Letters to the Editor
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The lesbians are going to strap our sons to rocks to be eaten by eagles!
I don't think manless reproduction is going to get us out of the picture that easily, for one thing, we wouldn't go down with out a fight. Another reason is that in order for this kind of paranoia to work, it would imply that all women would just become lesbians after they realized they didn't need men anymore. No matter what James Dobson and his brood may tell you, that's not going to happen.
I must confess, I've never seen porn where the guy blows his load into a cup and the woman (women?) drinks it. I've seen food porn, (well, not actually watched it but I know of it) where the guy ejaculates on a sandwhich or something and then the woman eats it. I don't really think that would do it for me, though.
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blows his load into a cup
It's usually a champaign glass. *laughs*
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Totally missing the point
In this article, in response to the question of why there's been "such a sluggish attempt to create a male contraceptive," the response was that "anything that would have the consequence of men's fertility being potentially damaged for any period of time is distasteful to men. I think that has to do with this notion of sperm competition and with the notion that women are unpredictable and untrustworthy."
What nonsense. How about the obvious biological reason? The fundamental flaw in male contraceptives is the same as the Star Wars defense system: you can't guarantee it stops 'em all. Millions of sperm are harder to stop than one or two eggs at a time. If there was a good one, I'd use it.
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Only a woman's studies major
"[Having] semen available in a marketplace radically changes the definitions of paternity, paternalism and fatherhood, and the fatherhood rights movement is reacting to that. It's finding that incredibly threatening to their ability to maintain notions about the heterosexual-male-dominated family."
Holy crap! Only a woman studies major could come up with this shit. About the only thing the fathers rights movement is concerned with here is the inevitable attempts to extract child support from sperm donors (while minimalizing their parental rights, of course.)
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It's what's in the stuff that counts.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the book, just the article.
It's fascinating to me that Moore works so incredibly hard to discuss sperm as if it were an industrial product, and completely disregards the fact that it contains the DNA of a man. It's not particularly 'threatening' to me that it can be bought and sold, separated from the body of the man who produced it, used in IVF, etc...because that doesn't succeed in de-personalizing it to the extent that she thinks it does. It still produces a child that gets half its DNA from the man that produced it. It strikes me that she's working very hard to remove him from the equation in her own mind...and it doesn't succeed, because in the end, the kid grows up to have hints of her father in her voice, in her eyes, in her risk of certain cancers....the sperm wasn't just a product, no matter how many books by women's studies professors contended that it was.
likewise, I don't find the prospect of "sperm" grown from the bone marrow cells of women all that threatening. It doesn't put an end to masculinity in any significant way. It's great that it enables two women to have a child together without having to use the DNA of only one of them and of one man who is not part of the couple...but that won't suddenly put and end to fatherhood or the positives that fathers bring into their children's lives, nor the hell they can create. Maybe, in the end, it will help us shift our focus from these gender roles that Moore is ultimately so obsessed with.
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absurd
"[Having] semen available in a marketplace radically changes the definitions of paternity, paternalism and fatherhood, and the fatherhood rights movement is reacting to that. It's finding that incredibly threatening to their ability to maintain notions about the heterosexual-male-dominated family."
Why does Ms. Moore automatically skip to the idea that men want to DOMINATE the family? The first concern, for men who want to be fathers, is being part of the family at all. If sperm is a purchasable commodity, women can have children without involving the sperm donor -- which is naturally threatening to those men who WANT to be involved. If the shoe were on the other foot -- if men could buy eggs and grow babies -- I have no doubt she'd be much more sympathetic to the motherhood rights movement.
She seems to have trouble realizing that men are, first and foremost, human. Women being able to reproduce on their own isn't threatening because it might "destabilize masculinity" or impact "notions about the heterosexual-male-dominated family." It's threatening because it makes us feel irrelevant and unneeded.
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Outrageous nonsense.
YOU didn't challenge her on any of her crap.
Technology has made sperm so pliable, so knowable, something that can be so sterilized, and so flexibly used, that women can now begin to use it. It can be extracted from male bodies and men can be bypassed in the process of reproduction. [Having] semen available in a marketplace radically changes the definitions of paternity, paternalism and fatherhood, and the fatherhood rights movement is reacting to that. It's finding that incredibly threatening to their ability to maintain notions about the heterosexual-male-dominated family.
Can you please clarify how the fatherhood rights movement finds that threatening?
HOW DARE SALON talk about the father rights movement from the pov of feminists AND NEVER ask a leader in it, like Glenn Sacks. That is just f'n outrageous and sexist and bigotted of you.
What does the fathers rights movement want? To parent our children. A rebuttable presumption of shared custody.
And Salon can't talk about that except to give a feminist lesbian an opportunity to bash the fathers rights movement.
This is completely offensive.
And then add this:
From my own sense, anything that would have the consequence of men's fertility being potentially damaged for any period of time is distasteful to men. I think that has to do with this notion of sperm competition and with the notion that women are unpredictable and untrustworthy.
When something involves messing with semen, it's not going to fly with men, because I don't think they ultimately trust that things are going to get back to normal. If they look at women's reproductive history with contraception, they should know it probably won't.
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS DOING? DID THE PROFESSOR EVER STOP TO ASK ANY OF THE BIOLOGISTS AT HER COLLEGE WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF HER THEORY?
Of course not! Who cares what scientists would say, when this lesbian queer theoried professor knows from her gut that scientists MALE AND FEMALE never work on male contraceptives because it is threatening to men.
Does this prof have tenure? Is this the kind of intellectual shit taught in women's studies?
Salon, ISN'T THERE AN ARTICLE HERE about how such a bogus crap filled theorist got a job teaching people?