The headline comes from a post-nuclear novelty song by Ann-Margret. The scenario worked out well for Annie, as I recall. In real life, it’s more problematic. In a post on the state of play in the culture of death, the Pundette dusts off some remarks I made here in 2008 — on how, in India, China and many immigrant communities in the west, a “woman’s right to choose” is, in practice, the right to choose not to have any women:
By midcentury, when today’s millions of surplus boys will be entering middle age, India and China are expected to account for a combined 50 percent of global GDP. On present trends, they will be the most male-heavy societies that have ever existed. As I wrote in my book America Alone, unless China’s planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, what’s going to happen to all those excess men? As a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can’t get any action are not a recipe for societal stability. Unless the Japanese have invented amazingly lifelike sex robots by then (think Austin Powers’s “fembots”), we’re likely to be in a planet-wide rape epidemic and a world of globalized industrial-scale sex slavery.
But why take it from a fringe kook alarmist like me? Half a decade later, the respectable types at Time magazine are now on the case:
Growing evidence suggests that in countries like India and China, where the ratio of men to women is unnaturally high due to the selective abortion of female fetuses and neglect of girl children, the rates of violence towards women increase. “The sex ratio imbalance directly leads to more sex trafficking and bride buying,” says Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. A scarce resource is generally considered precious, but the lack of women also leaves many young men without marriage partners. In 2011, the number of cases of women raped rose by 9.2 percent; kidnapping and abductions of women were up 19.4 percent. “At this point, we’re talking correlation, not causation. More studies need to be done….[But] it is clear from historical cases and from studies looking at testosterone levels that a large proportion of unmarried men in the population is not a good thing,” says Hvistendahl.
Indeed. The dearth of chicks will be one of the most important and consequential features of the global scene a couple of decades on, and, as I write in After America, “a world full of male frustrations will always find a market for sex slavery.” If American feminists wished to raise awareness of the issues Time is now addressing, they might give it an arresting name like, oh, “the war on women.” But I gather that title’s taken.