The New Eugenics?
Written by Brett, Posted in General & Random
Some lesbian friends recently came to visit the Gay Uncle and his boyfriend at their house Upstate. And guess what? They’re trying to get pregnant! This is good news for Gunc, as it means at least one more guaranteed sale of his book. But instead of adopting an unwanted American child, or trying to steal one from the arms of its family in Malawi, they’re going the donor route. The G.U. is down with this too. But he has to admit that when they started talking about the specifics of why they chose a particular dude from the list of tens of thousands of cum shots that the Sperm Bank had in their deposit accounts, he got a little…creeped out. “He’s Italian like me, but he’s not one of those short Italians because his mother was from Denmark or Norway or something, so he’s tall. And everyone on both sides of his family has good teeth. And he has eyes like her [her partner]. And no history of heart disease or cancer. And I found out on line that they have an attractiveness scale that they use internally at the Sperm Bank to rate the donors when they come in. It ranges from two to eight point five, and when I asked the lady where he rated, she said, Eight. And when I asked how many eight point fives they’d ever seen, she said, One. So he’s our guy.” Now Gunc is down with giving your kid all the proper advantages. And he supposes when offered choices on stuff like this, he’d tend toward ticking off some of the same checkboxes. But there’s just something borderline…Eugenicist about the whole process: picking out a kid–like a handbag or sweater–who’ll match your skin and eyes, selecting a donor based on his similarity in appearance to an idealized version of yourself. It just seems like a set up for an even worse form of narcissism than the one normally derived from participating in what Gunc likes to call “The Ultimate Vanity Project”. Maybe straight people pick their partners for the same reasons: they’ll breed well? Or maybe the G.U. is the only one who finds it odd. Let him know what you think in COMMENTS below.
As a lesbian mom who went through this process with my spouse myself, I can agree that it is a little weird. My own personal creep-outness peaked at the sperm banks that charged more for donors with Ph.D’s or who went to Ivy League schools. (As a refugee from academia myself, I can say with full authority that having a Ph.D is no guarantee of things like social skills–or even intelligence, when it comes to that.)
For most lesbians, I think (and I hope others will offer their opinions, too), the ability to choose the characteristics of our children’s donors is less about picking some “idealized version” of ourselves, and more about trying to minimize the awkward questions about one’s family.
I know a lot of lesbians who pick a donor because he looks somewhat like the non-bio mom, so she feels more of a physical or ethnic connection to the child. (Not that it’s necessary for non-bio moms to do that–but I think many do.)
It may also mean she and her child don’t get all of those “Who are you? Are you the nanny?” questions that can be annoying if not offensive. (This is of course an issue for adoptive and interracial families, gay and straight, too–and while we might wish people were more open-minded, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with lesbian couples wanting to ease some of the questions about our families. Our kids will get enough as it is, just having two moms.)
In my own case, we were much more focused on the medical profile of the donor rather than his looks. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing any attractiveness rating. We rejected all the perfect medical profiles once we realized those guys probably didn’t know anything about their family’s medical history. We also loosened up once we realized our own medical profiles were far from perfect, and there were only so many medical problems we could hope to avoid in any case.
Of course, even picking a donor who seems “right” is no guarantee. I gave an egg to my partner, who carried our child. Our son looks just like me, even though, to the best of our knowledge, our donor looked more like her. She gets really strange looks sometimes when she talks about having been pregnant. Ah well. We try just to live our lives, but realize that part of being a lesbian family in this day and age means doing a little education of others along the way.
Our main focus was medical since there is a particularly deadly cancer that runs in her family (every male member of her family in one generation has died from it except one, her father died when she was 19). We rejected any profile with a mention of this specific type of cancer and/or other related cancers. Having the child look like my family was actually easy since there is every possible hair/eye color combo imaginable among my cousins. We did look at ethnicity for skin tone, but the thing that made the decision for us was the donor’s essay and audio interview, he sounded intelligent, interesting and sensitive. We rejected one who sounded like a dumb frat boy. π
As for intelligence, we didn’t really focus on that because so many factors affect intellectual development. The donor had decent SAT scores, but that’s really no guarantee of intellect. His writing in his essay seemed coherent and intelligent, but who knows if he actually wrote it.
Our son is cute, intelligent, and on the autism spectrum. So I guess we did a decent job choosing but you always get something unexpected even if you know the person with whom you are making a baby. π
(here via mombian)
I found it INCREDIBLY weird, uncomfortable and creepy. Especially since I’m one of the folks whose partner didn’t feel especially like she needed the kidlet to look like her. So there we were, faced with thousands of faceless, nameless guys, from myriad sperm banks, and no idea how we wanted to sort them. We eventually came up with a short list, but even that became problematic when one ran out, and we had a miscarriage using another. All I really wanted was to be able to call up a place and ask them to give me somebody healthy and fertile, but that’s not really an option.
To reassure myself, I guess, I ended up basically telling myself that it’s not much different from straight women who take looks into consideration when considering a male partner. It IS more than that, but it’s closer to making me feel more comfortable.
As for whether or not it’s “eugenics”? I often joke that it feels that way to me, but I don’t think it is. There may be the occasional couple that approaches it in that manner, but for the most part, people I’ve met have been like me, with some sort of one-and-only-one vague idea of what they’d like. In one couple’s case, the non-bio mom is a redhead, so they wanted a redhead. (In mine, it was that I didn’t want them to be too short. I’m the shrimp in my family, and it’s an irrational sore spot. π )
So, yeah. It’s something I’m not entirely comfortable with, but on the other hand, I can’t much picture a different way of allowing people to sort through a catalogue and pick a donor, either.
Got any good ideas?
It’s the perfect fantasy for parents who try to control every aspect of their children’s destiny — now they can control their genes. Aside from the fact that ultra-controlling parenting is both inhumane and doomed to fail, many people seem to think genes are much more important than they are.
We started with the medical history (choose different diseases than what runs in the bio-mom’s family) and ethnic background (matching the non-bio mom and mismatching the bio-mom in order to try to avoid unknown recessive traits). However, we still had several donors to choose from. So we turned to the personal statements and kind of went by whim.
It’s tough because you think having a ton of information should help you make a “good” decision. And the cryobank wants you to feel you have choice and control, in exchange for all the money you pay them. In fact, the information is uneven. Most donors’ parents and even grandparents haven’t gotten sick or died yet — or, as Dana said, they don’t know their medical history — and there are so many variables in play that that you can’t make reliable conclusions anyway.
In the end I wonder if the info may be of more value to the children. After we had our baby, we ordered all the data the cryobank had on the donor — including a baby picture and an audio clip. I chose not to listen to the audio interview — but I think that maybe our son might want to, someday. Perhaps what I see as trivia will help him imagine the mysterious gentleman in his past.
I love a good handbag, and I’m not even a gay man! We ended up making a baby (ooops, twins!) via IVF. Our clinic had recommended two Sperm Banks and we went with The Sperm Bank That Has Adult Photos (well, photos of the donors as adults). Our criteria: caucasian (partner is white, i’m hispanic), light eyes (she has blue, i have green), relatively healthy (how do you every really know when the guys are in their early 20s?), not short (we wanted the kid(s) to have a chance since I’m 5’4′ and partner is 5’3′) and looks enough would-totally-sleep-with-him-if-i-were-the-sleep-with-hims-type. Kidding.
We never set out to find a match that would look like my partner; instead, we wanted similarities among our family unit. So, for example, we didn’t pick someone with red hair (we both have brown), or fair skin (neither of us are). We never had an attachment to them looking like either of us, though.
I never set out to create a mini-me, but boy howdy everyone tells me our daughter is a spitting image. As for our son, he’s got a narrow noggin somewhat like my dad, but having also a child picture of said Donor, boy howdy he is a spitting image of him.
I’ll repost an edited version here of what I wrote at Mombian:
Because straight people never choose their prospective co-parents based on their looks or other qualities, qualities they hope will pass down to their kids? Lesbians are just more upfront about it, as usual.
Of course, we chose ours in large part because he was the guy who finally said yes. So, you know, there you go β lesbians can be both as choosy and as indiscriminate as straight people! Who knew?! π
Hi Brett, your blog has such a refreshingly different approach to TTC and pregnancy issues- really loving it!
I’m Barbara from Fairhaven Health. We manufacture natural, doctor-designed products to help couples conceive and newly pregnant couples. We offer supplements, teas, diagnostic tools, etc. including products such as FertilAid for Women and Men.
If there’s interest on your part, we’d be happy to send you product samples for you to review or to use as giveaways. Just fyi, we’re by no means a large pharmaceutical company and are committed to helping women conceive safely and naturally. We are a very ‘Pro-family of all kinds’ company who understands and emphasizes with the difficulties and exclusion that gay couples face when TTC. Lame.
Either way,
I can be reached via Barbara@FairhavenHealth.com and I would love to hear from you.
You said, “Maybe straight people pick their partners for the same reasons: theyβll breed well?”
Yes (and so do gay/lesbian/bi people)- there’s a subsection of psychology called “evolutionary psychology”, where, in this theory, people will a.) do what they must to make sure they are perceived as attractive so their genes get passed on down to the next generation, and b.) find mates that look like any potential offspring produced will survive. Maybe not as consciously as the couple you were talking about, but it helps your brain decide who you wanna take home tonight and who you don’t.
‘Eugenics’ refers to large scale, state driven breeding programs. So in the case you’re referring is it definitely not eugenics by any stretch of the imagination. Otherwise you might as well say that any women who are only attracted to tall, good looking, blue eyed men (and no, these preferences are not limited to lesbian women) pr what have you is actually practicing eugenics :p
It’s normal to want good looking children, why should we expect lesbian women to desire otherwise? I think what threatens certain people is that women (hetero, homosexual or otherwise) have full control over their own reproduction, their own body and being the only one who get to choose who they have children with. That’s threatening for a lot of people but fortunately, we’re getting there.
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