The sperm-seekers whose demand has produced this height restriction aren't
giggly teenagers or desperate housewives addicted to Harlequin romances.
They are strong, autonomous, educated, middle class, not-so-young women of
ambition with support systems and resources sufficient to the logistical
demands of child-rearing. Whether childless because of sexual orientation,
a ticking biological clock aligned with bad luck in the marriage market, or
principled misandry, they view their future child's fatherlessness with
sanguine confidence and a clear conscience. Amongst such committed
egalitarians in all other gender-related matters, then, logic would suggest
a willingness to accept height parity, or at least diversity. So why are
these father-cleansing feminists choosing to "mate" with a stereotypically
patriarchal symbol of physical dominance?

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=1702952

National Post (Canada)
17 June 2009

The commodification of sperm
By Barbara Kay <bkay@...>

A few months ago I took part in a mock debate whose annual tradition it is
to task stand-up comics manques with raising optimal laughs around a deeply
trivial theme.

The proposed resolution was "The short man is the better man." I argued
this was a wince-inducing subject for the height-challenged male,
equivalent to "The fat woman is the better woman," and furthermore a
natural temptation to witless ribaldry. My objections falling on deaf ears,
including some attached to short men, I manned up for the job as best I could.

Googling desperately, I came upon an informational tidbit that proved
excellent (and only slightly ribald) fodder for debate laughs, but also
seems an apt take-off point for my yearly Fatherless Day column, namely:
Most sperm banks will not accept donations from men who stand under 5' 11"
in height.

The sperm-seekers whose demand has produced this height restriction aren't
giggly teenagers or desperate housewives addicted to Harlequin romances.
They are strong, autonomous, educated, middle class, not-so-young women of
ambition with support systems and resources sufficient to the logistical
demands of child-rearing.

Whether childless because of sexual orientation, a ticking biological clock
aligned with bad luck in the marriage market, or principled misandry, they
view their future child's fatherlessness with sanguine confidence and a
clear conscience.

Amongst such committed egalitarians in all other gender-related matters,
then, logic would suggest a willingness to accept height parity, or at
least diversity. So why are these father-cleansing feminists choosing to
"mate" with a stereotypically patriarchal symbol of physical dominance?

Because deep inside, they aren't buying the utopian theories they've
superficially endorsed. Freed from the hassle of meeting Mr. Right, and at
liberty to conjure up Mr. Right DNA, even women mate-free by choice want to
perpetuate via their future child's hologram sire the same symbols of male
strength and protectiveness women have prized since time immemorial. Their
decision to " disappear" their child's father says manliness isn't
important; their atavistically-driven entries on the sperm bank checklist
say it is.

We now take for granted the technology of alternate reproductive
initiatives that marginalize men's contribution to the family, and by
extension to society. But we shouldn't. Every child born with only half an
identity - the mother's - is a reproach to our decision, which began with
the advent of the birth control pill in 1959, to privilege the sexual and
reproductive rights of adults over the rights of children. For "adults,"
read "women."

Men took their cues from women. They soon internalized the feminist message
that they had many responsibilities as fathers, but unlike mothers no
natural rights, a rubric borne out in higher court judgments and countless
custody narratives. Men's biological and social value, and their
relationship to their issue, has for some time been contingent on women's
wishes and perceived needs.

And yet countless studies confirm the opposite of what the very existence
of sperm banks imply. Biological fathership matters. Fatherlessness figures
disproportionately in every anti-social behaviour from school dropout to
sexual pathology to hard criminality. A non-biological father figure in the
home is the greatest indicator for child abuse.

There's no secret to healthy communities. Marriage is the key. It takes the
same boring, bourgeois values and domestic strategies today, often referred
to amongst cultural observers as "the plan" - education first, then a job,
then marriage and only then children - as it did in 1950 to produce (on the
whole, no personal anecdotes, please) secure, successful children.

Poverty is not the issue, as ideologues continue to insist. The same
bourgeois values send many poor, but culturally traditional immigrants'
children soaring to peaks of achievement.

The irony is that the theorists doling out the Kool-Aid aren't drinking it
themselves. Marriage rates are going up amongst the educated middle class,
and down amongst the uneducated, unskilled and unmotivated -- those least
equipped to compensate for the negative effects of fatherlessness on children.

The commodification of sperm is a particularly hypocritical blot on the
social landscape. Donor recipients cheat their children with society's
blessing by mimicking the plan. They get their education and job first, but
skip the crucial marriage part. Finally they parachute their "family" into
stable, aspirational environments sustained by two-parent families.

Sperm-donor mothers thus effectively freeload from the harvest sown by the
very bourgeois constraints they exempted themselves from in their
children's creation.

Sperm banks opened a Pandora's box. The inevitable coming debate: "The
cloned child is the better child." Comedians may raise laughter from this
not-so-trivial subject, but fathers - not so much.