I had an interesting day spent mostly at one of the main public hospitals in Amsterdam, fulfilling my role as the "known sperm donor" for a couple of friends of mine.
It began, strangely enough, with the actual donation. I met the nice lab tech guy named Cor, who handed me a plastic cup and directed me to a small room with a sink, an easy chair, and a toilet. "There's some reading materials here, if you need it," he explained quickly. "Please capture the whole sample and give it to me when you are finished."
Although Amsterdam is probably one of the most liberal, unrepressed European cities, I have to say that the reading material left something to be desired. The fertility clinic I went to in New York City had a diverse selection of magazines and videos available for every possible taste and inclination. The Dutch hospital offered — Playboy and Penthouse. Blech….
Anyway, a few minutes later, I gave Cor my sample. He took it and put it on a lab table near some files.
"Normally we put a label on it right away, so we don't risk mixing it up with someone else's," he explained. "But you are the only donor we are seeing today, so we have no chance of mixing it up."
I and the prospective birth mother found this less than reassuring.
The rest of the day was spent dealing with mostly bureaucratic stuff: getting me entered into the hospital database, consulting with a doctor, paying the medical fees, getting a blood test, giving a urine sample, and listening to lots of discussions in Dutch.
The next step is for me to return to the hospital on Monday to give a second sample and finish some paperwork.
After that, my job is basically done …and the prospective birth mother's job just begins.
That is such a great thing to do Rik…
The gift of life and for your friend the gift of motherhood…
Sorry the magazines were lame… It seem not to have caused a problem though LOL
Thanks Yak. It requires so little of me and can hopefully bring such joy to my friends.
What an amazing honor you’ve been given, Rik. It says some profound things about you that you are the kind of person someone would want to be the biological father of their child.
Your comment about the magazines sparked an interesting conversation in our house about mainstream porn and why it is so boring and what the alternatives were.
We got into Playboy’s clear adoration of women but essential blandness, and Hustler’s edgier feel but deep misogyny, and then we talked about Susie Bright and Annie Sprinkle, the whole altporn scene, and what makes pornography feminist.
Then I started thinking about how your Quaker belief system interacts with all of this. How do the Friends approach issues of sexuality and gender? What is their take on pornography? Is it approached in any specific way or is it handled in the self-examination that is so much a part of the philosophy?
Quakers are as a people tend to be modest, perhaps even prudish, from our history of plain dress and disavowal of anything extravagant or excessively “prideful” in appearance. That said, Liberal Friends have come very far on issues of sexuality and gender.
I don’t know of any queries or discussions specifically pornography or other objectifying depictions of women. But given the active women’s groups within Quaker circles, they must exist.