Male Unbonding

If you've been following the international trivia columns in newspapers this book's contents would not come as a surprise. It is through such reports of abstruse studies/researches that Beale attempts to summarise the 'accident' of being male. Besides, for a book that seeks to tackle the whole shebang of maleness through the ages—not just centuries or even millennia—this one's surprisingly short on insight and argument. Beale makes a case for femaleness, highlighting through various lower animals' sexual practices how Eve's was the original sex. Because early unicellulars reproduced vegetatively begetting daughter (rather than son) cells; among contemporary life forms we have female aphids producing female aphids pregnant with female aphids. He then wonders why and how men came into being and stayed on top for so long without having really contributed to the greater genetic good. Having trashed their very reason to be, he laments over how maleness stands imperilled by the advent of cloning technology, feminising pollutants, drop in global sperm counts, lesbianism and custom-made wombs (for men). Sadly, throughout this engagingly-rendered account, Beale's journalistic aptitude lies wasted as he tries to play Darwin without having arrived at any real Galapagos.