Unmanned Craft

‘IT has started. Fellow men (and, in this instance, we mean men), our role here on Earth is gradually but inexorably being phased out.

Another redundant man

The Independent reports that Suzi Leather, head of Britain’s fertility regulator (Ofsperm?), is calling for a revolution in the law governing IVF treatment to end the requirement that women must find a man to act as father for her child.

‘It would give the green light to single women and lesbians to seek treatment on equal terms with heterosexual couples,’ the paper says.

‘But the downgrading of the father’s role in child-rearing is likely to be portrayed as an attack on the traditional family.’

Anorak obviously welcomes any move that will send the Daily Mail into an apoplectic rage, but we worry that this may be a step too far.

Step-ladders and better kitchen design have already made men’s role in getting things down off high shelves largely redundant. There are devices to loosen those hard-to-get-off jar tops.

Contraptions ranging from The Rabbit to The Lightest Touch, a female orgasmatron that is apparently taking the United States by storm, have replaced the male’s drunken fumblings in bed.

And now it seems we are not really needed in the procreation process.

All of which would be fine if we could take refuge in a pink gin and the company of similarly disenfranchised members of the unwanted sex in the bar of the local golf club.

But even that is no longer safe, with the Telegraph reporting on how the cracks are starting to appear at that bastion of chauvinism, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews.

In a move timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the world’s most famous golf club, women will be allowed to sit on any of the club’s three rule-making committees.

Apparently, they do have a woman already on one rules committee, but – you will be relieved to learn – she can’t vote.

Like old-fashioned methods of procreation, it was an arrangement that has served us all well for hundreds of years…’

Posted: 21st, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink