'One of the good guys': sperm donor masculinity and the falling Danish sperm count discourse

Sperm banks in Denmark produce and export donor semen worldwide. The role of the sperm bank is to provide high-quality, safe semen from desirable donors. However, over the last 20 years, global sperm counts are reported to be falling. Along with these discourses comes the implication that poor fertility is a personal failing, which implies a conflation of 'fertility' with 'potency'. This paper draws on qualitative research with Danish sperm donors to explore how donors construct their identities as donors and as the producers of 'good sperm'. Accounts of the drive to produce the best sperm possible and the resultant confidence boost are bound up in ideas about masculine potency and potential and bodily performance and set against a backdrop of a moral panic surrounding the apparently declining Danish sperm count.