Y: The Last Man finale (#60)
- Thread starter firehawk12
- Start date
Sorry to interrupt, because I don't quite know this forum or topic, but I felt I must say something:
I hate to break it to you, but women do need men. And men need women. And men need other men. And women need other women. And, most importantly, every life is precious in and of itself, whether other people feel they need it or not. The impression I got from "Y:The Last Man" was that, typical of Human culture, and in keeping with primitive notions of gender, men are evaluated only in terms of whether they are needed, that is, what they do for others, how they serve, provide for and socially relate to others, mostly women. Males may be expendable and disposable biologically, but to treat them that way in a civilized era is inexcusable.
To suggest half the global population is not needed is a very dangerous path to be headed down. To portray an entire sex as "not being needed" is one of the most worrying things I've heard recently. Wether women need men should not be the issue anyway. In the modern era, the worth of a man should no longer be based on whether he provides for/protects women. "Y:The Last Man" seems to have decided that if women no longer require men to provide for/protect them, then males can all just die, because what else are they good for?
Maybe you feel my views here are extreme, but I see this series as another worrying reinforcement of our people's view of the disposable male, whose only worth is taken from how he serves others, never from any concept of himself as a unique being.
"Women need us for two reasons: One, to have something to complain about. Two, because you can't take a battery home to meet your mother."
-Al Bundy.
It doesn't look the same. For one thing, the male in the OL episode (David Keith's character) isn't genetically engineered, just woken up from cryosleep (so he doesn't go looking for the scientist who created him, since here there is no such person). And I'm not aware of any other male characters who appear in the episode.
*sigh*. I always appreciate humour, but I'm trying to make a serious point here. "Y:The Last Man" was a very disturbing tale, despite on the surface appearing to be quite thoughtful and well-constructed. It suggested "if women don't need men to provide for them/protect them/lead them in the traditional way, then men can all die and it won't, in the long run, matter". It was portraying the male as only to be considered in how he relates to the female, not having any inherent worth in himself. As someone who has dedicated himself to drawing attention to the manner in which males- particularly young ones- are and have always been marginalized and dismissed, I was disturbed by this series. The problem was its clearly feminist influence, and the misleading and ill-considered interpretation of gender issues that a feminist stance always leads to. Gender is a massive issue to me, one I've dedicated much thought and study too. From the start, the flaws and irredeemable mistakes in feminist theory forced me to develop a new ideology, one arrived at through deconstruction of feminism's mistakes. "Y:The Last Man" simply couldn't escape those mistakes, and such a destabilized and primitive understanding of gender left the series morally troublesome.
I sincerely apologise for my overtly political ranting, here. I thought it was necessary to make my point.
No, no I absolutely agree. It's kind of a point I made earlier and why I prefer The Outer Limits episode that Y:The Last Man is very similar to. Y: The Last Man, thematically, is a 60's Gloria Steinem rant run amok. It's intellectual pornography for Women's Studies majors. The Outer Limits episode was a complete satire, parody, and condemnation of everything Y:The Last Man tries to argue for. Equality is one thing. Social dominance is another, and that's what radical feminists usually preach. Luckily most of them have been socially maligned and have been confined to college campuses so they can't undercut the intentions of real feminists any more. I'm not an expert on this subject, nor will I ever claim to be. But I've met some awesome feminists(dated a few too) and I've met some scary, radical feminists(ironically dated a few of them as well).
As far as Brian K. Vaughn goes, I'm not entirely sure that this man has a dick. Considering he subscribes to this nonsense. He reminds me of a Married with Children episode in which Jerry Springer has his own show called "The Masculine Feminist" and he constantly berrates men for being evil oppressors. It's a tragic guilt complex that some men have, and Brian K. Vaughn appears to be one of them.
It's sad yes. I personally oppose all feminism on an intellectual level, as I feel my ideology on gender is more correct than theirs. With many feminists, of course, this is simply a healthy ideological disagreement. Sadly, the field has become dominated by extremist feminists who drown out the voices of the many reasonable scholars and theorists I would enjoy discussing gender issues with. I suppose all ideologies eventually explode into extremism, however. All social religions and scholarly theories succumb to the unreasonable eventually.
I think you're overreacting to a highly stylized fantasy scenario. But let's take it at face value for debate's sake...
Hardly anyone in the series likes the fact that the gendercide happened, and those that do are portrayed as fanatical extremists. So your charge that the series completely devalues males is, I think, a faulty reading.
Furthermore, the story is an adventure, focused upon a small number of people. We see fairly little of the trauma that afflicted most women after the plague, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen and wreak havoc, only that it wasn't terribly important to the story.
Also, the human spirit is amazingly resilient. If the plague were to occur, I think women would find a way to survive, more so than if the tables were reversed.
Finally, the societies are clearly shown as actively trying to bring back males as quickly as their science will allow. That isn't a "disposable" treatment of the gender; it is in fact its opposite.
Again, my apologies for the politics here!
I didn't say the "gendercide" was portrayed as a good thing. Of course it isn't. However, the message of the story is clearly "Women do not need men". To suggest that anyone is "not needed", let alone half the species, is an extremely worrying idea. The focus of the story, I would argue, was "do women need men to function?" This should be irrelevant. Despite what human culture teaches, it is not the natural duty of men to dedicate themselves to providing for, protecting or leading women. A man's life should be evaluated on its own terms, not on whether women decide they need him. Consider "single mothers by choice" and the thorny issues of child support and child custody- in America particularly- and you'll see Western culture still encourages the understanding that a man's wants and needs are irrelevant, only if the woman needs him or not.
This is not in dispute. My issue is with the overall tone and implications of the fiction, not how it tells a story.
If an entire sex were, somehow, to die off, I also believe the other would find a way to survive. I do not see your logic in suggesting women would find it easier, though. After all, in most cultures women are still protected/provided for/led by men. It will take time, surely, for them to adapt to performing the provider-protector role themselves. Men are already conditioned to survive, because keeping family and community safe and provided for is what all cultures condition males in to from birth. With the pressures of providing for women gone, and being already inclined to the role of surviver and builder, what makes you think men won't find it easier? This isn't a competition, of course, merely curiousity on my part.
It is a disposable treatment. As always, the implication is that large numbers of males can die, and it doesn't matter in the long run. Just because the story suggests males as a sex aren't completely disposable, doesn't mean it isn't echoing the many historical and modern incidences in which mass slaughter of males is shrugged off and dismissed. Far too many men- young men and adolescent boys in particular- have been and are murdered casually due to our long-standing concepts of male disposability. This isn't simply less developed countries. Forced military drafts and militiaristic conditioning slaughtered millions of Western young men in this century alone. Any story suggesting that society is still a pretty nice place 60 years after every male dies, regardless of women's ability to make it so, which as I said I don't disagree with, is...well, if people were sensitive to this issue, it would be a very large wallbanger.
I didn't say the "gendercide" was portrayed as a good thing. Of course it isn't. However, the message of the story is clearly "Women do not need men". To suggest that anyone is "not needed", let alone half the species, is an extremely worrying idea. The focus of the story, I would argue, was "do women need men to function?" This should be irrelevant. Despite what human culture teaches, it is not the natural duty of men to dedicate themselves to providing for, protecting or leading women. A man's life should be evaluated on its own terms, not on whether women decide they need him. Consider "single mothers by choice" and the thorny issues of child support and child custody- in America particularly- and you'll see Western culture still encourages the understanding that a man's wants and needs are irrelevant, only if the woman needs him or not.
This is not in dispute. My issue is with the overall tone and implications of the fiction, not how it tells a story.
If an entire sex were, somehow, to die off, I also believe the other would find a way to survive. I do not see your logic in suggesting women would find it easier, though. After all, in most cultures women are still protected/provided for/led by men. It will take time, surely, for them to adapt to performing the provider-protector role themselves. Men are already conditioned to survive, because keeping family and community safe and provided for is what all cultures condition males in to from birth. With the pressures of providing for women gone, and being already inclined to the role of surviver and builder, what makes you think men won't find it easier? This isn't a competition, of course, merely curiousity on my part.
It is a disposable treatment. As always, the implication is that large numbers of males can die, and it doesn't matter in the long run. Just because the story suggests males as a sex aren't completely disposable, doesn't mean it isn't echoing the many historical and modern incidences in which mass slaughter of males is shrugged off and dismissed. Far too many men- young men and adolescent boys in particular- have been and are murdered casually due to our long-standing concepts of male disposability. This isn't simply less developed countries. Forced military drafts and militiaristic conditioning slaughtered millions of Western young men in this century alone. Any story suggesting that society is still a pretty nice place 60 years after every male dies, regardless of women's ability to make it so, which as I said I don't disagree with, is...well, if people were sensitive to this issue, it would be a very large wallbanger.
No need to apologize for detailed discussion of an artwork's tone and themes! 
By your logic, do you find all-female universities offensive? I myself have little opinion on them either way.
Well, I'm not sure one can bring too much logic into such a theoretical scenario; that remark was just my personal opinion. Considering male suicide rates (higher than females), aggressive tendencies and macho, anti-homosexual cultures, I think males would, by and large, fare worse than females. But I don't claim any real evidence on it.
Not sure I see your logic here. Millions of young men were slaughtered in the world wars, but I think it's pretty clear that the societies they left behind became more peaceful due to dealing with the trauma of their deaths. Are you suggesting that without males, females would devolve into complete barbarism, looting and killing willy-nilly? My personal opinion is that Vaugh's scenario is more likely.
Well, we only see glimpses of one city, and a very powerful person's house at that. Besides, 60 years is a long time in which to heal (and, through death, forget) the trauma of the plague.
By your logic, do you find all-female universities offensive? I myself have little opinion on them either way.
No need to apologize for detailed discussion of an artwork's tone and themes!
Well, I'm not sure one can bring too much logic into such a theoretical scenario; that remark was just my personal opinion. Considering male suicide rates (higher than females), aggressive tendencies and macho, anti-homosexual cultures, I think males would, by and large, fare worse than females. But I don't claim any real evidence on it.
Not sure I see your logic here. Millions of young men were slaughtered in the world wars, but I think it's pretty clear that the societies they left behind became more peaceful due to dealing with the trauma of their deaths. Are you suggesting that without males, females would devolve into complete barbarism, looting and killing willy-nilly? My personal opinion is that Vaugh's scenario is more likely.
Well, forgetting is exactly the problem. It should never be forgotten. In reply to your comments above, I believe Western society has completely forgotten the lessons it learnt in the world wars and later conflicts about treatment of and attitudes towards young males. The rise of modern feminism not long afterwards twisted our collective psychology back to a conservative and reactionary "women are victims, men have it great" attitude. Remember all the women who campaigned for better treatment for young men and boys, and protested the drafts, at the cost of their own imprisonment or exile in many cases? I'm guessing not; no-one today ever draws attention to them, because the idea of women campaigning for and helping men goes against the "male has a superior position and not vulnerable, female is vulnerable and is in an inferior position" ideology that both traditional social values and feminism promote.
No, I'm not saying females without males would "descend into barbarism", or vice versa. I don't see where you got that idea from.
Well, I find segregation of the sexes to be a big problem, yes. Keeping the sexes apart encourages harmful divisions and prejudice. I was always raised and educated among both sexes and have more female friends than male ones. I'm not sure my country has single-sex universities though...
As for hypothetical all-female societies, which I know you weren't discussing but I'll talk about because in "Y: The Last Man" Earth becomes this by default: I do find them offensive, for the reason that male disposability is a massively problematic element of the human cultural psychology, one I've dedicated myself to addressing. The offense has nothing to do with women, it's in people's attitude to males. An all-female society is offensive not for what it is, as such, but for what it implies and how those implications relate to our culture and history.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
Actually, no, Dr. M's theory makes no sense whatsoever. Let's examine it: according to him, because he created a-sexual procreation, all males could die off because they weren't needed, and therefor, through the quantum mechanical bio field, did:
1. Even if this were true for humans, it most certainly is not true for animals, so why would animal males die as well? And why not fish males? Indeed, as animals don't have the technological capability, and the remaining humanity doesn't have the resources to perform the artificial a-sexual procreation on all species; animal males would most certainly still be needed.
2. If all males were so obsolete, how come new males were created in those species that could change gender?
3. A technological means to a-sexual recreation would have no effect on the biological system; no changes were made to it, it was simply sexual recreation with an artificially fertilized egg.
4. He was NOT the one who first produced (technological) a-sexual procreation. We already did it with sheep and other animals before him - if the effect crosses species boundaries, all male sheep and then all males should have died off when Dolly was born. Every artificially inseminated egg implanted in a female is essentially performed exactly the same way as the cloning process; the effect should have occurred long before his successful clone.
5. Why is it birth that triggers the effect? As conception is a biological-chemical process, if anything in the process would have produced the effect, it would have been the viable insertion of his daughter's DNA in the egg of his assistant/lover.
6. Us humans aren't the first who successfully created a-sexual procreation. There are quite a few animals, plants and simpler organisms that reproduce a-sexually. So why didn't all males die out long ago? In fact, a-sexual reproduction existed BEFORE sexual reproduction, so how come males developed in the first place?
Quite frankly I think the effect was triggered artificially by his assistant. Think about it; she's in love with him, completely cyphers herself away for him, gave up her career for him and instead of having her own child with him, being the breeder for the recreation of his daughter with his first lover, so he can "do it right" the second time around. If finally she realized he wasn't ever going to make a real child with her, and he's just using her for his own selfish desires, she might very well have snapped, and worked in secret on a way to use the bio-quantum field to kill all males.
Sounds a lot more plausible to me than the doctor's theory.
As for the male/female worth/not worth, I completely agree with Deranged Nasat.
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^^ Maybe the morphic resonance only affected mammals because of their genetic similarity. And Vaugh did say that he thought the plague explanation was given in the text, though we're not sure which one is correct.
Deranged Nasat, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. You think females would survive such a gendercide, and wouldn't devolve into barbarism, but you don't think they'd have a society functioning as well as the one we glimpsed, either? What would you like to see?
Deranged Nasat, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. You think females would survive such a gendercide, and wouldn't devolve into barbarism, but you don't think they'd have a society functioning as well as the one we glimpsed, either? What would you like to see?
I apologise for not being clear. It's not that I don't think it was realistic to have society back up and running in 60 years. If an entire sex were to somehow die, I fully expect the other to have restored society in 60 years. It's not the fact the women's society functioned, it's that the story happened at all. My issue with this story is not its detail but its overall implication and tone. It is quite simply that the cultural tendency towards viewing males as disposable means that any story suggesting large numbers of males can die and yet society can get on with it as if they never existed is...well, how would a Jew in the 1950s react to a story suggesting all Jews can die and society just gets on with it and restores a functioning, "happy" society without them? To those to whom the treatment of young males historically and in many nations today is a major issue, the very idea of such a story is a wallbanger. Of course, I'm quite aware this seems extreme, but I hope you understand why I personally, in my subjective analysis, condemn stories such as this. In the cultural/political climate of our world, it's simply too disturbing to see such a conclusion given the events of the story, at least to those to whom this issue is a big one.
As always, I apologise if my politics is coming across too strongly!
I hope this clarifies my issues with "Y: The Last Man".
Hmm... although I understand your objection to gendercide scenarios, Nasat, I'm not sure Y-The Last Man argues for them as strongly as you believe. I haven't read through the series lately, but Y-TLM tended towards a male-centric female world. Yorick was constantly pursued by the Daughters of the Amazon, the media, and the Israeli army not because he was good at anything or because he had some crucial piece of information, but simply because was was a man. Beth is willing to take him back towards the end because he is, to borrow Rowling's words, the boy who lived. Even in the final issue, our sympathies are with clone Yorick, who can't get into school because he's got man parts, and not the world at large. Through the series as a whole, we root for Yorick, a lovable slacker whose fame comes from the fact he's a man.
I would need to read the series again (not a bad idea, in my book) to find more examples, but I believe they're lurking within. It's a bizarre fantasy, now that you raise that point, but it is not one that buys thoroughly into the tropes of gender wipeouts.
I would need to read the series again (not a bad idea, in my book) to find more examples, but I believe they're lurking within. It's a bizarre fantasy, now that you raise that point, but it is not one that buys thoroughly into the tropes of gender wipeouts.
I now understand your position, but it seems to me that you're making a rather incredible associative leap regarding an inherently fantastical work of fiction. I found the series fascinating, and do not believe that my interest in it condones any form anti-male discrimination.
With respect, your concerns over "wallbanging" issues seems inherently censorial, though I don't question your support for the freedom of speech. In any case, I found this series to be far more substantive and insightful than lots of underthought fiction that didn't have a similarly high-concept hook.
With respect, your concerns over "wallbanging" issues seems inherently censorial, though I don't question your support for the freedom of speech. In any case, I found this series to be far more substantive and insightful than lots of underthought fiction that didn't have a similarly high-concept hook.
I now understand your position, but it seems to me that you're making a rather incredible associative leap regarding an inherently fantastical work of fiction. I found the series fascinating, and do not believe that my interest in it condones any form anti-male discrimination.
With respect, your concerns over "wallbanging" issues seems inherently censorial, though I don't question your support for the freedom of speech. In any case, I found this series to be far more substantive and insightful than lots of underthought fiction that didn't have a similarly high-concept hook.
I don't believe interest in it condones discrimination, either. I also don't believe in the slightest it condoned any discriminition, although its views on gender were clearly biased towards feminist ideology and rather unbalanced as a result. It had no agenda, nor was it deliberately condoning anything, as far as I can tell.
I'm most certainly not accusing it or its fans of being anti-male, simply suggesting that it can't help but convey unfortunate implications by default, due to its subject matter. It hasn't done anything wrong, so to speak. It was certainly not my intention to be censorial, and I apologise if I came across too strongly.
I say wipe out ALL biological creatures and put Skynet in charge. Only then will earth finally have a ROBOTOPIA!
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