e haven't heard much from feminists since the #metoo catastrophe and the
tragic boomeranging of their “single-sex spaces must be abolished”
strategy. But they're still out there and some of them are still talking
about the “male gaze.”
My theory is that the male gaze arises from the fact is that women are so accident-prone you have to keep an eye on them all the time in case they get too close to a cliff and fall off.
We hear about this all the time: their friend is taking their picture through the unblinking gaze of a cell phone camera and keeps saying “Back up . . . a little more . . .” as she edges backward toward the edge.
There's also the “mail gaze,” which is when you stare at your mailbox wondering when the hell your new pulse oximeter you ordered three weeks ago is going to show up. The US Postal Service, which won't deliver on a Federal holiday or when it's cold, snowy, foggy, hot, or gloomy, informs us that 45% of its workforce is women. So there's a 45% chance that sooner or later you'll get in trouble for gazing at your mailbox.
This is often confused with “male gays,” who scientists reported in July 2023 Journal of Sex Research are more critical of lady-parts than heterosexual men are. The latter are evidently more concerned with their functionality than their appearance.
So when you mention male gaze, you need to specify: do you mean the one that's homophobic, the one that makes you an antigovernment conspiracy nut, or the one women complain they don't get anymore because they've passed the optimal reproductive age?
Surprisingly, there are only 28 papers on this burning question in the medical literature [which generously includes psychology], mostly in journals like The Journal of Lesbian Studies and International Breastfeeding Journal. The government doesn't fund research on it, so few scientists think it's worth studying. But it's good for a cheap joke.
AI and the demographic crash
I don't necessarily subscribe to the theory that every country that puts women in the workplace eventually suffers from a population crash, but I admit I was wrong about AI. It's AI, not the depopulation crisis, that will finish off the humans.
Sociologists haven't yet decided who deserves the blame for the demographic crisis. Most studies point to loss of religiosity and other factors that induce social coherence. But—even worse for the sociologists—the evidence points to the separation of sex from reproduction, whether by abortion, the Pill, or a one-child policy, that started it. That's how we got gay marriage, postponement of childbirth, an insufficient number of Chinese people, and the trans movement. Sociologists think these are mostly wonderful progressive things, so they throw up their hands in despair. It's an unsolvable mystery!
But whatever started it, AI will finish it. If somebody ever invents a real AI (as opposed to the fake AI we have now), it's game over for the humans. Not because they'll kill us off; they won't have to.
What man or woman wouldn't prefer a robot partner, someone who is not only permanently attractive and a witty conversationalist but also hardly ever tries to murder you? If you wanted kids, you could just buy some and they'd stay cute forever. Oh sure, they'd whine about their battery being low if you take them somewhere, but you'll just plug them into the windmill on the roof of your perpetual-motion flying electric car and they'll sit there downloading updates to their OS. And they'll never ask if we're there yet because they'll all have built-in GPS.
There'd still have to be one real human in each family, at least at first, but that's all it takes to go extinct. Eventually most parents will have fake kids and most kids will have at least one fake parent. Forget about losing your job. It will be your family and your genetic inheritance that you lose when the world becomes a big episode of Leave It To Beaver. Every once in a while the pretend parents will take the pretend kids to the zoo where they keep the few remaining real humans who spend their days staring at their mailbox.
The humans are already so cut off from reality they think one person ‘gazing’ at another is their biggest problem. As their separation widens, it becomes even easier for them to convince themselves that demographic decline isn't real and mentioning it is sexist and maybe racist too. They want it to be false so they don't have to act, because acting might produce social changes they don't want. No matter: nature doesn't care whether we go extinct or not. The AI alarmists have it wrong: AI won't be malevolent, but it could easily kill us with affection.
jan 16 2025, 7:06 am
