Perhaps even more interesting in the near-future is the prospect of creating sperm, through technological means, from female cells.

The research to do this seems to be close to succeeding - see e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11601-bone-stem-cells...

When researchers perfect this technique for humans, which they almost certainly will eventually, there will be no need for men at all. Women will be able to obtain lab-grown sperm from other women, and use this for fertilization.

All of these female-originating sperms will be X-chromosomed, and so in the much longer term we will see the eradication of the Y chromosome - and all the problems that arise from it.

> so in the much longer term we will see the eradication of the Y chromosome - and all the problems that arise from it.

Jeez what did my chromies ever do to you?

Colour blindness, famously. I'd have to google for any other Y-specific issues, don't know them off the top of my head.

It's amazing that we'd rather consider eugenics than change our social norms

Not the OP, but biology may be more amenable to change than social norms.

There is an interesting old article on Slate Star Codex touching this:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolo...

gawd this is so misogynistic, some women like having men around, for whatever reason. perhaps we can keep a few around for women into that.

The reason that military forces tend to be composed mostly of men is for two very practical reasons:

1. Men are on average physically stronger than women, and at their peak are physically stronger than is possible for any woman. This is more useful in a combat situation.

2. Women's bodies are specialized for pregnancy and childbirth. Without women providing this essential function, the next generation of humanity would not exist. By contrast, men are more disposable because all they do is provide the sperm.

A society where almost all women have been killed in battle cannot effectively repopulate, as there is a bottleneck of pregnancy: it is a long process that - excluding relatively rare cases of multiple births - requires one woman per newborn to conduct. A society where almost all men have been killed can repopulate much more rapidly, as it only takes a small number of men to fulfil the male reproductive role of providing sperm.

In fact the existence of sperm banks makes the widespread obliteration of males even less of a risk to the survival of humanity. Plus there is a promising subfield of stem cell research on growing viable sperm from female cells, which would remove the reliance upon males entirely.