Sex Horizon Guide

Sex: A Horizon Guide, a documentary directed by Michael Duffy and released September 11, 2013, discusses the importance of science in the development of the human’s understanding of human sexuality and the technology helping those with problems relating to sex, such as erectile dysfunction, STIs, gender dysphoria, infertility, and unwanted pregnancies. Overall, I was impressed with the role science has played in developing medicine and other technologies that most take for granted today, but were only invented recently, such as Viagra and “The Pill.” Much of what the documentary presents coincides with content from David Knox’s and Caroline Schacht’s Choices in Relationships: An Introduction to Marriage & the Family. Three major points Duffy …show more content…
Knox asserts that “sex selection technologies” such as MicroSort, “a new preconception sperm-sorting technology,” allow “parents to increase the chance of having a girl or boy baby” by selecting specific embryos in a lab “to be implanted in a woman’s uterus” (Knox 313). While some support these technologies, Knox writes, some argue that “sex selection contributes to gender stereotypes that could result in neglect of children of the lesser-desired sex” (Knox 313). Duffy makes a similar point, but with a different procedure: in vitro fertilization, which is where healthy embryos without any identifiable diseases are chosen to be implanted within a woman’s uterus. Duffy states that many fear this sort of technology will eventually develop into people choosing all the genetic traits, including physical, of their baby, basically “designing” the child. In addition, Duffy continues that many fear that the less desired physical traits will be neglected, just like many fearing the less desired sex will be neglected due to these developing technologies. Duffy and Knox both address society’s concerns over embryo-selection