Why can't Hollywood just call men "men," especially in a story about a plague killing off all the men in the world?
FX on Hulu's series Y: The Last Man, is adapted from a twenty-year old graphic novel about a plague that kills off everyone with a Y chromosome, leaving only women. But into today's era of trans madness, the television adaptation is jumping through hoops to try to avoid too much reality about the biological sexes.
This week's episode, "Mann Hunt," on September 27, introduced a geneticist who may be able to clone Yorick (Ben Schnetzer), the only character with a Y chromosome who mysteriously survived the plague. But don't you dare presume that his chromosomes make him the only "man" who now exists. For that matter, do not presume that a disease that killed off anyone with a Y chromosome only killed "men."
Yorick is secretly in Boston in search of a brilliant Harvard geneticist, Dr. Allison Mann (Diana Bang). He is hoping she will be able to unlock the mystery of how he survived. When Dr. Mann meets him, she makes clear that she hopes to clone him. Much of the dialogue between Yorick and Dr. Mann revolves around the doctor explaining why the presence of a Y chromosome does not necessarily make someone a male. She brings up an exceedingly rare condition called 5-alpha reductase deficiency.
"They're deficient in an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase deficiency. Okay. It's the one that converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. Completely commonplace in a remote area of the Dominican Republic. Babies are born, assigned female, only to discover male sex organs that descend in puberty." Well, gosh, if there's a rare deficiency in the Dominican Republic then let's toss out the "gender binary" altogether!
Dr. Mann also brings up another unique condition called androgen insensitivity syndrome. "One in 20,000 genetically XY births are resistant to androgens, the male hormones, and so babies are born with internal testes but typically female external traits."
Needless to say, rare syndromes and deficiencies are not the same as someone deciding they're transgender and should in no way diminish the norm of biological manhood. Putting the culture through linguistic torture in the definitions of male and female is madness. Nonetheless, Dr. Mann rails against the notion that she is working to bring back "men."
Dr. Mann: Men love to ask women about children, don't they?
Yorick: Didn't you just say that there's no such thing as men and women?
Dr. Mann: Yeah, I didn't say there's no such thing. I said there's infinite variations. And the idea that I'll be working to bring back men is reductive and ridiculous and beyond stupid.
Yorick: Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. Look, I was just asking because you seem sad.
Dr. Mann: I seem sad?( scoffs ) Look around you. You understand how fucked we are, right?
Yorick: Yeah.
Dr. Mann: If I can figure out why you survived... and that's a big if... and I can somehow figure out a way to replicate it or replicate you... and again, that's an even bigger if... none of that even begins to scratch the surface of what we have lost. Which is not, and I cannot emphasize this enough... men. Not everyone with a Y chromosome is a man.
The left's obsessions are so exhausting. They cannot just adapt a popular graphic novel about the death of men and make it about losing...men. They have to go to the mat for the trans agenda instead, sacrificing drama for contrived dialogue.
When a woman spots Yorick hiding in a room in Boston, she does not jump for joy at the sight a lone male survivor. She assumes he's transgender, telling him, "My brother's in Jamaica Plain with a few guys. They've got testosterone, if you need it." Of course, her "brother" is really a sister who transitioned. The trans confusion happens a lot in this show.
This episode also continues its ongoing plot about a Meghan McCain knock-off character, Kimberly (Amber Tamblyn). The show portrays Kimberly, whose Republican president father perished in the plague, as a former McCain-style Republican. She is now turning villainously "right-wing."
The discovery of a lone conservative Republican female cabinet member, Regina (Jennifer Wigmore), in the rubble overseas leads Kimberly to plot against the female Democrat who took over after the men died. Regina is at first hesitant to join with Kimberly.
"When you were on The View, you called me strident," Regina tells her.
"None of that matters now. This place is a Rachel Maddow fever dream," Kimberly replies.
Later, Regina says, "Your father won in a landslide, and we still ended up with socialists in charge."
Bet on Kimberly and Regina growing more conspiratorial as the series progresses. In the eyes of Hollywood, there can be no good conservative women. And, apparently, there also cannot just be "men," plain and simple, in a script about "the last man."
