BenjaminBoa
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2011
- Messages
- 117
You just brought up my biggest beef with members of the LGBT community. I am pretty involved when it comes to rallies and supporting families who have had their kid commit suicide over being gay and all that stuff. But it drives me nuts when people consider their sexuality their identity... what is gonna happen when/if it gets accepted as normal all those people who's whole life revolves around "Being Gay" wont have a life anymore.Nope. I don't think they're talking about asexual reproduction.
It's a well-documented problem in domestic rams. There are males that really only want to mate with males, and really won't mate with females, and if they've got characteristics that are desirable for breeding, human intervention is required.
It is certainly not justifiable to claim that all homosexual behavior in non-humans is for the purpose of exhibiting dominance. That claim is no more justified without detailed studies than a counter-claim that it's "for pure love." The available evidence does not suggest that all homosexual behavior in non-human animals is for the purpose of exhibiting dominance. In the above-mentioned case of domestic rams, it's not about dominance. These problem rams prefer to mate with males than with females when given the choice.
There are naturally occurring bonded pairs of male swans. They brood eggs together. They clearly are not sexually monogamous, but they are pair-bonded. They have a lasting pair bond like all other pairs of swans, and they raise offspring together. Interestingly, male pairs have higher reproductive success than heterosexual pairs, because males have more access to resources than females swans. In terms of access to resources, in swans, Male + male > male + female > female + female. This is sort of akin to the fact that gay human male couples have a high representation in the expensive NY neighborhood of Greenwich village, whereas lesbian couples have a very low representation there, because 2 * 0.75 (what males make for the same job) < enough to live in Greenwich village.
Bonobos are apes, not monkeys, but their expression of sexuality is DEFINITELY not only about dominance. They use it for just about everything. It is sometimes about dominance, sort of, but not in the way that you might think. When a female bonobo wants to join a new group, she trails it for a while, and when the dominant female in the group decides that she likes the new female enough to let her join, the sexual interaction that signals that does not involve a dominant sexual position on the part of the dominant animal, but a submissive one. The new female then goes on to have sexual interactions with every other female in the group, and then she's in. For bonobos, sex is like a handshake. It has nuances, just like handshakes do, but it is used as freely, as often, and as communicatively as we use handshakes. Possibly more. It is probably more fair to say that it's like handshakes and hugs, AND sex. Yeah. That's probably more accurate. Instead of a hug, for bonobos, when a kid is throwing a temper tantrum, you do something else for it. In fact I just had a friend show me photos of her study bonobo population yesterday, and she pointed out how bonobo males lose their hair from about their genitals up to their belly buttons because they have so much semen smeared on their bellies all the time from their male-male ventral-ventral interactions that it makes their hair fall out. And they all have both genital and oral warts--infants up to adults. I'm sure you can imagine why that is. It's the go-to affiliative interaction. It is not an agonistic interaction. There is competition in bonobos, and sex is not what they do with each other when they are competing. Sexual interactions are entirely affiliative. They're what you might do AFTER an agonistic interaction, to make up. Or what you do when tension is building, to entirely avoid an agonistic interaction from developing.
This is just a tiny fraction of the homosexual interactions that have been documented in the animal kingdom. If you're really interested in this topic, the book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl is probably the go-to source. I have not read it myself, because I am not especially interested enough in the topic to read something like 400 pages that document homosexual activity across the animal kingdom. The reason I am not so interested is because I don't engage in the naturalistic fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy). If I want to think that what is natural = what is good/ok, then I'll have to sign up for male-perpetrated infanticide, and I'm not up for condoning that in society. But homosexual activity is certainly a common part of the natural world with no convenient sweep-under-the-rug explanation such as "it's for expressing dominance," so if that's important to you to know about, Bagemihl's book is a good place to start. In primates, just FYI, homosexual behavior is not usually an expression of dominance, but when exhibited, is usually an expression of friendship/affiliation. There are all kinds of formalized signals of agonism/dominance/submission in primates, and letting another male hold your balls or play with your penis (which are behaviors also found among non-human primates) simply aren't among them. And I'm sure you guys can imagine why--you're not ABOUT to trust someone who's NOT your friend get that close to important stuff like that!!!
Exclusive homosexual behavior is not particularly common in the animal kingdom. But then, neither is sexual monogamy, even in species with social monogamy and tight pair bonds.Even in the albatross, the pinnacle of pair-bondedness, there's plenty of "somethin' somethin'" on the side. Pairs raise kids. Absolutely. Pairs faithfully raise kids together year after year. Absolutely. But pairs aren't always raising their OWN kids together (well, females are raising their own, but not always those of their male pairmate, and males aren't always raising their own, but some other male probably is). I think it's only been in the last couple of years that an albatross researcher has actually witnessed an extra-pair mating, but it has been known for quite some time that the eggs in the nest didn't always come from the dad on the nest. Both moms and dads are working, when they can, to diversify their genetic portfolios and to avoid putting their "eggs in one basket"--the female putting them in the "basket" of only one male year after year, and the male the reverse, plus the addition of one literal basket.
Anyway, the world of sexual reproduction is an amazing place, and our societally derived, pre-conceived notions of biological reality actually don't do a very good job of describing biological reality. But the dedicated work by biologists is out there. Carpe diem, if you actually care about being correct when you make assertions on this point. If you decide to make being fully educated on this point your mission, you won't be disappointed by the ride.
As far as "being gay" or "being straight," whether non-human animals do this depends on what you mean. For us, this is a claimed identity. There's no reason to think that non-human animals cling to some sort of social identity. They just do what they do and don't worry about it. So the definition of "gay" is up to you. Some people think that pair-bonded male swans count as "gay." Some people wouldn't, because even though those male swans are pair-bonded and raise offspring together as a pair, they obviously have sexual interactions with females, because females have the ova. Personally, I don't think labels for non-human animals are terribly important. These fixed labels are sort of hung on an idea of sexual monogamy, which, although it exists, is quite rare in the animal kingdom (as well as within humans), and which involve a lot more in humans than just descriptions of their sexual activity (e.g., someone can be gay without have sexual interactions, or can even "be" gay while they are engaged exclusively in heterosexual interactions).
That said, I'm not offended by a person asking if a spider is "gay." The distinctions between identity and behavior are subtle, and I can easily do the translation to "Does my male spider only want to mate with other males?" which, given my knowledge of the variation present in sexual tendencies in the animal kingdom, is not an unreasonable question.
Back on Topic, I gotta say this title is genius, It has gotten so many views and comments just because of the title.
To those of you who are wanting that info, I'm still waiting on my old bio professor to email me back, he wasn't in his office when I was at campus yesterday sorreh.
People need to loosen up though, its okay to joke around about an animal being gay or acting gay even if it isn't an animal who's courting with another of the same sex.. sheesh.
I could anticipate the same amount of serious commentary about how animals "arn't gay" or "this is offensive" if someone had a colorful tarantula who was constantly cleaning himself and redecorating his enclosure and the person said "wow hes so gay he...." My little sheltie crosses his paws when he sits, flicks his tail instead of wag, loves his sweater (hes a mix so hes got short hair on everything but his tail and ears, he gets cold really easily) and always wants attention from men but ignores women. As a joke we always call him our gay dog and when one of his favorite men is over we tell him "his boyfriend is here." I've had people at the dog park get so upset that I teasingly said "aww Riles you're so gay with your little sweater" And try to lecture me about how offensive and controversial and politically incorrect my comment was.
I always just look at Riley and in a cooing voice say "Are you gay? Whos gay whos gay?" And he barks and then I tell him "I loove you." and he tries his best to mimic my voice in a sort of winey howl and then I turn to the person and say "I think he agrees, he's totally gay." It pisses people off so much.
Long story short people need to learn to differentiate joke from a serious comment.
On a serious note, I don't think if it occurs in the animal kingdom means it is okay or normal. But I think it is just ignorant to make empty conjectures that humans are the only ones with homosexual tendencies, and dismiss any information against that view as simply dominance. Whether or not animals identify with being a certain sexuality, I doubt any of them are that complex socially to discriminate between sexualities and sexual tendencies. Humans identify sexuality because of prejudice, if it were always considered normal, not just tolerated as normal humans wouldn't have reason to try to draw differences between the two, they would just try to court who they want to court. But people are stupid animals, a lot of them want their own world views to be everyone else's which is why we will always have deviation between groups of people.
To the poster who posted about experienced members not wanting to talk to members who are new. I'm just going to start a thread on that topic.. I feel like if anyone posts a reply to that this whole thread's purpose will change for like the... nine thousandth time since it was started.
