No Men Beyond This Point Page #3

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referred to as a strike.

But it wasn't

an organized event.

My mother wasn't even aware that other

women were doing the same thing.

One night, she just decided

that she'd had enough.

My father and brother and I

were in the dining room

waiting for

dinner to be served.

And I noticed she

wasn't in the kitchen.

And it didn't seem like

any food was being prepared.

Then she appeared with a coat on and

her purse in her hand and said...

I'm going out.

I don't know

when I'll be back.

If you want dinner, you'll

have to make it yourselves.

I think there's some

ground beef in the freezer.

And it was really

out of character for her

to be doing

something like that.

But it wasn't until I turned and

saw the look on my father's face

that I realized that something

significant was happening.

I have to admit, I was impressed that

he was able to swallow his pride

and ask me

to take him back.

But then I suddenly

had this realization

that I had absolutely

no use for him in my life.

I love

everything Iris paints.

I always have.

But I'm biased,

because we're so close.

And when you

really like someone,

you tend to like

everything they do.

Am I as crazy about

this man phase she's been in?

Maybe not.

But they're still

beautiful paintings.

I don't think people

acknowledge the issue enough.

I mean, most don't

acknowledge it at all.

But manlessness is something

that really concerns me,

which, I guess, is why I've been making

it such a part of my work lately.

Because I want to

keep the issue alive.

I guess it's my way of making

people confront what's going on.

The paintings don't sell nearly

as well as my other pieces.

Actually,

they don't sell at all.

Nobody wants a picture of a man

hanging over their fireplace.

It isn't Andrew's age

and what that represents.

He just...

He has this way

about him that I like.

I notice her staring at him a

lot, but it kind of makes sense.

If you're gonna spend all

that time painting someone,

you should probably

really like looking at them.

You think I'm

obsessed with him.

I'm not.

It's just part

of my process.

It doesn't matter

what my subject is.

It's good.

Are you being serious?

Yeah, it's good.

And it's not like there's a lot of

other men around for me to paint.

And he does live with us.

Here is it.

I did it for art class...

It's not perfect

or anything.

I wasn't concerned

with likeness so much.

I was more

interested in his body,

his muscles,

especially in his arms.

I really like his arms.

My grandma used to say

about my grandfather

that it wasn't his looks

or even his personality that

caught her attention at first,

it was his spirit.

And that's what I'm trying

to capture in my paintings,

Andrew's spirit.

And maybe, by extension, the

spirit that exists in all men.

As the number of fatherless

pregnancy claims continued to rise,

we discovered that the number

of normal pregnancies,

in which a man impregnated

a woman, was plummeting.

In fact, by the end of 1957,

three out of four babies born

were coming from

mothers claiming

to have had

a fatherless impregnation.

What was even

more alarming, though,

was the fact that every one of those

mothers gave birth to a girl.

Parthenogenesis.

It's the reason

why we get called.

You know,

instead of how it used to be

when you needed to be

with a man to get pregnant.

What? It's true.

That's disgusting.

Parthenogenesis is a form

of asexual reproduction

in which an egg is the sole

source of genetic material

for the creation of an embryo.

But this mode of reproduction

was only known to occur

with insects and

certain types of reptiles.

With mammals, however,

an embryo could only develop if the

egg had been fertilized by a male,

bringing together the genetic

components that make life possible.

But with parthenogenesis, since

all the necessary components

needed for reproduction

are produced by the egg,

sperm are rendered obsolete.

Not only that,

but we discovered

the sperm could no longer

penetrate the wall of the egg.

It was producing a new protein

that hardened the membrane.

The sperm were

literally being shut out.

Even when a sperm was injected

into the egg artificially,

it was almost immediately

rendered inert.

When you take sperm out of

the biological equation,

there are no longer

any Y chromosomes

being introduced

into the embryonic process.

So every embryo has two X chromosomes

and every child is female.

And thus,

no more males.

It wasn't hard for them to figure

out that I was the last one.

I was actually the only boy born

that year in the entire world.

But they didn't make it official

until a few years later,

when they were sure that there

wasn't any more of us coming.

When I started school,

I got a lot of attention.

I was kind of

like the class pet.

Not in a bad way.

It wasn't like I was being

kept in a cage like Mr. Chips.

He was

the actual class pet.

High school was

more of a challenge.

By that point, girls were so

used to not having boys around

that the idea of being attracted to

one was completely alien to them.

Don't get me wrong,

there were some crooked girls,

more than there

are now, I'm sure.

But they weren't

accepted by the other girls.

But neither was I,

so we got along just fine.

It really wasn't until

I finished high school

that I realized how different

things were going to be for me,

compared to

the girls I graduated with.

That's when it

finally dawned on me that

I wasn't gonna have the same

opportunities that they were going to.

They were going

down one road

and I was going down another.

I, Eleanor Marie Hamilton,

do solemnly swear...

That I

will faithfully execute...

That I will

faithfully execute...

The office of the President

of the United States.

The office of the President

of the United States.

And with the best

of my ability...

If you had told someone

in the early 1960s

that a woman would be the next

President of the United States,

they wouldn't

have believed you.

It may seem ridiculous now,

but at that time,

people thought they'd have to wait

10, or possibly even 15 years,

before that would happen.

The changes weren't that

drastic, at least not at first.

It's not like they came out

and declared war on men

or anything like that.

But I don't think it

would be a stretch to say

that there was

an element of payback

in their governing agenda.

We very much appreciate

the historical contribution

that men have made

to our civilization.

But the facts are the facts.

Women make up 62% of the

population. And that...

Actually, Senator,

it's 64% now.

Right.

And that ratio needs to be represented

in all levels of society.

But isn't your

worker replacement program

a little harsh?

These statistics...

Worker assessment program.

We only allow male

employees to be replaced

if, after a very

thorough assessment,

they are deemed

to be less capable

than an equally

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