    21

    ince

    ssant raids by wandering bachelors and rival groups, the females

    could not continue together.

    But if you're a man, don't take too much comfort from this fact.

    You're still far less necessary than you think.  In a vast variety of

    species, the social order is held together entirely by the female.

    Elephants provide a good example.  The females travel together in a

    close-knit group, operating under the leadership of a massive Amazon

    who settles disputes and protects the troop with her fierce charges.

    The unfortunate male, on the other hand, is excluded during most of

    the year from polite society.   He wanders the forests, a gloomy,

    solitary brute, until that brief period when he is needed for sexual

    purposes.  Then, for a short time, he and his messy tendency to battle

    his brethren are tolerated by the ladies...but barely.

    There's reason to believe that males are becoming more

    disposable in modern American society than ever before.  The age of

    information is upon us.  Only one hundred years ago, the vast majority

    of human beings eked out a living by physical labor. That was true

    even as late as the 1940s. By 1956, it had changed. For the first time the

    majority of American workers did no physical labor at all.   Most men

    and women had moved from  factories to offices, where they pushed

    paper, made decisions, held long meetings, read reports, and placed

    phone calls. Their job was gathering information, weighing it, and

    spreading it to each other.32

    In the mid-1800's when the railroads were built, John Henry was

    a mighty man who drove cold steel through the heart of a mountain,

    making his hammer ring. Joanna Henry would have had a much

    harder time of it.  In the information age, men no longer have the edge.

    Women's brains are every bit as quick as men's.

    Men were disturbingly expendable in the era of the Arab

    propped up by his spear.  But today they are more disposable than

    ever. If the women's movement were to decide that the night had come

    when all the ladies of the world should walk quietly into the bedroom,

    a butcher knife in hand, and eliminate a snoring burden who insisted

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