Decline of the real man is no joke

Sunday, 7 December 2008

According to our report of the threat to the more testosterone-charged of the species, some of us may live to see the last of the real men. What a good idea, one thinks. Toothpaste tube caps always screwed back on. Garages used for cars, rather than snooker tables. No more women being embarrassed by their partners showing off on the beach. No more men of a certain age sucking in their stomachs at the swimming pool when a pretty new lifeguard wanders by. No more comb-overs. No more dirty socks on the floor. It will be goodbye to road rage, hello consideration.
Hang on, though. Do we really want a world where everyone is from Venus and no one is from Mars? Where Frenchmen no longer have any différence to vivre? A land where the man of the house is more Mrs Doubtfire than Mr Atlas? Where pubs no longer echo to loud-mouthed arguing over the merits of back fours and deep-lying strikers, but where, instead, hair-netted old men clack their knitting needles over glasses of lukewarm sherry? Boating accidents where the cry goes up: "Hermaphrodites and children first!" Editions of Top Gear fronted by Jemima Clarkson?
Still, at least there will be no more leading articles on the foibles of the sexes written by men. And most of these difficulties were foreseen and solved by the visionaries of the radical feminist movement in the 1970s. But how are we going to spend our way out of recession if every customer realises they are expected to pay only after they have packed their carrier bags, and only then starts to rummage for a purse? And can you imagine the queue for the toilets?
We may be joking, but this is also serious. As Geoffrey Lean, our environment editor, reports today, a host of common chemicals is feminising the males of every class of vertebrate animals, including humans. For some time scientists have been concerned about the "gender-bending" effects of some artificial chemicals, especially phthalates, used to soften plastics. The latest research, however, suggests that the scale of the problem is greater than anyone had realised.
The new report is a reminder that the challenge of environmental sustainability goes much wider than climate change, which is understandably front and centre of green concerns. The pressures on natural ecosystems of human industrial activity go far beyond the release of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air – which, as we reported last week, will not reverse naturally for hundreds of thousands of years. Wildlife programmes on television, once the representations of an innocent world free of humans, have become an unremitting campaign against human overpopulation. But these documentaries tend to focus on the threats to the viability of individual species. Gender-bending chemicals pose a threat to the very mechanism – sexual reproduction – that sustains almost all multi-cellular life forms.
As we report today, and have reported before, the British Government has a record of obstructing the more stringent controls proposed at EU level. This week, our representatives will lead opposition in Brussels to proposed new European controls on pesticides. Many of these chemicals have been found to have gender-bending effects, and it would make sense, on the precautionary principle, to restrict them where possible.
Britain is leading a small group of countries (the others are Ireland and Romania) trying to block a regulation that would phase out their use. Ministers say this would harm British agriculture, but the regulation would specifically allow British farmers to opt out if they had no practical alternative.
The Independent on Sunday does not want to fall into the trap that caught several Conservative MPs saying that a recession is a good thing. But the pause in the relentless growth of global industrial activity provides an opportunity to reconsider our priorities. And the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States next month provides some optimism that the most powerful nation in the world will be working to help the environmental cause.
The declining fertility of males is a phenomenon that produces a nervous reaction, especially among men. But the Government's refusal to adopt a precautionary approach to potentially gender-bending chemicals is no joke.