The spermmaxxing industry is full of bad seeds

In May 2016, Jeffrey Epstein emailed his urologist. “Harry,” he wrote, “I want to bank some sperm, where do I go?” After filling out a number of forms, the California Cryobank laid out for him the terms of his sperm storage, specifying that if he died his sperm would fall under the control of his estate. Epstein, who’d been charged with the sexual trafficking of young girls, had long discussed his fascination with transhumanism, the use of technology to enhance the human condition, and (according to the New York Times) told scientists that he hoped to “seed the human race” with his DNA. 

Apparently, he was quite open about his ambitions. At one dinner party, a guest heard Epstein’s goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his home in New Mexico, having based his idea for a baby ranch on the Repository for Germinal Choice, an elitist sperm bank which opened in 1980 and was designed to be stocked with the sperm of Nobel laureates. The guest said Epstein’s dinner parties were populated with attractive, successful women – potential candidates, evidently, to carry his children.

Except, it’s now unclear where Epstein’s sperm has gone. The cryobank says they no longer have it, and none of his 40 or so beneficiaries are yet to receive any of Epstein’s money or possessions, which presumably includes the sperm. Could one of them have already used it to impregnate themselves? Could it have been donated to a sperm bank for use by strangers, who would never know their baby shared DNA with a notorious child sex offender? Will somebody soon look down at their toddling son and think, I’m sure I’ve seen that smile before? Where is Epstein’s sperm?

Sperm is beginning to take a new and increasingly important role in conversations about masculinity and health. The conversations sit on a spectrum. Approaching the mainstream is a new industry focused on “spermmaxxing”. You’ll be familiar with the maxxing concept by now, which focuses on improving a single characteristic, and now encompasses penis-maxxing (which requires “scrotox” and various weights), and ballmaxxing (injecting the scrotum with saline to make it bigger). Spermmaxxing is about keeping your sperm count high, an obsession led by tech millionaires and biohackers like Bryan Johnson, who claims to have “scrubbed” out all the “microplastics in my balls,” by doing things like sweating them out in saunas and getting rid of nonstick pans. 

“I had 165 microplastic particles in my semen just 18 months ago,” Johnson told his followers online in May. “Now, I have zero.” At 48, he says his “fertility markers” are “elite for an early 20 something”. And while few men, presumably, are focusing on microplastic ball scrubbing with the same feverish gusto as Bryan, as fertility in the UK drops to record lows (with around 30% of fertility issues sitting purely with the man), and studies showing that average sperm counts among western men have more than halved in the past 40 years, more and more people are, for the first time, taking sperm seriously.

Companies selling organic pants to “reduce chemical exposure to your reproductive parts” have sprung up alongside vitamin brands that recommend “stacking” supplements, while influencers routinely advise men to abstain from ejaculation to improve sperm count. At one end of the spectrum, lasting taboos around male fertility seem to be fading. At the other, fertility is a distraction from the real prize of modern masculinity – beauty.

Clavicular is the looksmaxxing influencer who markets physical self improvement as an algorithmic problem to be solved using syringes, bone hammers and testosterone. He’s been taking testosterone supplements since he was 14 and says it’s given him a muscular physique, a square jaw and also, by the way, made him infertile. Testosterone replacement therapy (which is increasingly popular, and recommended by people like Joe Rogan and Robert F Kennedy Jr) is safe when prescribed by doctors, but one side effect is that you stop producing sperm. Another looksmaxxing influencer called Felix van der Heiden discovered as much when he took part in a Silicon Valley “sperm race”. “Everything’s dead,” he told the New York Times, having seen the results of his semen sample. “Just rotten inside.”

Clavicular, though, doesn’t seem to care. While the old taboos around male infertility are grounded in ideas of what it is to be a man, for his young army of looksmaxxing boys, being a man is not about attracting women or procreating, it’s exclusively about appearance as a marker of worth. Sacrificing sperm for the perfect jawline is a small price to pay. For them what matters is what’s visible, while for the tech billionaires the optimisation of one’s biology is everything. Rather than a path to fatherhood, fertility becomes a kind of dystopian status symbol. 

Epstein was obsessed with his sperm. As well as freezing it, he took a drug to increase his sperm count, and bought a device to assess its quality. For him, it was yet another route to power. And it’s possible that his plan to seed the human race could still be realised. Not only is the spermmaxxing industry thriving, but somewhere in the US, his sperm outlives him.