The new sexual predators

Value depends on scarcity. In the world of human reproduction, the most valuable entity is the fertile female—specifically, her eggs and womb.

The fierce politics surrounding female fecundity and women’s reproductive rights rests not only on a woman’s ability to create new life, but also on the incredible amount of commitment and risk involved when her eggs and womb are accessed for procreation. Since women are fertile for a shorter period than men, since gestation takes 40 long weeks, and since labor and delivery pose life-threatening risks, young women will always face disproportionately high demands for access to their bodies. But those demands are rising in unexpected ways, and from unexpected people.

Historically, it was understood that sex created babies. Cultural scripts thus emerged that valued and preferred certain types of sex and male-female relations. The profession of prostitution has always been highly stigmatized for this reason. As we’ve learned the hard way, when female prostitutes engage with their clients, fatherless children can be born, growing up distinctly disadvantaged.

Rape is another example of unbalanced behavior between the genders. Although women do rape, men force sexual access against their victims’ will much more often—and their victims are predominantly young (as in fertile) women. Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig T. Palmer in their 2000 book A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion describe rape (and prostitution) as “gene promotion strategies” that men use when legitimate, consensual sex is not possible. A man that is unable to engage a fertile female in legitimate consensual sex may face the dilemma of using force, monetary incentives or facing extinction.

We teach our daughters a script of warning so they can anticipate these established sexual predators. Oprah broadcasts a list of safety tips for women to avoid them. Parents forbid their teenage daughters from a whole range of activities where her sexual safety may be threatened. We make movies about these predators. We have derogatory names for them. We have a sense of who they are, where they lurk, and what to do to avoid them. We do these things because we care about the health of women and know that their well-being, and the well-being of children, depends on whether they conceive babies in the context of love and companionship.

But now there are new predators on the scene, for whom we do not have a script. There are new characters eager to exploit our daughters’ bodies, who enjoy unsullied reputations, passing detection even as they blatantly hunt for eggs and wombs with checkbooks in hand. And historically they have been the people women should fear the least.

These new players vying for access to young women’s bodies are older or infertile women, and gay men—quite often our friends and members of our family.

A friend of mine, for example, had a bizarre encounter with a regular customer at the restaurant where she waits tables. A middle-aged woman, as politely as she could, asked my friend if she had ever considered becoming an egg donor—and then asked specifically if she would consider becoming her egg donor. Since my friend—Jewish, with blue eyes and straight hair—was apparently a rare catch, this woman wanted her babies.

Another friend of mine was put under a great deal of pressure by her aunt who married in her late thirties and had trouble conceiving. The aunt desperately wanted a child, and preferred to have a genetic relationship with the child, so she aggressively pressured her niece to “donate” eggs to her. If she had agreed, my friend would have become the biological mother of her social cousin.

By neutering ourselves in our youth via contraception and abortion, women have increased the scarcity of the fertile female body, which has increased the demand for it.

Younger women look to older women for guidance and mentorship. They rely on being able to trust their foremothers as sisters in the cause for women’s health. But the increased scarcity of the fertile female body, combined with IVF technology that allows for egg harvesting and surrogacy, creates conflict between generations of women. Older women with more power and resources put their interests ahead of younger women’s and make up for their past mistakes or misfortunes by risking the health and well-being of their successors.

The attack comes from close range—dressed in words of altruism and generosity. The women who seek other women’s children often carried the torch for gender equality, women’s rights, and so many other wins for their side in the gender wars. Out of respect for their ambition and challenge to the glass ceiling, younger women feel pressured to give their children to older women as gestures of appreciation for their life trajectories. Perhaps these women anticipate a similar trajectory for themselves and donate away their children in hopes that someone will do the same for them in the future—a form of paying it forward.

Our gay friends and family members may now also be after our daughters’ bodies. These are the only men in the world we thought we could trust because they weren’t interested in our bodies. That is, until they grew older and discovered they wanted to be parents. Today, more and more often, gay men are using egg donors and surrogates to create motherless children on purpose.

Toleration of these attempts to create families follows a timeline of slipped slopes and fallen barriers. If heterosexual couples can use sperm donors to create children who are separated from their biological fathers, so the logic goes, then lesbians should be able to do the same thing. To them, it’s not biology that matters—kids just need two parents. And if lesbians use sperm donors to create fatherless children, then it’s only equal and fair for gay men to be able to use egg donors and surrogates to create motherless children too. Because again, it’s not biology that matters; kids just need two parents. At present, all those who believe in gender equality rather than gender complementarity are being urged to accept this often violent (against women) form of third-party reproduction.

Proponents of redefining marriage call marriage equality “the civil rights struggle of our time.” TV shows like The New Normal promote surrogacy arrangements with dialogue like “a family is a family, and love is love.” Characters that criticize the use of surrogacy and egg donation are explicitly depicted as unsympathetic, racist, closed-minded bigots.

What these shows (and other memes) do is insist that in order to be a friend to gay people, one must approve, or at least stay neutral toward, all forms of third-party reproduction.

So now, young women must do more than simply defend themselves against aggressive heterosexual males who want to use them for sex. They must also navigate a world filled with new, never-before-seen predators—people they thought they could trust—who aggressively target them for their eggs and wombs.

Whether you can grasp it or not, men do have sex without wanting to impregnate someone.

So procreating IS NOT the driving factor.

Procreation is THE fundamental driving factor. You're mixing up the subconscious and instincts with pleasure and desire. Just compare it to eating. People eat fundamentally because they need to survive. The fact that food tastes good is simply a biological, genetic construct to aid in the survival of the species. People eat on the conscious level because food tastes good and it feels good to eat. But the only reason our bodies were designed to like the taste of food was because it was necessary to help us survive. Sex is exactly the same except survival of the individual is replaced by survival of the species.

Geez Ramius, you folks look more like junior high school nincompoops by the post.

You really do need to reach down inside yourself and gasp the fact that biology cannot drive every move of your life.

The Left believes we are not people of choice. They believe we are people who must join the collective or be labeled this or that.

And so far, you folks have bit off on that hook line and sinker with regard to this issue.

I’m an individual. I control my actions. I evaluate what I do and why I do it.

You do not, at least not yet you don’t.

You can tell me why you do things. You cannot tell me why I do them.

By far, men have always been the main buyers of sexual access to fertile females. Women virtually never pay for sexual access to either gender. Women and girls make up the overwhelming majority of prostitutes and escorts, and men overwhelmingly make up the clientele. This is true for every human culture, in every period in history. And it has everything to do with reproduction and the scarcity of the fertile female.

Horse pucky. It has everything to do with the reality that if a woman wants to fool around, she can always find a willing guy. If a guy wants to fool around, for many men they can seldom find a willing woman.

This is true in no small part because the sexual experience is different for men and women. LINK

This was my first post on this thread. Since this post I have had a number of folks jump in to tell me I'm all wet, when I claim sex is undeniably NOT ALWAYS RELATED to reproduction.

The absurdity of the first and last statement above, started this all off.

Read the parts in red above.

In the first part, the premise is that men have always been the main buyer of sexual access to fertile females. If the guy had cut that down a bit, left out "fertile females", I wouldn't have addressed the absurdity of his first point. Fertile females? Really? Good grief!

In the second part, the premise is that men purchase access with reproductive intent, and with the scarcity of the fertile female in mind. Reproductive intent? Scarcity of the fertile female? Good heavens this guy is dense when it comes to purchased sex.

Men don't buy access to fertile females. Men buy access to attractive women so they can have sex with them. Please, lets see a show of hands from people who know of men who go to brothel's to purchase time with women to get them pregnant so he can have offspring. What? I don't see any hands. What gives? What gives, is that it was a sophomoric, ill thought out, absurd, and assinine comment.

If the case would have been made here that men become successful to attract women, and that there was a tacit monetary component to the paring up, and getting married, I wouldn't have had a major objection. That is a part of reality. But then that's NOT what the writer was addressing is it?

No, the writer was addressing prostitutes and the men who purchase their time and sexual access.

Are men buying access to fertile females? No. Are they buying access for reproduction? No. They are purchasing access with attractive willing women so they can have sex.

This has absolutely nothing to do with reproduction and the scarcity of the fertile female.

So bartender, a man walks into a brothel and says, "Is anyone here fertile and willing to reproduce?"

Give me a fricken break folks.

You are both quite wrong. There is a distinct difference in the desire to have sex and the desire to have a child, and societal forces have noting to do with the difference. If you were right maternity wards would be filled with men ogling newborns in the same numbers that go to strip clubs. Sexual acts that do not include the possibility of reproduction would not be desired. There would be no fetishes. There would be no homosexual sex.

This article starts with a premise and then wastes a lot of words trying to justify that premise, even though it is false. Reminds me of the Communist Manifesto, just shorter.

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