I went to dinner with my friend Rennat recently and I was telling her about how I had considered donating sperm in an effort to raise money to fly back home more often. Ren immediately thought of the movie The Kids are All Aright and tried whole-heartedly to convince me out of doing it. (I had already been convinced by my girlfriend, Amy, but nevertheless Ren felt obliged to press me against it) I told her that if I weren't concerned about having a bunch of offspring running around, I would not mind. Still, in some sense, I was not really convinced I would view the children of my sperm with people I did not know as my children. Ren had a different view on the matter. She said, in effect, that not only would she consider them her children in some sense, but that it is just different (apparently by levels of degree) between male sperm and female eggs.
Now, to give her credit, there is some serious truth to that. Biologically speaking, men have limitless sperm while females have a fixed number of eggs. However, that "fixed number" is usually around 1.5 million. So despite their being a fixed number, I would not say it is a common occurrence that they run out. The idea that concerned me most was that, in some way, motherhood was better/more important than fatherhood.
First, it is important that the two enterprises are very different but not unequal. I do not feel the need to get into a long debate about the importance of each responsibility, but if we remember that feminism is not about turning the tables against men, but leveling the playing field, then we do not want to say one is more important to the other. My own personal skiddishness comes from the idea that one's "children" is understood in more than just a biological sense, but also a relational sense. We can see this trend in stepparents who call their partner's kids from other situations their own.
Ren later backed down from this point pretty readily. But it gave me pause, and I think it helps us remember that feminism is about eqaulity not a different type of inequality. As the saying goes, every man should be a feminist. I would add, "and everyone should be for equality."
