of it was possible." "But if we wanted things to change, we were gonna have to be the ones to do something about it." "There's been a surprising development in the sanctuary escape story that we told you about last week." "REPORTER 'l:" "The 37-year-old Myers surprised everyone today when he arrived at the Jefferson Street Community Hall to give a press conference." "Andrew Myers, the youngest man in the world, resurfaced today after escaping from the Alice Lake Sanctuary." "At an impromptu press conference, he and his former employer, Iris Balishev, made a startling announcement." "We not only want the right to marry, we want to have children together." "Even though heterosexual reproduction is considered to be impossible, it is our hope and our belief that with the resources of the Governing Council and the support of the scientific community, that it can become a reality." "That it should become a reality." "And I realize that I'm biased because I'm in love with a man, but I know I'm not the only one." "Please speak up, because time is running out." "Seeing the two of them together like that, so obviously in love, pleading for recognition, it awoke something in people." "Go ahead, you're on the air." "I don't care who knows anymore." "I like men." "I'm not saying I totally agree with it, but you have to admit, they make a cute couple." "I'll tell you what the answer is." "No." "Just let them die off." "Come on, are they really that bad?" "I don't think so." "This is a question of morality." "We can't just stand by and let them vanish off the face of the Earth." "That's not what women are about." "There were more calls today for the Governing Council to take action on painlessness." "of course, the Governing Council is aware of the public's reaction." "And they're taking it very seriously." "That's why they've convened these emergency meetings, to assess the situation and consider any possible solutions." "It doesn't matter if we figure out how to keep men around." "It's not our place to intervene." "This is an act of nature." "Praise nature." "FEMALE CALLER B"." "I think they should find a way to start producing men again." "But not too many." "Maybe 100 or 150." "Then see how it goes." "There's been so much attention focused on us from the press that we decided to make it a really small, private ceremony." "But it was beautiful." "And legal." "We even have a license to prove it." "I don't have it on me right now, but it's the real thing." "We're married." "And now we've been getting even more attention because of this little development." "It's not so little anymore." "We don't know if it's a boy." "We asked them not to tell us." "I really want it to be a surprise." "But the procedure worked." "Andrew's DNA is present." "It's his." "It's ours." "It's what she wanted." "To be with him and have a baby." "So good for her." "And if it's a boy like everyone seems to think, then that's great for the world, too, I suppose." "Personally, I couldn't imagine having something like that growing inside of me." "A male baby." "It turns out that the Y chromosome was the culprit after all." "The government scientists disguised the Y chromosome to look like an X chromosome, thereby tricking the egg into accepting it." "Do I wish people had been this excited when I got pregnant?" "Of course." "But it's a good thing that's happened." "I never really liked the idea of men going extinct." "Didn't feel right." "On the other hand, I'm not going to deny that I'm happy they came as close as they did." "Gave them one hell of a scare." "And that's exactly what they needed." "Patience." "That's what I've been saying all along." "We just had to stay vigilant, keep our wits about us." "And sooner or later, we'd get our chance." "And here we are." "It does feel different." "I don't know if it's just in my head, but I feel like I'm pregnant for the first time." "Which, I guess in away, I am." "I don't know, I'm just really excited." "I'm just praying it's not a girl." "No, no, I was just..." "She won't talk to me" "She won't talk to me" "Well, I know she can see me" "She just don't want to read me" "She won't talk to me" "Oh, baby, talk to me" "She won't talk to me" "But I know she can see me" "She just don't want to read me She won't talk to me" "She won't talk to me" "She won't talk to me" "She won't talk to me" "She won't talk to me" "But I know she can see me" "She just don't want to read me" "She won't talk to me" "She won't talk to me" "She won't talk to me"