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Nonfiction
Rene Almeling, Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm: Super interesting, short book about the body work performed by sperm and egg donors and the way that gendered expectations shape their experiences. Agencies encourage women to think about themselves as altruistic people giving a “gift,” while they don’t worry about men who are just in it for the money; egg donors are asked why they’re participating, while the agencies are generally uninterested in male motivations. Women make more money, but they’re paid for donating particular cycles to particular recipients, making the transaction seem more intimate, and the number of eggs doesn’t affect the payment. Sperm donation, by contrast, is framed as a piecework job for which men are only paid for production (a sample with sufficient motility). Sperm banks have identity-release programs, sometimes paying men more if they agree to release their identities when any resulting children turn 18, while egg agencies routinely refuse even to let donors know if recipients become pregnant, and agencies that do both have entirely different protocols for each, with gender-specific protocols and treatment of donors (jokes and T-shirts for men, “thanks for the gift”-type eggs/hearts for women). Egg donors’ profiles include pictures over three times as often as sperm donors’. There’s actually an oversupply of egg donors (perhaps because the altruistic framing makes egg donation seem more socially acceptable), but that hasn’t affected payment rates.
Almeling contrasts the experiences of egg donors and IVF recipients, both of whom inject the same drugs. Egg donors find the process relatively less awful, though, because they aren’t trying to get pregnant.
She points out that we don’t know much about what masturbation is generally like for men from a scholarly perspective, but finds that sperm donors experience it as an occasion for bodily control—they have to be abstinent for at least 36 hours and sometimes more before donating, and then they have to perform on cue. Sperm donors focus a lot on the money they’re earning, while egg donors didn’t talk about money when they talked about how donation fit into their daily lives.
Building on the work of Viviana Zelizer, Almeling suggests that egg donors don’t see money as inconsistent with a gift relationship—they’re getting paid, but they’re also giving. Men, by contrast, “talked much less about recipients, did not report receiving thank-you notes and gifts, and did not make distinctions about donating for the right reasons.” They conceived of donation as a kind of employment, calling recipients “customers,” and men were willing to call the money “income” or “wages,” while egg donors spoke of a “fee” or a “price,” and were more likely to use the term “compensation,” connoting payment for something lost, than the term “income,” connoting payment for something earned. Some men used the term “service,” connecting to images of man as provider, while almost all the women used gift rhetoric instead. Egg donors were more likely to talk poetically about the great gift they were giving, while men felt more objectified and alienated.
I was fascinated that the men generally thought of themselves as fathers, but were also often surprised by the fact that a child had resulted from one of their donations. By contrast, egg donors conceptualized themselves as non-mothers, because they contributed “just an egg.” Women thought of stages of reproduction as more distinct and contingent: “Egg donors are more likely than sperm donors to specify their donation as eggs, which are mixed with sperm, which might result in the creation of embryos, which might implant in another woman’s uterus, which might result in a successful pregnancy, which might result in the birth of a child…. Men, who hear less about recipients, draw a more direct line from sperm to baby and assign much less uncertainty to the process.” These differences, Almeling argued, were shaped by cultural norms of femininity and masculinity—a woman has to nurture to be a good mother and thus the egg donors refused the category mother, but a sperm donor is a father because the male contribution is primary (“men provide the generative seed and women provide the nurturing soil”). Gift rhetoric for egg donors helps them exit the “mother” category and focus on the potential mother they’re helping, while identity release programs in sperm banks highlight the significance of the sperm donor’s contribution. “Men cannot help but see themselves as fathers, because they are providing sperm in a culture that equates male genetics with parenthood.” As a result, egg donors feel a strong connection to recipients and not to children, while sperm donors feel the opposite.
Almeling emphasizes that little about this is biologically based. Men could provide sperm for specific recipients. Women could be paid piecemeal, per egg, and their eggs could go to multiple recipients instead of one specific recipient each time. Sperm banks could emphasize the gift relationship and solicit thank-you notes and gifts for donors. Egg agencies could treat women more formally. “But this is not how it works in the market for sex cells, where a woman’s donation is considered a precious gift and a man’s donation a job well done.”
Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror: Short primer on Iranian history, then fairly detailed account of the rise of the secular, populist Mossadegh and the British-spurred, American-financed coup against him. Truman sympathized with nationalist aspirations, but Eisenhower (and the Dulles brothers in charge of foreign policy) was more sympathetic to fears of Communist takeover, even though that wasn’t really what was going on in Iran. So America backed the shah, because he was friendlier to Britain’s oil interests, and bought “stability” for 25 years at the cost of brutal repression and then passionate anti-Americanism when bottled-up popular demands finally exploded. Depressing but useful history, emphasizing the mismatch between Iranian aspirations (not to be stripped of their oil for a pittance, not to be treated like lesser human beings by the British) and British/American preoccupations (global dominance, Communism).
Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewer book. This was a really good combination of popular science and self-help, tilted towards the self-help with a list of bullet points/exercises at the end of each chapter. It offered very interesting strategies for dealing with willpower challenges, and though I haven’t conquered procrastination, I’m trying to do better with various tactics suggested by the book, which range from focusing on your breathing to giving yourself permission to feel what you feel to commiting yourself to behave tomorrow the way you’re behaving today—which takes away your excuse, which will never really come true, that tomorrow you’ll be a better person and so you’re licensed to avoid your long-term goals today. Recommended. (Many points in the book are also to be found somewhere on her blog, The Science of Willpower.)
Almeling contrasts the experiences of egg donors and IVF recipients, both of whom inject the same drugs. Egg donors find the process relatively less awful, though, because they aren’t trying to get pregnant.
She points out that we don’t know much about what masturbation is generally like for men from a scholarly perspective, but finds that sperm donors experience it as an occasion for bodily control—they have to be abstinent for at least 36 hours and sometimes more before donating, and then they have to perform on cue. Sperm donors focus a lot on the money they’re earning, while egg donors didn’t talk about money when they talked about how donation fit into their daily lives.
Building on the work of Viviana Zelizer, Almeling suggests that egg donors don’t see money as inconsistent with a gift relationship—they’re getting paid, but they’re also giving. Men, by contrast, “talked much less about recipients, did not report receiving thank-you notes and gifts, and did not make distinctions about donating for the right reasons.” They conceived of donation as a kind of employment, calling recipients “customers,” and men were willing to call the money “income” or “wages,” while egg donors spoke of a “fee” or a “price,” and were more likely to use the term “compensation,” connoting payment for something lost, than the term “income,” connoting payment for something earned. Some men used the term “service,” connecting to images of man as provider, while almost all the women used gift rhetoric instead. Egg donors were more likely to talk poetically about the great gift they were giving, while men felt more objectified and alienated.
I was fascinated that the men generally thought of themselves as fathers, but were also often surprised by the fact that a child had resulted from one of their donations. By contrast, egg donors conceptualized themselves as non-mothers, because they contributed “just an egg.” Women thought of stages of reproduction as more distinct and contingent: “Egg donors are more likely than sperm donors to specify their donation as eggs, which are mixed with sperm, which might result in the creation of embryos, which might implant in another woman’s uterus, which might result in a successful pregnancy, which might result in the birth of a child…. Men, who hear less about recipients, draw a more direct line from sperm to baby and assign much less uncertainty to the process.” These differences, Almeling argued, were shaped by cultural norms of femininity and masculinity—a woman has to nurture to be a good mother and thus the egg donors refused the category mother, but a sperm donor is a father because the male contribution is primary (“men provide the generative seed and women provide the nurturing soil”). Gift rhetoric for egg donors helps them exit the “mother” category and focus on the potential mother they’re helping, while identity release programs in sperm banks highlight the significance of the sperm donor’s contribution. “Men cannot help but see themselves as fathers, because they are providing sperm in a culture that equates male genetics with parenthood.” As a result, egg donors feel a strong connection to recipients and not to children, while sperm donors feel the opposite.
Almeling emphasizes that little about this is biologically based. Men could provide sperm for specific recipients. Women could be paid piecemeal, per egg, and their eggs could go to multiple recipients instead of one specific recipient each time. Sperm banks could emphasize the gift relationship and solicit thank-you notes and gifts for donors. Egg agencies could treat women more formally. “But this is not how it works in the market for sex cells, where a woman’s donation is considered a precious gift and a man’s donation a job well done.”
Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror: Short primer on Iranian history, then fairly detailed account of the rise of the secular, populist Mossadegh and the British-spurred, American-financed coup against him. Truman sympathized with nationalist aspirations, but Eisenhower (and the Dulles brothers in charge of foreign policy) was more sympathetic to fears of Communist takeover, even though that wasn’t really what was going on in Iran. So America backed the shah, because he was friendlier to Britain’s oil interests, and bought “stability” for 25 years at the cost of brutal repression and then passionate anti-Americanism when bottled-up popular demands finally exploded. Depressing but useful history, emphasizing the mismatch between Iranian aspirations (not to be stripped of their oil for a pittance, not to be treated like lesser human beings by the British) and British/American preoccupations (global dominance, Communism).
Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewer book. This was a really good combination of popular science and self-help, tilted towards the self-help with a list of bullet points/exercises at the end of each chapter. It offered very interesting strategies for dealing with willpower challenges, and though I haven’t conquered procrastination, I’m trying to do better with various tactics suggested by the book, which range from focusing on your breathing to giving yourself permission to feel what you feel to commiting yourself to behave tomorrow the way you’re behaving today—which takes away your excuse, which will never really come true, that tomorrow you’ll be a better person and so you’re licensed to avoid your long-term goals today. Recommended. (Many points in the book are also to be found somewhere on her blog, The Science of Willpower.)
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