I didn’t want to write about sperm racing.

Sperm racing, to me, represents what’s wrong with American culture - while also telling us a lot about what’s going on with boys & men. Which is why I’m writing about it, despite my deep desire to not give these guys any additional attention.

In case you missed it, a 17-year-old boy spearheaded a sperm racing contest that made headlines. After the kid got kicked out of school (for taking fundraising calls in the bathroom, according to this reporter), billionaire tech bros asked for his craziest idea.

Pause there for a minute: The school/school system didn’t know what to do with an entrepreneurial 17-year-old. So they kicked him out of school. There may be more to the story than that; I suspect there is. But this remains: 17-year-old male didn’t fit into the dominant school culture. School rejected him; tech bros welcomed him.

See any parallels there? Broadly speaking, schools aren’t serving our boys well. Boys don’t feel welcome or safe in school — but the internet and tech bros are welcoming them with open arms.

Our entrepreneurial 17-year-old pitches competitive sperm racing, expecting the idea to flop. Tech bros loved it. More than a million dollars later, sperm racing is a thing. Why? Well, because how better to prove/demonstrate your masculinity than by racing sperm? By literally testing and demonstrating the dominance of your sperm?

How better to make money from/capture the interest of boys and young men than by feeding anxiety about their manliness? See, while the sperm race was ostensibly to draw attention to declining male fertility,