The other day CTV reported the astonishing statistic that in the whole of Canada there are just 33 sperm donors. That seems awfully low for a nation of 30 million people. Three sperm donors per province plus one per territory? Surely we can do better than that. All hands on deck!
Ah, but it’s not as simple as that. Apparently, the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act makes it illegal to pay donors for sperm. I mean, it wasn’t even the usual Canadian Wheat Board-type racket whereby you’d only be able to sell your seed to the Canadian Sperm Board at a price agreed upon by representatives of the federal-provincial Semen Commissions. Instead, they just nixed the whole deal, and, once Johnny Canuck found out he wasn’t going to be remunerated, virtually the entire supply dried up.
As a result, this once proud Dominion now has to import sperm. According to CTV, 80 per cent of Canadian women who conceive through donor sperm are getting it from the United States, mainly from men in Georgia and northern Florida. Canada’s future is now in American hands.
You know how it is: you wait ages for a good sperm story and then they all come at once. It seems there’s also a shortage of the stuff in Sweden. But, in contrast to Canada, this is caused not by government intervention in supply but by a surge in demand, from Swedish lesbian couples anxious to conceive. Inga and Britta had been trying for a child for ages but nothing seemed to work. Then it occurred to them this might be because they’re both women. So they headed off to the sperm clinic, whereupon the Sapphic demand ran into the problem of male inability to satisfy it. There appear to be higher than usual levels of non-functioning sperm.
Don’t worry, I’m not being Swedophobic in mocking the watery emissions of Nordic manhood. It’s a widespread problem: “Concern As Sperm Count Falls By A Third In UK Men” (the Daily Mail, 2004). Don’t ask me why: I’d blame Tony Blair’s cozying up to Bush were it not for “Sperm Count Drops 25 Per Cent In Younger Men” (the Independent, 1996), so maybe it was John Major pulling out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Still, even for a demographic doom-monger such as myself, you could hardly ask for a more poignant fin de civilisation image than a stampede of broody lesbians stymied only by defective semen, like some strange dystopian collaboration between Robert Heinlein and Russ Meyer set in a world divided into muff divers and duff donors.
I wouldn’t want to overly extrapolate from two minor news items, and I’d be quite happy to do cheap lesbo-seminal gags to the foot of the page, but the thought does occur that a visitor from the day before yesterday—say, the mid-20th century—would be befuddled by the problems we face in the dawn of the new millennium. The other day the Toronto Star, ever on the cutting edge in the hunt for new bigotries, turned in a fascinating report on the problems of air travel and . . . Go on, take a wild guess. Racial profiling? Ha! You piker! We’re talking about gender profiling—in the sense that most of these squaresville Homeland Security types think there are men and there are women and that’s pretty much it. As a result, many pre-operative transsexuals run into difficulties south of the border or when flying trans Atlantically, and that’s before the introduction of “Whole Body Imaging” scanners where you may show up naked on the security screen packing a few too many extras. “Travelling for transpeople is always fraught with uncertainty,” Ontario lawyer Nicole Nussbaum told the Star. “The current system doesn’t match up with transpeople’s lives.”
Of course, no “system” could. I see that what I quaintly thought of as the Toronto Gay Pride Parade was officially billed this year as a parade to celebrate “the LGBTTIQQ2S communities.”
LGBTTIQQ2S? Oh, come on. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgendered, Intersexual, Queer, Questioning and 2-Spirited. Where ya bin? 2-Spirited doesn’t mean too spirited, as in Anne of Green Gables, but is supposedly some First Nations thing. Anyway, you can see why the “current system” of airport security has a hard time keeping up. Any day now, they’ll introduce Intergendered and Transspirited, and by the time Mayor Miller has stumbled through the acronym in his official proclamation, the parade’ll be over. So, when a Bigendering person shows up at the frontier, don’t be surprised if the border guard comes over all 2-Questioning. Travel, explains the Star’s Julia Steinecke, is “complicated for those who live in the grey area between genders.”
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What possesses MacLean's to keep publishing the ignorant weirdo Mark Steyn is a mystery to me.
A comment at this point seems superfluous…but I liked the article while cringing at all the terrible semen jokes.
We think of ourselves as free, but it's largely the sort of trivial freedom to choose ice cream flavours, clothing styles, and yes, sexual behaviour. More important liberties such as the freedom to say what we think and teach what we think to our children are quickly eroding. Other basic freedoms such as the right of each person to live, no matter how "unwanted", have already been completely eradicated for certain select groups.
GREAT ARTICLE!
most people don't give a crap about peoples' gender identity / perversion issues. I wish the news media would figure that out.
I wasn't so much surprised by the article, which was brilliant btw, as i was that so many people buy into the whole LGBQQTTFCEAWCWEFFVEE2151!$#$% nonsense. If it was the straight cool people's club i wouldn't want to be associated with it if it identified itself with an acronymn that so blatently pointed out its hypersensitivity.
Gay, straight, or otherwise, do us all a favor: If you are so hypersensitive and socially insecure, go live in another country for a while (or forever) and learn what true injustice is. There are worse things in life than people not understanding and embracing every little facet of you character. Grow a thicker skin and live your lives.
there are just 33 sperm donors. That seems awfully low for a nation of 30 million people.
http://b7r-g.com/vb
Wow, there a lot of people from the GSUFDRYFERSLEMNXC community who are really thin-skinned!
Or is that the DCMNYPWOOSgRR^2.14 community
And when will they make a stand for their fellows: the non-human preference and age-bias free communities?
Are all the infuriated comments here serious? Or are they jokes? It's hard to tell. Evidently the transgendered society is also the transhumored society. Confusion reigns. We are no longer merely post-modern, we are post-parody. The laws of "reductio ad absurdum" no longer operate.
In order to be one nation, you must not only worship the same god(s), you must laugh at the same things. Both religion and comedy create community. The center cannot hold when it keeps moving. Is it funny (odd) or funny (ha-ha)? Political correctness is obviously no laughing matter. How do you sleep with such big buttons on your pajamas? And two hard-boiled eggs.
The easiest way to find a Steyn column on this site:
'Most Read' + most comments + click = Steyn
Whether any of it is true or not is almost besides the point…it's damned fine writing.
Damned fine writing . . . Yes, and we look forward to his next wit-filled rant against the Jews.
Don't forget the Muslims!
(Remember: if you hate everybody, it's not technically discrimination!)
Indeed. Which is why Steyn is not in the same universe as H. L. Mencken. If you don't know it already, you'd enjoy Gore Vidal's essay on Mencken's equal-opportunity scorn (collected in Vidal's United States; it was an intro to Mencken's collected journalism). But Mencken belonged to no party and was free to write what he wished; Steyn has hitched his star to a sinister political movement (which is why I waste so much breath commenting on him). Actually, FWIW, my opinion of Steyn has changed significantly over the last year of reading his Maclean's columns: I now think his conservatism is actually a cynical career move (for $$ and for ease of shtick) and that there's a real, independent journalist inside him just dying to get out and skewer the loony Right as he skewers the loony Left, but as yet he lacks the courage to reinvent himself. Just a theory.
Here's a new one: I'm a reporter in the U.S. and a few years ago I was covering a gay parade in Washington when I came across what was clearly a guy in a house dress. I asked him what he was, and he answered, "a transgender lesbian." In other words a male who became a female then a lesbian because he wanted to be with women. If he wanted to be with women, I asked, why didn't he just remain a man. His reply: "I don't want to be with those kind of women."
This many replies to this inane nonesense (I guess I'm not helping the cause)? The title actually drew me in, then the old bait and switch, another screed against changing times and progressive permissiveness. If you people really believe that this is what's important, then maybe we don't have the first class education system that we claim. Both groups, the ones on the parade floats, and the ones decrying it are packed with loud morons.
Columns of this quality should be syndicated globally. The freaks are nothing but attention seeking non-entities. I often wonder what they become when they hit an old age. Mark, U R by far the best, and your writing makes me think and laugh at the same time. Just take great care.
I'll take LGBTTIQQ2S over the zombie Steyn drum-beaters (ZSDB) any day
Interesting.
According to the headline, the point of the article is that, despite the unprecedented sexual freedom we have now, many of our other freedoms are being eroded (a point with which I fervently agree). But according to the text and the comments, the point of the article is that LGBetc people are weird and wrong, and there’s really no reason that governments should accomodate them. Oh sure, there are a few vague references to other lost freedoms, but that’s clearly not the point.
So it looks like the writer and his fans are just another group of people who believe in freedom, with one exception, and it’s mostly the exception that matters to them. And when everybody is for freedom with one exception, then the inevitable result will be no freedom at all.
Freedom! Even for weird people! No exceptions!
Last good word from me about all this, in the form of three warnings for ya:
–Turkey basters..
–Ultimate outsourcing..
–Spend some time with the Missus, if that's your style….
My, the LGBTTIQQ2S community exhibits a serious lack of humor! It seems to me no matter which way you swing, this would strike you as one hilarious take on the matter of freedom lost!
Nice work, Mark, absolutely made my morning.
Mark, that was a GREAT column. You've hit the nail on the head buddy. You and Macleans should stand up, and then take a bow. You've got my support 100%!! Go Mark Go!
Too funny! And very well written.
This practice, of using Georgia cracker and Florida fish-head donated sperm to Canadian women may soon result in claims from the offspring of such reproductive activities to American citizenship by virtue of the hands-on activities of the American father. More work for immigration lawyers?
I can see your point, Mark; but the problems seem to be coming from Big Government interfering and the desire of various sub-populations for Big Government to interfere. As for the social…issues that you so CHARMINGLY commented on….
I don't believe that your intention was to be hateful and hurtful; all the same, I don't like the way you commented on transgendered peoples. It's ridiculous, of course it is; but it is the result of no boundaries being established and citizens that like pushing the envelope.
I'm sorry for being so incoherent. In simpler words, I appreciate the aim of the article, but I can't get around the snideness and ridicule.
Way to go, Mark. enjoyed you on "Rush", today!
The inmates are not only patronizing
the Star Wars' bar–
the inmates are RUNNING the damn place……
This is one the best, most hilarious, insightful and, yes, satirical articles I've ever read in Maclean's. Classic Mark Steyn! I'm renewing my subscription and ordering subscriptions for all my friends!
hah. Steyn. shocking and outraging Canadian pantywaists yet again…
we need more iconoclasts. no one is precious. suck it up.
I guess Steve missed the photo. The gentlemen, women, whatever.. on display, hardly look like they're fighting for any serious 'level of awareness'. If they don't take themselves seriously, how can you seriously expect society to?
Another HILARIOUS column. Mark, you are the best!
There are lots of facts & stats in the article, Hamid … go back and read it.
Hey, are you a Muslim? What would you like to see done with the LGBT agenda? With the people themselves?