This has been around for a while. Nothing to do with Rumpole’s observation of his wife as “She who must be obeyed” or the current male response about who makes the decisions which goes something like “My wife decides where we live, where the kids will go to school, who our friends will be, what family car we will buy and where we will holiday, while I can choose what beer to buy and, if I have money left over, my own car”.

Recently science sites have again raised the question about the fast dwindling Y gene. From directing about 1,600 inheritable characteristics there is now debate about whether it is responsible for only 26 maybe 47. Wow! What a fall from grace for the Adam hypothesis. The research into the dwindling size and genetic contributions of the Y chromosome has been going on for over a decade and, whilst there is no disagreement about this, there are different scientific camps lined up to prove the Y chromosome may find back-up amongst the so-called ‘junk genes’ (how very male) or, from within its own limited resources that allow for repair and replication.

The fact is that women, the XXs, the ones that ensure there is enough food for everyone, that there are changes of clothes for the children, that there is something done with left-overs and so forth have come prepared as always with an extra X gene to supply and augment in the case of genetic accident or damage. Alas, the lonely Y gene doesn’t have this. If this is not enough, the XXs now have backup power of endocrine-disrupter resources from the industrial food, pesticide/weedicide and plastics industries boosting their hormones on a geographically global scale. Poor little, lonely Y gene.

Probably not time to panic just yet as the genetic pundits say the Y has another four million years left.

What will life be like without blokes? I can’t think of an upside here. Now in my sixties, I can think back about the blokes that have been a part of my life. Some are/were the very best of men; one or two the worst of men. A few were of high and ‘noble character’. One or two were of low-to-no character. We girls are possibly lucky to escape the return scrutiny.

Trying to envisage a world without blokes I have made a list of why men matter:

1. They are more fun. Hands down they are more fun. Skilled as satirists, they also play jokes on each other, they tease and trick and play payback and it is all in good humour. Just tune into Jeremy Clarkson’s merry band of musketeers and you will see what I mean. These are humans enjoying life, tricking each other as they have the most amazing adventures while making bucket loads of money. AND these are exploits are all Political Correctness free.
2. Men are far better to lunch with than women because the jokes, the wines, the camaraderie, the tales and exploits are so much bigger and better. AND they don’t add up who had what when the bill arrives.
3. Having run several businesses based on food and events men are much easier to work with on a commercial/business basis than women. Their vision is definitely broader, the commercial scale broader, the budget bigger, the engagement with event design and commercial appeal more liberating and the scope of oversight more comprehensive. AND they make the project enjoyable.
4. You don’t have to listen to a woman of ‘old wealth’ explain how to trim costs or reduce a menu to its meanest level whilst surrounded by a home with $4 million in artworks on the walls. Men understand the value of effort because they have put it in.
5. Many women think in housekeeping budgetary terms within which allowance they disguise from their bloke what they spend on clothes, handbags, shoes, hairdressers, podiatry, and cosmetic procedures. Mind you, when women provide their own income such add-ons are slashed and with it flagship stores like David Jones and designers such as Oroton topple.
6. Men have grown up accepting that it is always ‘their fault’. Women will die arguing it is never theirs.
7. Female execs need to lose the focus on the ‘i’ dotting and ‘t’ crossing of undue diligence if their workplace is to be relaxed and efficient. Men just aren’t that fussed on the fussy.
8. Pettiness. Women are experts, the old-fashioned hetero male not so. Add to this ‘grudges’ which women can hold onto for a long time, way past the used-by date. Men forget them.
9. Next, manipulation. A female strength. The original strength from that ‘apple’ through to Lady Macbeth and beyond. Men are disarmingly gullible.
10. This brings up another female skill, ‘enticement’. What was the glance of an eye, the depth of the décolletage, the peep of an ankle is full, back nudity minus a thin thong disappearing between buttocks and the tiniest triangle over the pubis and it is OK. Like the female Bonobos displaying her reddened buttocks to attract a male. But if a poor bloke responds in kind by flashing any part of his genitalia or even grabbing such offered enticements he is in jail, he is outed and his career will have to be rebuilt.

That said there are women who manage with vision, oversight, commercial and professional intelligence and a required wry sense of humour their businesses, companies and even their countries as well as if not better than blokes. Maggie Thatcher tops the list along with Elizabeth I as well as Elizabeth II. There are many now on Boards or Benches that have adopted the best of male demeanour while adding their female skills to the whole equation.

As I won’t be here to witness the last of you blokes thanks for all the good times, the great dances, the parties, the arguments and advice, the laughter, which direction to take, the wry observations, the sex, the babies and for doing the heaving lifting, fixing the light bulbs and taking the rubbish out. You won’t be missed for long because without your Y gene we XXs will be following.

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