World's biggest sperm bank, Cryos, tells redheads: We don't want your semen

[Renew Deal]

The world's largest sperm bank is telling redheads to keep their semen.

Demand for ginger-haired donors is so low that Cryos International says they needn't bother donating.

"There are too many redheads in relation to demand," Ole Schou, the director of Cryos, told the Danish newspaper, Ekstrabladet, according to London's Telegraph.

Men with scarlett manes sell "like hot cakes" in Ireland, Schou said, but that's about it.
<snip>

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2011/09/18/2011-09-18_worlds_biggest_sperm_bank_cryos_tells_redheads_we_dont_need_your_semen_.html

[AngryAmish]

1. nobody likes gingers

[trumad]

4. They do have souls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Owf9U19Nc

[whathehell]

8. Really?....The number of them (some shade of red) on movie stars and models

would seem to argue otherwise...My sister, who is attractive, but not beautiful, is a flaming redhead and

over the course of her life, has five marriage proposals, four of which she accepted.

I thought the "ginger" aversion was mainly a Brit thing.

[Angleae]

41. Women redheads are desired, men not nearly as much.

[whathehell]

43. I was thinking that..

Although there are lots of red haired men

who are quite attractive -- Lawrence O'Donnell

is one who comes to mind.

[whathehell]

13. Hmmm....Don't know about that...I have a shade of red hair often called "copper" or auburn

slong with brown eyes, an unusual combination,

and I, if I DO say so myself,

never lacked admirers of the opposite sex.:party:

[Frosty1]

18. I had a girlfriend who hated redheads

It was completely irrational but she just automatically disliked them. Her only grandchild whom she loves dearly was born a redhead... karma or divine justice perhaps?

[onpatrol98]

23. LOL

divine justice...I bet plenty of democrats of children who look like "W".

:rofl:

[shanti]

27. really.....

:eyes: there are lots of men who love redheads. i'm not a redhead, but two of my exes expressed a desire for a redhead above all.

my grandmother lusted for a redheaded grandchild, but never got one. true red is actually the rarest hair color, much rarer than blonde.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. What is it about redheads that repel non-redheads?

My friend wanted to adopt and was borderline "too old". She got a call, saying that there was an "undesirable" infant, would she take him? My friend expected a child with a physical or mental challenge and accepted without asking. She later discovered that the "undesirable" factor was her son was a redhead.

Go figure.

I would have ASKED FOR a redhead . . . .

[Bryn]

3. I am not a redhead, but I think redheads are beautiful!

What a shame!

[Lucian]

5. I love redheaded women.

I don't understand why some people don't.

:shrug:

[Randypiper]

34. Terry Gross on FRESH AIR interviewing Melissa Leo

GROSS: And your hair, which is so often long and red, did you have long, red hair when you were a teenager?
Ms. LEO: I had - yes, pretty much. Pretty much, I've had the head of hair that has preceded much of me through much of my career.
GROSS: Was red hair a good thing or a bad thing when you were growing up? Some kids get teased for it.
Ms. LEO: I had so little contact with other children when I was little that I don't really know. They might have had an issue with it. If they did, I didn't notice.
As I got - you know, there was one opportunity many years ago that I dyed it brunette. And that experience taught me something about myself that I would not have learned without dying my hair brown, which is that people judge.
As a brown-haired woman, I walked out of the hotel in Rhode Island, and people looked me in the eye and greeted me good morning. And for me, that was astonishing. It had never happened in my red-headed life.
GROSS: Why not?
Ms. LEO: Because people judge a book by its color, and if I wasn't sure, by the time I'd done these two blondes of Lois Riley and Alice Ward and walked in the world not just in costume but, you know, on off days as a blonde, people not only look you in the eye and say good morning, men and women both come up and touch you and ask you very intimately how are you today.
GROSS: Wait, so...
Ms. LEO: A redhead, on the other hand, is someone who will steal your husband, has a fiery temper, and people tend to cross the street when they see a redhead coming.

[undergroundpanther]

42. My family is full of redheads

when we have a family reunion there is the inter-generational redheads pic, every time there's no less than 30 people in it babies to the old folks..red runs through our family it's everywhere.I wasen't one of the natural redheads but one time my hair was dyed neon red,with manic panic , and my mowhawk was a foot high and that year I was in the redhead photo,for fun.

[whathehell]

44. Mine too....

All four of my immediate family -- Both parents, and my sister and me -- all had some shade of red hair.

[William769]

6. Such stupidity.

I find redheads HOT!

[LeftinOH]

7. People who get a "donation" from a non-redhead may end up with a redheaded child,

anyway. Then what?

[pipi_k]

9. Exactly...

Both my parents had brown eyes and very dark hair.

Two of my (full) siblings resemble our parents.

I'm the only one with lighter hair and blue/grey eyes.

And my hair at times has brassy/red undertones to it in the sunlight. I have to use a special purple/blue shampoo to keep the brassiness away because it makes my skin look ruddy.

Anyone who wanted a pure dark-eyed, dark-haired kid would have been disappointed in my looks had they used my dad's Native American appearance as a guideline.

[whathehell]

10. Quite true....My redheaded sister married a brunette and had TWO brown haired children, however

when the brunette guy married again, he got two redheaded

children and his second wife was NOT a rehead!...Go figure.

[era veteran]

11. I had fire engine red hair, it's blond/white/silver now.

I took so many ass whoppings for just having red hair. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Makes you different a bit though after all that character building.

[whathehell]

12. Is this more of a "regional" thing?...I notice you're from Kentucky and I

believe I heard of another kid from that area

who suffered a similar fate because of hair color.

Freaking A...It's SO stupid!

[era veteran]

33. It would be another one of our peculiarities.

Kentucky, originally settled Scotch-Irish, has more redheads than anywhere else in the States. Kentucky also joined the South during reconstruction so there you go.
It probably didn't help that my middle name is Francis and first name, nickname, Dick.

[whathehell]

38. Yes, you are probably right

and it certainly is peculiar for a state

with a maximum amount of redheads

to have that prejudice.

As the inimitable Jim Morrison said: People are strange.:shrug:

[formercia]

14. "Men with scarlett manes sell "like hot cakes" in Ireland"

Should that read: "like hot baby cakes?"

[SoCalDem]

15. Devil's advocate here..

Global warming issues mean less ozone layer & more skin cancers.. Red headed people often come along with fair skin, and a proclivity for sunburning..

and people in the market for "bought sperm" tend to be people who also might want to have their offspring resemble them. Since red-headed people are already a "minority", maybe that's at the heart of the issue.

:)

[jaded_old_cynic]

22. This is true.

My husband was a redhead who never liked to use sunblock. He passed away from metastatic melanoma in '06 at age 48.

REDHEADS USE YOUR SUNBLOCK!

[hunter]

37. I don't like my own white skin.

I grew up in Southern California when everyone thought a tan was healthy. I was burned badly many times when I was a kid. Lots of my skin now looks like brown and white speckled leather with weird bumps and depressions.

Waiting for pathology reports after my doctor cuts chunks out of me sucks.

My blond-some-red-haired-blue-eyed genes were meant for a cool, cloudy place.

[Ilsa]

16. I love red hair and wish I had been born with it.

I'd dye my hair red, but I don't have the skin tone for it. I would certainly have loved having redheaded kids, too. Not that I would live them any more than my two brunette boys.

[laundry_queen]

17. That's stupid!

Never understood that view about redheads. I love red hair. Used to wish I had it, LOL. Always regretted the redhead boyfriend that got away, as I always wanted redheaded kids.

And yeah, even non-redheads can make redheaded babies. My grandparents, both brunettes, had 8 kids. Out of 8 kids they had 1 redhead and 1 blonde.

Wasn't there some study that said within a few more generations redheads will be nearly 'extinct' as it's a mostly a recessive gene? They should be saving that sperm for the future, lol.

[Throckmorton]

19. Ive always found them to be a turn on

I must be a freak or something.

[shanti]

28. blondes and reds

often end up in the same family, i've noticed. i have cousins like that.

[B2G]

20. Two words

Prince Harry.

[CJCRANE]

21. Red hair is a Celtic trait.

Celts are in the minority everywhere except Ireland and Scotland.

I assume people usually go for the traits that are common for their own race.

[lapislzi]

24. Correction:

True "Celtic" people are small and dark of hair and eye. Red hair and larger body type were introduced to the British Isles during the Viking raids of the early Middle Ages. The same is true of Normandy, which was overrun by Norsemen around the same time. Normandy's neighbor, Brittany, remained Celtic.

You are correct that red hair is now common in the British Isles, but it's not native to them.

[pipi_k]

31. This is what happened, I think...

in my family. Or one side of it.

Some of my dad's ancestors came from Normandy. The family is mostly dark-haired with a few light hairs, but those with lighter hair, like myself, have brassy red undertones.

It's the Viking in us

The other ancestors came from Brittany, and that's where the dark eyes and hair come in. Along with some Micmac blood in Canada.

[geardaddy]

46. Yep, that's true.

If you look at most Welsh people, they're dark-haired and dark-eyed. There are some red heads near the areas that were raided by Irish/Viking raiders.

[GreenPartyVoter]

36. lapislzi is correct on how red hair turned up in Ireland and Scotland. Just for fun,

I would also like to point out that the Celtic cultural lands at their height encompassed a lot of continental Europe. :)



http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/pre_norman_history/iron_age.html

[TheManInTheMac]

25. Nobody wants my semen either.

Sigh...

[LibertyLover]

26. I'm a classic Irish red head

with fair, freckled skin, green eyes and a tendancy to sunburn. I love my hair color and wouldn't trade it. I confess that nowadays I need help from L'Oreal to keep the gray away, but I would have loved to have had a child with red hair.

[SoapBox]

29. Red hair...

ooooo, sexy!

[MilesColtrane]

30. deleted

[Zywiec]

32. Kick

[lunatica]

35. My father was a redhead. Auburn red

[Poll_Blind]

39. A pseudoscientific theory in response to the anecdotes involving certain people not liking redheads:

There are a number of factors involved with how one human being views another. Some of this can be attributed to differences in culture and communication styles. For instance, I have read that Asian cultures typically communicate much more through the eyes than through the rest of the face. To a Westerner, who is more used to those around them communicating more facially (as opposed to an area localized in the eyes and directly around them), Asians may seem cooler, more expressionless.

Similarly, there is a phenomenon known as the "Uncanny Valley". I'll just quote from its Wiki page to speed things up:

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's human likeness.

Outside of computer animation and robotics I believe the concept has wider application in subtle and sometimes unexplainable reactions that people or groups of people have toward others and wider issues involving xenophobia and racism. Now, this hypothesis only goes so far and is really more of something to consider: People who have red or blonde hair, especially those who have a combination of strongly different skin tone (i.e. very pale or semi-translucent), especially in combination with extremely light or sparse eyebrow hair, may induce an unconscious "Uncanny Valley" response in those to whom the differences vary the greatest from their own exposure.

If the weight of the differences, collectively, between the viewer and the viewed are great enough but not too great, an "uncanny valley" response may be triggered. It's my belief that while an African or Asian or European may appear acceptable to a viewer, there are some people who may find the differences of red haired, pale-skinned or very very blonde Caucasians to be imperceptibly viewed as abnormal and thus untrustworthy, evil or undesirable in some way.

Just a thought. Hope I expressed that clearly enough to get the point across.

PB

[whathehell]

45. Interesting article on red haired people, including the origins of some negative bias.

There is much speculation that the prejudice against "gingers", a British term,

may have started in Britain as part of their anti-Irish, generally anti-celtic

attitudes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair

[WildEyedLiberal]

40. I think redhaired men are GORGEOUS

Still holding out for one. These people are idiots.