Ginger-haired baby. Photo credit: .melanie
The world’s largest sperm bank is turning away redhead sperm donors because demand for the progeny is so low.
Demand for redhead donors is so small that Denmark-based Cryos International has said they needn’t bother donating, reported Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet. Ole Schou, Cryos’s director, said that there had been a surge in donations in recent years, allowing the facility to become much more picky about its donors. Cryos’s stores have now reached their peak capacity of 70 litres of semen, and has a waiting list of 600 donors.
“There are too many redheads in relation to demand,” Schou told Ekstrabladet, reported The Daily Telegraph. “I do not think you chose a redhead, unless the partner – for example, the sterile male – has red hair, or because the lone woman has a preference for redheads. And that’s perhaps not so many, especially in the latter case.” Schou said the only reliable demand for sperm from redheaded donors comes from Ireland, where he said it sold “like hot cakes.” Donors with brown eyes and brown hair are highly prized because of the bank’s many customers in Greece, Italy, and Spain. One hard-to-come-by sperm variety is Indian, because India forbids the exportation of eggs or sperm.
Sperm from redhead donors sells “like hot cakes” in Ireland.
“Can we wash away redhead bigotry, please?” asked Matthew Bell at The Independent, who said that the “shoulder-shrugging indifference which the news has been met” is “astonishing.” Bell reported that a recent poll found that 67 percent of people think anti-ginger sentiment is a form of racism. “But I have yet to hear of any protest riots erupting on the streets of Copenhagen.” Bell argued that “gingerism is nothing new. It probably dates back to the anti-Irish sentiment of the 19th century or before, when the Irish were regarded as ethnically inferior.” Despite his outrage, Bell understood why demand is low: “Given the choice, how likely is it that you would plump for the one colour guaranteed to come with freckles and a lifetime of low-level bullying?”
Is ‘gingerism’ on the rise?
Not so fashionable after all. “We always thought having red hair was fashionable, at least that’s what Interview Magazine told us, but it turns out nobody wants ginger babies anymore,” said a shocked Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire. She wondered “why anyone wouldn’t want a baby with beautiful strawberry locks. Perhaps it has something to do with the teasing red-headed children sometimes face? Or maybe it has to do with this New York Times piece that claims red heads are more sensitive to physical pain?”
Would you want a redhead baby?
Discrimination. “Apparently being in a special club with the likes of Julianne Moore, Conan O’Brien, and Dana Scully doesn’t mean redheads have it easy,” lamented Jezebel, which noted that, “everyday our flame-haired friends are experiencing discrimination when they try to make a donation at the sperm bank.”
