The intentional thinning of a specific sex is called gendercide.
The culling of girls is practiced in China.
The thinking goes that a son is more of an asset to a family than a daughter. If the family farms, the physically stronger son will be able to help with the chores. If the family is in business, then the son, naturally, would carry on the family tradition.
But if a daughter is born there’s the dowry to worry about if she were to marry, and if she didn’t marry, well, then that’s a burden, too.
The Chinese have gotten so stuck in this thinking that for every 123 boys, 100 girls are being born. Within 10 years, one in five young men will be unable to find brides because of gender scarcity.
According to a recent article in The Economist, China is on the path to having as many unmarried young men — re-ferred to as “bare branches” — as the entire population of young men in the United States.
You can see where this is going. Too many rampaging hormones.
But it’s no joke.
Never mind all the “take my wife” gags. A woman provides stability for a man. A family gives him reason to work, to come home, to establish roots.
The Asian culture, particularly, views a single man as an outcast. Ostracized, young men turn to crime, including sexual violence.
The other crime, of course, is the selective destruction of all these infant girls. The advent of ultrasound scans allows many to choose to abort a female fetus. Otherwise, they are either killed at birth or neglected to the point of death.
China’s one-child policy begun in 1979 had much to do with this practice.
Today’s worldwide de-sire for smaller families also is responsible for the spread of the disturbing trend. In recent years, most of Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the northern reaches of India have recorded heavily lopsided male-to-female ratios.
IN THE UNITED States today, women comprise more than half of all professional roles. They outnumber men as college graduates. And when the recession hit, more wom-en than men retained their jobs.
Of course, that may be because women, still, are the cheaper hire. For all of our advances we still make only 80 cents to every $1 a man is paid. And when it comes to being the boss, only 2 percent of CEO positions at America’s largest corporations are held by women.
Still, women rock.
We’re natural networkers, we generally like to effect change through consensus and at the end of the day we’re not afraid to admit we need a hug.
That’s sanity.
THE HUMAN species has survived all these years because of natural selection.
Because boys are slightly more likely to die in infancy than girls, nature miraculously compensates with a higher birth ratio of boys to girls. On average, 103 to 106 boys are born to every 100 girls.
When mankind chooses to skewer that ratio, pandemonium will en-sue.
Alas, we, once again, are our own worst enemy.
— Susan Lynn
