The newly touted ability of parents to choose the sex of their child will almost certainly have a huge impact on society. It's interesting that Newsweek chose a couple seeking to have a girl for their case study. In the West, we believe — or we like to tell ourselves that we believe— that one sex is as good as the other, and that couples are as likely to use this capability to select a girl as a boy. Although I note that sex selection is banned in Europe, perhaps because the leaders there suspect that, in the eyes of many, all babies are (still) not created equal.
Where this development is really going to hit home, however, is Asia, where few uphold any pretense of believing that a girl is as good as a boy. China's one-child policy has led to mass numbers of abandoned baby girls (many of whom are adopted in the West) and a return to the ancient practice of gender selection through infanticide — which was strongly discouraged, but never fully eliminated during the early years of the Communist Regime The impact of these crude forms of gender selection is shocking:
[In] September 1997, the World Health Organization's Regional Committee for the Western Pacific issued a report claiming that "more than 50 million women were estimated to be 'missing' in China because of the institutionalized killing and neglect of girls due to Beijing's population control program that limits parents to one child." (See Joseph Farah, "Cover-up of China's gender-cide", Western Journalism Center/FreeRepublic, September 29, 1997.) Farah referred to the gendercide as "the biggest single holocaust in human history."
And China is hardly alone. The report linked above also cites widespread infanticide in India as well as rampant use of abortion to prevented unwanted (female) children. A while back, FuturePundit noted that in Taiwan, abortion has skewed the demographics of childbirth such that three boys are now born for every two girls.
With its $18,000 price tag, it's unlikely that the procedure outlined in the Newsweek story (linked above) will have much of a role to play in rural China or India any time soon. But we may see simplified, less expensive versions of the procedure available in developed areas in the region within a decade or so, and some kind of risky "bootleg" version universally available sometime thereafter.
In such a scenario, we can look forward to a sharp drop in child killing and abandonment in these areas. But the demographic woes will only be exacerbated. I have to wonder how the Chinese government will repond to the introduction of such technology. On the one hand, it would support the one-child policy and help eliminate the dreadful work-arounds that have developed to ensure male offspring. On the other hand, it would lead to a highly skewed sexual demographic. What would a society that was 70-80% men be like? Would it be stable? Efficient? Brutal? Way gay? Nobody knows; it's never been tried.
One thing is for sure. China's population growth problem would be solved. In fact, a new population difficulty would probably emerge: rapid decline.
Via KurzweilAI.net
While an 80% male population may never have been tried in a large geographic area, men have been confined in prisons, military settings and the like.
In prisons the result is not generally efficient or stable but brutal and "way gay" - aggressively so. The more disciplined the facility, the closer it comes to the military model - less gay, less brutal (though neither is ever completely abolished) and more stable and efficient.
One reason that society has long encouraged marriage is the civilizing influence a wife has on a husband - "All my Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down." Married guys stop living fast and hard and start contributing to society.
I'll bet this procedure becomes quite popular when the cost falls to about $5,000.
Posted by: stg at January 20, 2004 03:27 PMI read your posting with interest because of the humanitarian work I do in China with orphans. You are correct that a gender bias has led the abandonment of hundreds of thousands of baby girls in China. China officials put the number in the orphanage system at close to 1.5 million. These children live meager lives, with little access to health care of nutrition, all because they happened to have the "misfortune" of being born female.
I do believe, however, that China has begun to realize the extent of their gender imbalance. Last August, they passed a law making the use of sonograms for sex determination illegal. What remains to be seen is whether that will simply increase the number of little girls who are abandoned at birth. They have also recently passed a revision to the one child policy in some areas which allows the family to try for a second child (a son) if their first is a girl.
I think it is far too easy to simply say that "China prefers males". All of the village people I have talked with have told me that they would love to have a daughter, also, but because of population policies, they are unable to have both. The Chinese people I have met LOVE their children, but because of ancestral beliefs and ancient practices, only a son can fully honor his parents. This is a centuries old belief that will be hard to change quickly. In one village I visited, there were 117 school children who were boys and only 26 girls.
Unfortunately, this ancient belief also means there are thousands of orphanages filled with beautiful little girls who were abandoned solely for being female. These children came into the world only to be left behind. They are my passion and my calling. The Chinese government has asked me to help them start a national Orphan Relief Fund for these kids, and I have spent my last year working night and day to help make it happen. Being born a girl in China is strike one, but being an orphan usually means strike two and three combined. It is my sincerest wish that through this new fund, we can show the world how very much these little girls can contribute to the world if only given a chance.
Amy Eldridge
Director, Love Without Boundaries
http://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com
EVERY child counts
I seem to recall hearing that alpha males (ie, the dominant males of society) are very conservative. Ie, they're at the top of society and don't have a good reason to disrupt the structure. On the other hand, the lower rung males are much more likely to embrace technologies or beliefs that disrupt society because that gives them a crack at the top.
China and other such nations will experience problems with high proportions of males. That means something will happen whether it be social upheaval, massive social control, importing lots of females (or perhaps increasing the birth rate of females) to address the imbalance, or perhaps the economy or weird social mores will provide an outlet. Something will happen.