no one ever refers to women as "virile"

Some of my interest in the below topic may be related to my current endeavor of selling my eggs to a wealthy gay man in California, which is, all in all, a rather defiant act of fertility on everyone's part -- me for being an educated woman in any way involved in procreating in my mid-twenties, him for being gay and spending a great deal of money on the process, and the surrogate for (although the paperwork dances around it) selling her bodily services and thus putting a commercial value on work that women have heretofore done for free.

People have asked me whether I worry about my genes being "out there." My reply -- a very instinctive one -- has always been that I stand by my genes, and the more of them out there the better. This guy's going to get a baby one way or another, so it might as well have some Jen in it.

This is the same kind of view that motivates (whether consciously or merely biologically) the young men who have spent time "sowing their oats" since time immemorial, and count their babymamas with a sort of virile pride. I see no reason I shouldn't have the same impulse; until now, it has simply been impossible to physically carry out (and even now, it is, of course, substantially more difficult, but I get paid, instead of owing child support).

If I could impregnate men and make them walk around all swollen up with little Jen-babies ... I might have been doing it for years. Survival of the fittest, indeed.