site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2283 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 31, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

When a gay couple has a baby, how rude is it to ask which one is the biological parent?

Depends heavily on the couple and your relationship to them, along with the question you ask. A rando is going to feel like oblivious or even like an attack; a distant coworker or friend-of-friend is going to seem invasive and maybe clueless; and close friend, happy family, or long-time near coworker I’d expect all but the most cautious to find just awkward rather the mean… but it even then, there’s polite forms and less polite forms.

I’ll start with the caveat that for gay men, they might not know. There are some pragmatic arguments for certainty, but there’s social and relationship arguments for specifically obfuscating it even from yourself.

For most of the gay guys who get into surrogacy, be aware that ‘bio dad’ is entirely different a question than who’s the ‘real father’. Even for couples who did only use one semen source or where the parentage is going to be obvious, both guys are still dads, and that’s an important part of the mental framework. Anything that scrapes it is going to be much more unpleasant or unintentionally cruel than just the awkward normie question of ‘how they decided the genetic donor’.

Under that, be aware you’re asking about people’s reproductive lives. There’s a joke in straight comedy that congratulating a guy on his wife’s pregnancy is just a less crude way of brofisting and saying ‘nice creampie’. You’re not quite doing the same thing, because jerking off into a jar (usually) not part of their sex lives, but it’s still not something you should ask in a crowded space, in mixed company, in a business environment, or in front of kids, no matter how clinical you name it.

And the answer might well be either “none of your business” or two proud gay guys who have way more info than you wanted to know.

For lesbians it’s a little easier. Asking who carried isn’t actually the same thing as who is the biological mom, since lesbian ova transfer is a thing, but it’s a lot less loaded a question. Still not something I would ask random strangers at a Pride event, though.

… and I’ll also caveat that even today, a nonzero part of gay and lesbian couples with kids have them from past heterosexual relationships, or adopted the kid. So be aware that the answer could well be ‘neither’, or an entirely different minefield than the expected one.

I think it depends how phrase it and how well you know the couple. Maybe don’t say it like “So, whose sperm was it?” when you’re holding the baby.

Is there a reason you want to know though?

Is there a reason you want to know though?

What a weird question. Child legitimacy and family lineage has followed us around for millennia fueling scandal and intrigue. I mean, this hypothetical child will be born a bastard. Taking an unnatural approach such as two men bringing in a child to the household is bound to cause tensions in a culture that has only recently begun insisting this is perfectly okay.

Lots of things have followed us around for just as long. Doesn’t mean asking about them is reasonable.

“Hey, is your daughter a virgin?”

“How do you feel about your foreskin?”

“But can you prove you were born a free man?”

Are we talking about the reasonableness of asking or reasonableness of wanting to know? Am I to write a full defense of curiosity per se? Are we going to pretend that these social dynamics were wholly arbitrary figments of a stupider, worldwide people?

how rude is it to ask

I figured we were talking about the gap between curiosity and need-to-know. I’m not going to begrudge anyone the former.

I mean, this hypothetical child will be born a bastard.

A troublesome prospect if the child wants to inherit his noble father’s land and title. But AFAIK the adoptive parents are what matters legally so if the gay couple is married, I don’t think it counts as a “child out of wedlock”.

Although does anybody care about this in any developed western country? My parents weren’t married and that’s the case for >50% of children where I live. Nobody will seriously use the word “bastard” in that way unless they’re a medieval history enthusiast.

Taking an unnatural approach such as two men bringing in a child to the household is bound to cause tensions in a culture that has only recently begun insisting this is perfectly okay.

I think we’re a bit past the point of worrying about what’s natural and what’s unnatural in our hyper connected post industrial society where we’re utterly reliant on thinking rocks. Homosexual penguin couples have adopted and raised chicks (although eventually divorced), so if anything gay adoption is more natural than antibiotics and social media.

I don't see it as being about capital L legitimacy or anything like that, more about how to engage in normal observations about stuff like how a kid takes after their parents. Nobody particularly cares whether a kid has one parent's nose or whatever (apart from their parents, obviously), but those aspects still represent and embody small L lineage and legitimacy.

With straight parents the natural assumption is that they are the biological parents and so there's no question to ask, and explicitly asking who the "real" parent is would be liable to start a fight. With a gay couple it's a natural assumption that at least one of them isn't the biological parent for obvious reasons, and as such it's natural to be curious which one is. But it's usually rude to ask, hence OP's question of just how rude it would be.

If you think this is weird did you know in Iceland, citizens use a dating app that lets them know if they’re related to the person they’re seeing, out of fears of incest? It’s due to the extreme homogeneity of the population, but there’s a twist to it. There was a study specifically on the Icelandic population that showed that the healthiest and most reproductively successful couples there are third and fourth cousins (which only share < 1% of the same genetic makeup).

One argument in support of that reproductive logic is it may reduce a woman's chance of having a miscarriage that’s caused by immunological incompatibility between a mother and her child. Some individuals have a Rhesus factor on the surface of their RBC’s during a second pregnancy and she and the fetus could have incompatible blood cells (which triggers the mother's immune system to treat the fetus as a foreign intruder, causing a miscarriage.).

Still though. The idea is gross. There are a lot of very attractive women in my extended family. I have a cousin in my family who’s a gorgeous girl and we’ve been tight ever since we were growing up, but she was adopted at birth. Even then the idea is disgusting to me.

I have a cousin in my family who’s a gorgeous girl and we’ve been tight ever since we were growing up, but she was adopted at birth. Even then the idea is disgusting to me.

I think being close since childhood is the factor here? That’s definitely how the disgust evolved, a fourth cousin you only met as an adult is not going to cause the same response as an adoptive sibling.

Pretty much. We knew she was adopted from a very early age and so did she. My extended family is massive and spread throughout the whole US, with concentrations in certain pockets of the country. So whenever there was some kind of get together, we’d all balkanize and split into camps, and we’d whisper and talk “who the people over there by the lake are,” or “who are the kids on the back patio?,” because we didn’t know who these other family members were.

A lot of times the older cousins and adults introduced us all to each other and we became very friendly and open. Large groups of us would run to my grandfather’s game room down the hall or we’d go down to the basement and we’d all play pool or football outside. One time though, one of my very distant cousins comes up to me and goes “Hey, who’s that girl over there?” (Referring to her.) I tell him who she was and he goes, “She may be family, but if I don’t know her, it don’t count right?”

a fourth cousin you only met as an adult is not going to cause the same response as an adoptive sibling.

I think you got carried away with the example here. I'm pretty sure even explicit anti-cousin-marriage laws/norms don't prohibit relations between fourth cousins.

A troublesome prospect if the child wants to inherit his noble father’s land and title.

Genuinely funny, haha.

Were you feigning confusion so that you could start talking about gay penguins? You do remember a time when homosexual couple were controversial…right? Are you 9 years old?

It’s perfectly intuitive why someone would be curious about another’s parents if it were obvious both biological ones weren’t around. To the extent it’s not intuitive to you, you’ve been trained to forget.

You do remember a time when homosexual couple were controversial…right? Are you 9 years old?

Actually that’s a very good point. I’m not 9 years old but I was around that age when gay marriage was legalised where I live, and I genuinely don’t remember gay couples being controversial unless someone was talking about the Middle East or the Bible Belt.

Are you a millennial or from a more conservative region? This definitely could be a generational divide thing.

Were you feigning confusion so that you could start talking about gay penguins?

The gay penguins came later, I was mostly trying to say that homosexuality and gay adoption is a lot more natural than all the man made horrors/wonders beyond our comprehension that we’ve invented. A good portion of the population literally wastes hours every day watching AI hallucinated videos in a borderline trance, and a surprisingly large minority has a sycophantic chatbot as their only friend and even lover.

Also the penguins were bi IIRC. Even penguins suffer from bi erasure, alas.

The thought was prompted by seeing public figures on Twitter who everyone here knows posting their new arrivals and being oddly consumed by the thought that I don't even know if it's their real child.

I figure that I ought to sort this out before I find myself in such a situation IRL.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats