By David Futrelle
Sexual reproduction can be confusing. Luckily, there are always some very smart men around to explain it to any ladies who might need a refresher course. Like this dude, whose contribution to the abortion debate got the attention of @TakedownMRAs on Twitter.
Damn, I didn’t learn ANY of this in Sex Ed.
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Tell you what, mate, you can have half the fetus.
Uh…somebody slept through biology class, didn’t they?
Ejaculation ≠ creation, Brian, you bignoramus. You don’t carry a fetus in your body, you get no say over what happens to it. Tough shit if you don’t like it.
Abstinence only education strikes again.
So… if I create a giant paper mache art sculpture and leave it in your house, you are morally obligated to care for it, keep it in your home, and allot space to it, since I created it and I get to say what happens to it, even by forcing someone else to do all the work of maintaining it. Did I get that idea right?
And just wait till Brian learns how many fertilized eggs never even make it to implantation…as many as 2/3 of ’em, in fact. It would blow out whatever brains he’s got. Someone tell him and Frankie there that God is the biggest abortionist in the Universe.
If you don’t want your preciois sperm to be aborted by a woman, don’t fucking impregnate her. It is that simple. Men are doing it all the time!
Given how invested they are in the idea of men as scientists, you’d think they might have checked in to what’s been discovered since bleedin’ Aristotle.
If I could change just one thing about conservatism, I would eliminate their virulent hateed of learning….
What century is this moron living in?
In case you missed it, your precious seed only has 23 chromosomes, which is not enough to create anything by itself. Where do you think the other 23 come from?
Also, you’re not the one having to carry an gradually increasing weight on your hips for 9 months and then risking your life just to push it out.
You wanna be a father? Then you gotta pull your weight. That means financially, emotionally, and physiologically supporting your SO throughout the pregnancy, birth, and raising of your offspring.
I bet this guy would proudly “babysit” his kids and brag about what a good “babysitter” he was.
My dad had his faults, but at least he considered himself a parent, not a spermlord.
Ah, sperm is LIFE and people with a uterus are merely the incubator.
So Masturbation is Murder. Sounds like it’s not abortion providers that are the problem.
I don’t know what the hell is wrong with Brian. I will say this: that vintage picture of the baby coming out of the egg is adorable.
I thought Every Sperm is Sacred in the Monty Python movie was humor, not an educational device.
And then, presumably, you’d watch everything else about it, deprived of that central support, collapse like a house of cards built by some maladroit giant with chopsticks.
Congrats, you have the same understanding of the mechanics of fertilization and pregnancy that the ancient greeks did thousands of years ago.
So he’s trying to revive the homunculi theory?
This is what happens when sex education is ignored.
We should have expected this to happen when they started running that pregnancy test advertisement with the end saying “because you’re your baby’s first home” constantly…how they decided that a home pregnancy test = the uterus is a home for first time occupants and only temporary so don’t think you can stay there indefinitely…was the best ad verbiage?
Hell if I know, but a uterus is not a house damnit.
Hmm…interesting. I wonder if this fine fellow and his pin-headed buddies realize that the mitochondrial DNA, without which there can be no life, is carried ONLY by the egg…along with the rest of the mom’s DNA.
Now, I am the first to admit that higher mathematics is not my game, but that looks, to me, as though the mother contributes MORE to the growing new human than the father does.
Sorry, guys, but you lose again. And, unless you find a way to, say, graft the mitochondrial DNA in your skin cells into the developing embryo – at the moment of conception – you are not going to get rid of us.
Ain’t arithmetic grand?
Brian has a point; if I decide to laser-etch an illustration of my original foxpony character into a man’s skin, it is his ethical responsibility not to disturb my creation and to consult me before seeking any sort of modification or medical attention.
One of the best pieces of advice my mum ever gave me was “if you can’t imagine raising a child with that person, and especially if you find that prospect to be horrific in every imaginable way, don’t have sex with her”. I didn’t always follow this to the letter, admittedly, but she certainly had a point.
She also made it very clear that if I impregnated someone and didn’t live up to my responsibilities (which included raising the child if the mother decided to carry it to term), she’d disown me. And I have no reason to assume that she was joking – she took this sort of thing very very seriously indeed.
Okay, but…this actually gets argued in the Legally Blonde musical, in the song “Chip on My Shoulder.” I am serious. The law students have a class where a sperm donor is suing for visitation rights. Warner, the dude Elle chased to Harvard, claims that “without his sperm the child in question wouldn’t exist” so the dude is “within his rights to ask for visitation” and is winning…until Elle steps up.
“Mr. Huntington makes an excellent point, but did the defendant keep a log of every sperm emission made throughout his life?”
Teacher: “Interesting, why do you?”
Elle: “Well, unless the defendant attempted to contact every sexual encounter to find if a child resulted from those unions, he has no parental claim over this child whatsoever. Why now? Why this sperm?”
Teacher: “I see your point.”
Elle: “Also, by Mr. Huntington’s standard, all masturbatory emission, why the sperm was clearly not seeking an egg, could be called….reckless abandonment.”
Teacher: “Mrs. Woods…you just won your case!”
So, yeah. Your sperm better mean something every. single. time. if you want to claim this specific sperm is special and you get to control a woman because of it.
@Samantha Kaswell
Sperm do have mitochondria (they would swim far without them) but they’re discarded upon fusion along with the rest of the wiggly bits that are no longer needed. The eggs also carry all the nutrients needed to keep the zygote alive and dividing in the period between fertilization and implantation. Oh, and the egg has to do all the work of preventing multiple sperm fertilizing at once. I could go on, but if facts actually mattered, Brian would never have written anything quite so ignorant…
“that vintage picture of the baby coming out of the egg is adorable”
David always finds the best vintage pictures.
What is it with the right wing and their god-complex? They’re forever insisting that they alone are Creators (job creators, baby creators, civilization creators), and we should all worship them as such.
In the real world, you’ll never see a group more dedicated to destroying the things they claim to be creating. The legislation they pass, the policies they push, take away access to maternity leave, prenatal care, and early childhood education. Capitalism, increasingly, requires both parents to work long hours outside the house to make ends meet. Automation and outsourcing are removing jobs, to the point where college graduates can’t find work in their field. As for academia, science, the arts, and independent journalism (hallmarks of a civilized society), the right wing has been taking a crowbar to those things for decades.
All this “creation” must be some sort of performance art that we don’t understand.