Who needs men?

I was on the treadmill the other day and this blonde on the treadmill next to me kept going on about how women don’t need men. She wasn’t directing her sermon to me, of course, but to the incredibly attentive ponytailed thirty-something lass jogging to her right.

“Women don’t need men. I mean, what do we really need them for?” the blonde kept saying as she marched up the 15-degree incline, taking one angry man-hating step at a time.

“Seriously, they can’t really give us anything, so why do we need them?” she continued.

The ponytailed friend couldn’t offer any real response except for a bewildered look, the kind of look you’d have on your face if someone told you on your 40th birthday that you were adopted.

“I’ve got a good job. Everything I need, I buy. Since I’ve been single I go where I want, do what I want. I don’t need a man. Women don’t need men.”

Eventually ponytail woman came up with something, one use for men.

“What about babies?” she asked delicately.

“Hah!” Blondie scoffed. “You don’t even need men for that. All you need is a sample and the job’s done. No fuss, no mess. In fact that’s all you need from the man and the best part is you never have to even see him.”

Blonde girl presented quite a provocative argument. Sure, it was unrealistic to believe that all women would one day suddenly just stop finding men useful - but it’s certainly the case that many of them are starting to believe that men are redundant, obsolete.

It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d heard Blondie’s theory. Every day millions of women around the world have exactly the same discussion in coffee shops, malls, gyms and crèches. A revolution is quietly being plotted - and while it might not overthrow the global patriarchy altogether, it sure as hell can cause the formation of an ideological breakaway republic.

If you exclude reasons involving tradition and emotion, then objectively it is kind of difficult for us men to convincingly argue that we are still needed by women. Let’s look at the facts.

More and more women are earning more than men these days; they’re getting better grades at colleges and universities and are taking up positions of leadership in just about every sphere of life.

Twenty years ago there was no such thing as a stay-at-home husband. These days an increasing number of our brothers are cooking, cleaning and child-watching while their wives make the big bucks and call the shots.

It’s like there’s a role-reversal-nightmare-feminine apocalypse unfolding before our eyes. It’s like Planet of the Apes, except it’s not primates enslaving us, it’s women.

What about protection, you may ask. Don’t women need men to protect them?

Well, that’s not true any more either. Today, women fly combat missions in Iraq and kill sentry guards with Bowie knives in the middle of the night - so they certainly don’t need your scared, ADT-calling-ass.

Hell, they even have women wrestling professionally. It’s not unthinkable that they’ll eventually take over the world.

It won’t be through brute force but rather through cunning.

They don’t need to wipe us men out. We’ll do it for them - with a little encouragement.

Behind every leader with a nuclear arsenal is a woman whispering in his ear, “do it, push the button”.

So what happens in a world without men? What would the world be like if, hypothetically, the male species has obliterated itself in a nuclear holocaust?

Do women take over in a velvet revolution and rule the Earth for all eternity in peace and harmony?

Probably not. The peace would probably last for one afternoon before the bitchiness starts. The next thing you know, someone makes a remark about someone else’s radiation suit and then the world is plunged into war again.

Think about a female-dominated workplace or an all-girls school. These are two of the most hostile environments you can come across. When women find themselves in either of these two scenarios, they immediately arrange themselves into warring tribes and an extremely tense atmosphere becomes the norm.

The trouble is, unlike in a male gang-type environment where dividing lines and cliques are clear, the female clique system is chaotic, complicated and never constant.

Female alliances are so fickle and heavily characterised by back-stabbing and double crossing that it’s impossible for a woman to even know who her friends are. Women left to govern themselves is a recipe for disaster and makes handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban seem like a good idea.

You see, without a common enemy - men - women will be unable to co-exist peacefully. Women need lying and cheating men around to unite them in their common cause - hatred of men.

Once we’re out of the picture they will turn on each other. The problem is, being emotional, unrestrained and unaccountable, in destroying each other women will obliterate the entire planet in the process.

Men are here to prevent this terrible apocalypse. We are here to rule the Earth with our rational, reasoning minds and to keep it out of the hands of women.

Essentially there are no women without men and this, my friends, is precisely why we’re still relevant.