Everywhere, Karyn's cyberbegging spawn...

January 7, 2003 12:14 PM

Latest cyberbegging: Help 2 nice Boston lesbians make a baby"What we're saving up for is SPERM! That's right ... those little swimmers cost a bundle...the sperm itself, which heterosexual women get for free all the time, intentionally or otherwise, costs a bundle! Upwards of $250 for a single shot." It seems to me that there might be...cheaper methods, but I would sooner give the 2 nice girls $ than this guy: "I don't have love, don't have career, the only thing is to pay more debts. now, I got very bad fever, and I could feel this world is gray. "
posted by troutfishing (51 comments total)

And when baby comes all the expenses are finally over!
posted by four panels at 12:20 PM on January 7, 2003

There's an obvious win-win solution in this combination of posts, troutfishing. I won't insult anyone's intelligence by spelling it out.
posted by soyjoy at 12:22 PM on January 7, 2003

Lesbian women can get sperm for free too.
posted by Witty at 12:29 PM on January 7, 2003

I'm part of a lesbian couple and would love to have children but it is EXTREMELY expensive and can take years of doctor's visits and awkward requests to the men in our lives and legal documents to actually get pregnant. It's amazing to me how straight people take all that sperm for granted. A couple of drinks, a couch, and it's done. The couple that put this site together is at least using a sense of humor to get what they need. I admire their gumption.
posted by pomegranate at 12:34 PM on January 7, 2003

And when baby comes all the expenses are finally over!
Seriously. Them what begs for sperm today, will beg for pampers, etc. tomorrow. If it's not a scam, it's certainly two people who aren't ready to care for a child.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:35 PM on January 7, 2003

sweet christ, these two could stand to be a bit more resourceful. this town is filled with a) sperm-filled college and grad students who could be bought off for beer money, b) friendly gay guys who make great uncles/male role models/donor-dads with no strings attached, and c) higher quality amateur web designers who could give this site a polish. judging by their free use of emoticons, i think i'd rather send the Raelians money. maybe they should think about getting a dog instead.
posted by serafinapekkala at 12:38 PM on January 7, 2003

sweet christ, these two could stand to be a bit more resourceful. this town is filled with a) sperm-filled college and grad students who could be bought off for beer money, b) friendly gay guys who make great uncles/male role models/donor-dads with no strings attached, and c) higher quality amateur web designers who could give this site a polish. judging by their free use of emoticons, i think i'd rather send the Raelians money. maybe they should think about getting a dog instead.
posted by serafinapekkala at 12:39 PM on January 7, 2003

GACK! double post! apologies...
posted by serafinapekkala at 12:39 PM on January 7, 2003

SoyJoy - maybe! - but as a mother-to-be I would be more than a little dubious of Mr. "I could feel this world is gray' 's DNA.
posted by troutfishing at 12:40 PM on January 7, 2003

here's what i meant to post as #2:

would love to have children but it is EXTREMELY expensive... straight people take all that sperm for granted

actually, i think *fertile* people take sperm for granted. it can be just as frustrating to be in a het relationship and not be able to conceive...maybe more so. that's why there's this crazy program called ADOPTION of children who *already exist * and need parents, right? (/somewhat bitter)
posted by serafinapekkala at 12:43 PM on January 7, 2003

Does it cost so much money for the actual man-juice itself, or for the incidental costs of, erm, handling and storage and such?

I vaguely remember seeing a doco on sperm banks, and as I recall the cheaper option once the goo had actually been aquired was basically turkey-bastering at home. I'm with serafinapekkala here - if the associated pre-fertilization medical costs are minimal, I would think these women would be able to find a suitable donor (if not anonymously, which may be the point?) relatively easily...
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:46 PM on January 7, 2003

a) sperm-filled college and grad students who could be bought off for beer money, b) friendly gay guys who make great uncles/male role models/donor-dads with no strings attached,

If a random woman asked me to get her pregnant, I would run as fast as possible in the other direction. Even if she assured me I would not be expected to support the child, the risk is too great. The laws are all slanted toward the mother, and if she decides later that she needs my financial support (or is simply lying from the get-go), I can be made to pay. Any man with a brain in his head would be reluctant to get involved in something like this.
posted by kindall at 12:48 PM on January 7, 2003

A friend and her partner are currently in the same situation of trying to get pregnant. I was shocked to find out how costly the process is, and they are even getting the sperm for free from the gay best friend who will be assuming an 'uncle' role. Apparently, the storage and 'distribution' of sperm is quite expensive. I do have sympathy for anyone going through the process. However, four panels is exactly right - it hardly gets less expensive when the baby is delivered. I hope this couple is not in complete financial denial.
posted by widdershins at 12:52 PM on January 7, 2003

I've seen the turkey-bastering technique with a cow before. Crazy stuff. This ice-cream truck pulls up, only it's not carrying ice cream. Then the driver loads up this gun-like device (like a forceful turkey baster), and ::boom::, it's all over but the calving.
posted by Fabulon7 at 12:52 PM on January 7, 2003

The second link is just loaded with Babelfish poetry. My fave, from the "my promise" page: "I am honest, and if I lie to you, I will not spend time on my promises, please believe me!" Genius, if unintentional.

I'm still not buying a hat/scarf set tho'. Maybe if he put out a book instead...
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:52 PM on January 7, 2003

Apparently, the storage and 'distribution' of sperm is quite expensive.

Widdershins, I'm confused. I can understand why artificial "distribution" costs might be accrued, but why storage, if they've picked the donor? Can't he act as, um "self-storage" until needed?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:58 PM on January 7, 2003

Yes P, but just think, you could have your own three stunningly designed webpages, and the inestimable pleasure of having them posted at "wowpicker.com/PinkStainlessTail.aspx". How can you pass that up?
posted by MidasMulligan at 1:00 PM on January 7, 2003

and as I recall the cheaper option once the goo had actually been aquired was basically turkey-bastering at home.

The problem is, for some lesbians, sperm=kriptonite. DIY is ideologically prohibited. (and if it wasn't they could just get drunk on the proverbial couch)
posted by BentPenguin at 1:01 PM on January 7, 2003

Except, serafinapekkala, in my state (Texas) there is legislation up for vote this winter that would deny me the opportunity to adopt because of my sexuality.
posted by pomegranate at 1:02 PM on January 7, 2003

If a random woman asked me to get her pregnant, I would run as fast as possible in the other direction.

and wise would you be. but were you a penurious college lad in Boston, you could visit one of several local labs advertising in all the student papers "We Pay Ca$h 4 Sperm," sign a confidentiality form, get your $50, and be on your way, and for all you knew *several* random women in the future would bear your unnknowing offspring. what i meant to suggest to "Mary" and "Leah," rather jokingly, was to circumvent CryoBank and advertise directly and then get themselves a turkey baster. couples looking for donor eggs and surrogate moms do this (the advertising, not the basting) all the time.

i can be made to pay

not if you waive/terminate your parental rights. there are legal procedures out there to protect the rights of both mothers *and* pop (and BTW the laws are "slanted towards the mother" for some historical reasons, if you ask me), and if the *moms* weren't up front about not wanting future involvement of the dad then the dad would rightly have second thoughts.
posted by serafinapekkala at 1:02 PM on January 7, 2003

pomegranate: d'oh! sorry...didn't mean to trivialize this issue, not the same here in MA. :- (
posted by serafinapekkala at 1:05 PM on January 7, 2003

Pink, I don't have the excruciating details, but from what I understand, the 'turkey baster at home' didn't work. And they're obviously not about to get inseminated the traditional way. So that means that a clinic has to be involved, and I believe my friend said they have to store the sperm first. It's apparently not an option to have the donor produce the sperm, then have the doctor immediately inseminate the woman.

Wow, things get complicated, don't they?
posted by widdershins at 1:08 PM on January 7, 2003

The mind whirls. Good luck to them at any rate!
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 1:10 PM on January 7, 2003

And when baby comes all the expenses are finally over!


Here here!! Their diaper bill alone in one month is going to be $250. These women are in no way financially ready to have a child. Or they just want someone else to foot the bill because they are too lazy to get second jobs to earn a little extra cash for something that is so important to them. I can think of more creative ways to acquire some sperm than asking strangers to send me a dollar.

Call it God, call it the universe, but something is sending these women the message that this is not the time for them to be having a child. But of course they will not pay attention to those signs.
posted by archimago at 1:23 PM on January 7, 2003

It's amazing to me how straight people take all that sperm for granted

i'm forever spewing it around, you'd think if there were actually a market for it i'd have been kidnapped or something.
posted by quonsar at 1:33 PM on January 7, 2003

insert joke about not being able to give the stuff away here...
posted by jbelshaw at 1:35 PM on January 7, 2003

Great, the latest offspring of the Save Karyn mindset.
posted by NortonDC at 1:42 PM on January 7, 2003

Aren't sperm banks for people who can't physically have children?
posted by Witty at 1:45 PM on January 7, 2003

Are you suggesting that the nice lesbians use parthenogenesis, Witty?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 1:50 PM on January 7, 2003

Archimago -- you're paying WAY TOO MUCH for diapers. We get diapers delivered to our door twice a week for, oh, a 3rd of the price you quoted. Nice diapers.

Children are 'spensive, no doubt, but I wouldn't want you to keep getting ripped off. As for interpretting the messages of the universe, I think you should look into your service on that one as well, but it's all a shady business from what I hear.
posted by daver at 2:21 PM on January 7, 2003

I'm suggesting that I don't feel sorry for any woman that is ABLE to have children, but can't afford to do it any other way than nature intended.
posted by Witty at 2:23 PM on January 7, 2003

Aren't sperm banks for people who can't physically have children?

Unless human biology has changed radically since I wasn't looking, lesbian couples can't physically have children.
posted by kindall at 2:24 PM on January 7, 2003

That too.
posted by Witty at 2:34 PM on January 7, 2003

Lesbian couples can physically have children, they just can't create children. On their own. Without outside intervention.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:37 PM on January 7, 2003

Unless human biology has changed radically since I wasn't looking, lesbian couples can't physically have children.

Unless human biology has changed radically since I wasn't looking, lesbian couples can physically have children.

Homosexuality does not equal sterility.
posted by widdershins at 2:37 PM on January 7, 2003

I can hardly wait till their PO Box is up and running...
posted by LowDog at 2:38 PM on January 7, 2003

Any man with a brain in his head would be reluctant to get involved in something like this.

Hear hear - I am sure you cannot "opt out" of your responsibilities as a parent, otherwise many men would have done so (and not a few women). Parental responsibilities and parental rights are not tied together, either - you can he held responsible without having any rights. The laws are slanted toward women (for some good reasons and many bad ones) and the donor could find himself with a lifelong financial burden for doing someone a favour.

If they are keen enough to have children, they should be willing to use the "direct injection" method of insemination (just lie back and think of England), which would be no more embarrassing and undignified than many procedures women endure all the time, I would have though.
posted by dg at 3:01 PM on January 7, 2003

Unless human biology has changed radically since I wasn't looking, lesbian couples can physically have children.


individual lesbians can physically have children. Lesbian couples cannot. If a married couple discovers that they're infertile because the male is not producing enough sperm, how likely do you think it is that they'll invite a male friend of theirs to have sex with the wife in order to produce the child? Or do you think they'll go to a clinic? it's the same situation here - there's a partner capable of being impregnated but no partner capable of producing sperm. Some people are comfortable with a kind of casual interpersonal solution, while others will want doctors and authorities to make the whole thing more normal and official and to avoid the complications of extra-marital sex.
posted by mdn at 3:14 PM on January 7, 2003

If they were a heterosexual couple, would they be begging for help with more "regular" maternity costs? What sort of reaction would they have if that were the case? Would you feel differently about it?

I'd feel the same either way: these people aren't responsible enough to be parents.
posted by KiloHeavy at 3:41 PM on January 7, 2003

troutfishing: but I would sooner give the 2 nice girls $ than this guy: "I don't have love, don't have career, the only thing is to pay more debts. now, I got very bad fever, and I could feel this world is gray. "

Why? Seems we have on one hand two healthy lesbians complaining they can't find free sperm or the cash to get pregnant, in the middle of Boston. Obviously, they are retarded morons who shouldn't be reproducing anyway. ;)

On the other hand, we have a dude who isn't even begging for free cash, but saying "please, help me me and buy one of my scarves if you like them" (at a pretty fucking cheap price, too), because he put his own assets at risk to raise the cash to try to become an entrepreneur and pay off his student loans. Life dealt him an unlucky blow with the late shipment, and he apparently pounded the pavement selling each piece individually in hopes of paying off his loan and even making a profit. At least the second guy is doing something, and quite frankly his story is a lot more sad and worthy of pity and help. When he writes about the anger and frustration and hopelessness he feels, or the slight hope he felt when they sold 7 dozen walking around Queens, or how despondant he feels that his girlfriend and "partner" left at the first sign of trouble... well that fucking moves me, more than "Hi, we're nice dykes! All you horny guys like lipstick lesbians right (no pics, though- just pretend we look like those Penthouse photosets!), so please help us Save Karyn's Fetus because we don't want a kid bad enough to get, like, a second job or cut into our Bloomingdale's spending!!"

Odd that people like MidasMulligan, normally the bastion of Free Market Uber Alles when it comes to the corporations he fellates on a daily basis, isn't championing this guy's risk-taking in buying the scarves, or trying to set up a basic if not- perfectly- pretty-and-Amazon-esque online retailing store. All MM can do is throw a pithy comment about getting a free web-designed page from the guy (hey, and like a good business person this fellow is trying everything he can to sell his product and not get beaten up or worse because the risk he took in the Land of Opportunity bit him in the ass). Midas, if you don't post a follow-up in this thread about how you admire the guy for at least trying... well. I've had my disagreements with you in the past, but I'll be genuinely hurt if this is really truly what you're made of.

But really, it's troutfishing that pissed me off... troutfishing, what the fuck were you thinking? Who are you, Howard fucking Stern, that two women trying to get knocked up is more heart-rending than an immigrant who came here to get an education and is trying to pay off his loans and burdens with good old fashioned hard work and entrepreneurial spirit? What an asshole, tf... >:(

People make me sick. TF, you made me sick. How nice that you can rally a voice for the voiceless in other threads, but when confronting the reality of someone with broken english who maybe isn't photogenic enough, your liberalism is tossed away like yesterday's coffee grinds.
posted by hincandenza at 4:09 PM on January 7, 2003

Strictly on the monetary side of the discussion. It's possible that the couple in question can continue running the business on their own incomes once it is operational - they are just having trouble raising the start up money. The VC market is not what it used to be. They do have the advantage of being "first movers" in this particular space (Karyn did not occupy the same niche) although clearly that advantage isn't what it used to be.
posted by dhacker at 4:33 PM on January 7, 2003

hincandenza - I'm sorry if I pissed you off! - I apparently didn't read the (somewhat long) text close enough. It struck me (on a cursory scan) as the complaining of a small time entepreneur whose quick buck scheme turned sour, and also gave me the visceral feeling of a bad rendition of the "Nigerian scam" email stories I get (from all over the world these days, and some of which may even be legitimate appeals for help for all I know). It didn't help that I ran across the link to the site on an online free classified. It was termed "free web design" and I was curious about who was offering "free web design" -and that link brought me to the 'desperate appeal' and I thought to myself "hmm...disengenuous link", as well as "why not just advertise the scarves directly?"

Anyway, perhaps I'm getting hardened to online desperate appeals? I guess I'll have to go back and reread the site text and see what I think on second glance.
posted by troutfishing at 4:52 PM on January 7, 2003

If you're so self-absorbed that you need to replicate yourself to feel complete, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

If a pregnancy happens for a couple (no matter the genders involved) that's great (at least the first or second time it does). However, if it doesn't, that's just life. Deal. There's no reason why I should be paying into an insurance plan to subsidize someone else's arrogant need to reproduce, and an outright grub for pregnancy money is offensive. There are existing people who don't have enough to eat or a place to sleep. If you need a child that badly, adopt. If you want a baby immediately, it may have a different skin color from you. If you're adopting for the right reasons, that won't matter.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:13 PM on January 7, 2003

If a pregnancy happens for a couple (no matter the genders involved)

Uh... you do understand that's identical to saying "Gay people shouldn't reproduce", right? However, the adoption thing is a pretty cool idea- why don't these women adopt? Mass is relatively liberal, I'd suspect they could do so.

troutfishing: nah, I just had low blood sugar, don't mind me too much. :) I mean, it could very well be a hoax, but my reading was it was more sincere- and after all, it's not just "please send me a dollar", but "please buy these products/services I am offering". And it just really rubbed me the wrong way, because if it's sincere it's a pretty hard luck story, yet he's still plugging on and for whatever it's worth that seems more laudable than two women trying to buy some baby batter when either getting it free or following Curley's suggestion and adopting, are much easier and don't require cheesy online begging.
posted by hincandenza at 8:35 PM on January 7, 2003

Hincandenza - Well...I agree. I really don't like the cyberbegging at all...especially because it's almost never done by those really need it. I suspect that the way it tends to work is - the people who actually need help (and what's more, even earning it by selling scarves) don't have the time/money/education/access to computers (or whatever), the resources to achieve a high net profile. I suspect that, while the scarf man won't do very well (he could really use some web design help), the lesbian couple will get at least some of the money they need (slightly better site - still awfull, but a sensational site topic) . And those who go to bed hungry at night all around the world? No computers (or food) for them.......but Karyn is eating well, I'm sure.
posted by troutfishing at 8:55 PM on January 7, 2003

my dear friends,
without a photo, how can we be sure this is in fact a real lesbian couple?
Could we be seeing a nigerian lesbian scam ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:00 AM on January 8, 2003

$250 a pop?! To think that I've let all that money slip through my fingers over the years...
posted by horsewithnoname at 8:37 AM on January 8, 2003

$250 a pop seems cheap to me... when it often seems only one pop is needed to make it happen.

But aren't there enough daddy-free children in this country already anyway?
posted by Witty at 8:48 AM on January 8, 2003

If you're so self-absorbed that you need to replicate yourself to feel complete, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Possibly the dumbest thing I've seen posted in this thread. If our primary urge in life beyond survival weren't to pass on our own DNA then you probably wouldn't be around to post that comment. Your parents must be proud.

What better reason than to more fully complete their lives should prospective parents have for bearing a child? What could be a more loving reason? Love is finding the person that completes you and a child is the natural physical manifestation of that love. How can that be self-absorbed? This is not to say that an adopted child cannot be an even more profound expression of love. I'm also not accounting for all of the wrong reasons that people have have children for, but to call the urge to pass on your own DNA self-absorbed only distinguishes your naivete.
posted by BlueWolf at 11:05 AM on January 8, 2003

I didn't say that having children was self-absorbed (although if you stopped reading my post after that sentence you could think that). The operative word there is need. If it doesn't happen through traditional avenues, resign yourself to the fact that you won't have children with your genetics and adopt. Don't grovel for spooge money on the Web.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:05 PM on January 8, 2003

I did read the rest of your post. You stated that one was arrogant for having a need to reproduce. I simply quoted only the first line.

If you need a child that badly, adopt.

So I guess your parents just decided they needed a baby one day and ordered one from the stork. right? You make the decision to have a child sound a lot like the decision to go get a new washer/drier set. Even an adopted child should not be made to feel as if they are a commodity in this way.

Also, the urge to pass on your genes can be and often is a need as strong as the will to survive. Passing on ones genes is a method of survival.

However, if it doesn't, that's just life. Deal.

I'd like to point out that they are in fact dealing with it.
posted by BlueWolf at 5:00 PM on January 8, 2003