Name: Interplanetary matriarchy.
Appearance: Highly efficient.
Age: The everlasting future.
Matriarchy, eh? So you’re saying that women are destined to rule the world? I think that’s fairly obvious. And not just the world. Maybe the galaxy.
Ah well. I suppose men had a good run. At an agreed signal, women will just kill all the men in their sleep, I suppose? I expect that’s plan B. For now, I think they just intend to colonise space without taking any men along.
But how can they colonise anything without having children? Don’t they still need men in that department? Not exactly. All that the interplanetary matriarchy technically needs to get started is a supply of sperm.
Well, maybe men won’t give it to them! Maybe they will go on strike if necessary. I’m not sure that will make a difference. New research from Dexeus Women’s Health in Barcelona shows that once sperm is collected and frozen, it can survive in microgravity with no ill effects.
How did they find that out? They took lots of sperm samples up in a plane, and dived at the ground a few times to subject them to weightlessness. It opens up the possibility of creating “a human sperm bank outside Earth”, according to Dr Montserrat Boada.
So the matriarchy will just defrost what they need to impregnate themselves when required? That’s right. And they can always have a few sons if they need to top up the supply.
But who will put up shelves on Mars? And what if they have to park the spaceship in a narrow crater? You see? It’s the absence of that kind of sexist remark that will make an all-female space mission more cohesive and efficient.
What about the all-male missions in the old days? Were they not cohesive? Nasa looked into this years ago, according to Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space.
And? She told an audience in 2017 that the US commissioned a secret study into long-term space travel, which recommended that to stop people having sex, “the crew should be the same gender: all men or all women”. Apparently women were the better choice, because men would quarrel about who was in charge.
Men would definitely do that. It’s basically human history so far, isn’t it? A short summary, yes.
Although someone ought to tell Nasa that there might still be some sex on a women-only spacecraft. True. But at least there won’t be any pregnancies, which are a nuisance during a space flight.
Do say: “They can take our lives, but they will never take … our sperm!”
Don’t say: “Right lads, the women have gone. I’ll be king now, yeah?”
