Showing posts with label Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. Show all posts

The Real Mama Grizzlies: Lesbian Moms?

Sarah Palin, With Bear

Sarah Palin's understanding of wildlife appears to be no better than her tenuous grasp of social history.  Mrs Palin has been very much in the news over her enthusiastic promotion of a band of crazies  thoughtful, conservative candidates who agree with her own views on education and "traditional family values".   The women in this band she likes to describe as "mamma grizzlies", most recntly Christina O'Donnell in Delaware.
The problem with the conservative view of the "traditional" family and its values is that has little relation to history, and is in fact a relatively modern invention. The problem with her adoption of mamma grizzlies as her model is that they too scarcely embody the "family values" she claims to support.  Real life mamma grizzlies do not live or mate in the nuclear families she so admires. Rather, they mate in promiscuous, polygamous groups, then raise their young as single mothers - or in collaboration with other females, as family units headed by two women.  The closest human counterparts to real-life "mamma grizzlies" are lesbian couples, with kids - not exactly Christian O'Donnell.
Bruce Bagemihl in Biological Exuberance describes the family structure of grizzly bears, based on an analysis of 18 published, peer-reviewed academic papers. He notes that while grizzlies (and Black bears) are largely solitary creatures, they do sometimes form short-term social groups around specific food sources. Mating is indiscriminate and polygamous, with both males and females mating with multiple opposite sex partners for conception. After mating, the males have no further part in child-rearing.
Consequently, many grizzly mammas raise their young as single parents - unless (as many do) they team up with another female for co-operative parenting.
The two mothers become inseparable companions, travelling and feeding together throughout the summer and fall seasons as they share in the parenting of their cubs.. ....... A bonded pair jointly defends their food, and the two females also protect one another and their offspring (including protecting them from attack by grizzly males). The cubs regard both females as their parents, following and responding to either mother equally; bonded females occasionally also nurse each other's cubs. If one female dies, her companion usually adopts her cubs and rears them as her own.
Bagemihl is careful to point out that there are no observations to suggest that these relationships are sexual, but that is not my point. Rather, I want to draw attention to the abundant evidence from history, anthropology and zoology that "natural" sexual and family relationships are far more varied than the simplistic formulations of  "traditional family" propagandists would ever like to admit.
Sexual activity is not always exclusively for procreation and not always between opposite-sex partners; the partners in procreation are usually opposite-sex (not always - some lizards reproduce from female pairs), but the parties in biological parenting and child-rearing are not always the same; and there are instances where same-sex parents have clear advantages over the alternatives, especially where the alternative is not "one mom and one pop", but a single mother, as in the case of the Grizzlies.

There are thousands of animal species that are known to have homosexual relationships, some even more frequently than heterosexual relationships (for example bighorn rams, female bonobo chimps and male giraffe). Many other animal species, especially birds, form same-sex parenting couples, by adoption or surrogacy. In human societies, there are likewise numerous examples where standard practices include same-sex relationships in addition to opposite sex-marriage - and the evidence from research is that just as in the animal kingdom, same-sex couples are at least as capable of good parenting, and sometimes even better, than opposite - sex couples.


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Books:

Bagemihl, Bruce: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Stonewall Inn Editions)

Crompton, Louis: Homosexuality and Civilization

Naphy, William G: Born to be Gay: A History of Homosexuality (Revealing History)

Roughgarden, Joan: Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People

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Exclusive Heterosexuality Unnatural?

"I don't know of any species that is exclusively heterosexual"
- Zurich Zoo tour guide, Myriam Schärz.
The argument that same -sex relationships are supposedly "unnatural" is so fundamental to the homophobes' case, that it needs to be countered at every opportunity. At Bilerico Project, Jesses Monteagudo has a good rundown of just how widespread same sex behaviour is in the animal kingdom. Here are some extracts:

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In 1999 the standard work on the topic, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Stonewall Inn Editions) by Bruce Bagemihl, was published.
"On every continent, animals of the same sex seek each other out and have probably been doing it for millions of years," Bagemihl wrote. .......According to Bagemihl, "Homosexual behavior occurs in more than 450 different kinds of animals worldwide, and is found in every major geographic region and every major animal group."
But we don't need Bagemihl for anecdotal evidence. Hardly a week goes by that we don't hear stories about same-sex oriented otters or rabbits. You don't have to go to the Zurich Zoo to learn about "the indiscriminate and almost insatiable sexuality of bonobo apes" or "how gay male dolphins use their lovers' blowholes for sexual gratification." Just last year a review paper by Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk of the Department of Biology at the University of California in Riverside concluded that "same-sex behavior is a nearly universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, common across species, from worms to frogs to birds."
"Female western gulls sometimes pair off for several years and mount each other while incubating eggs," Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson wrote in Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia. "Similar behaviors have been documented among female sage grouse, male mallard ducks, and female and male greylag geese and turkeys." According to the authors of Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America, same-sex behavior has been documented in all kinds of animal species, including antelope, bugs, butterflies, cats, cattle, cockroaches, crickets, dogs, donkeys, elephants, flies, geckos, guinea pigs, hamsters, horses, hyenas, lions, martens, mice, moths, octopuses, orcas, porcupines, raccoons, rats and wasps.
Gay animal behavior seems to alarm religious conservatives almost as much as the human variety, and they have tried their best to deny it. Those who do admit that same-sex behavior exists in the animal kingdom try to explain it away as being playful antics or dominance behavior to assert hierarchy.
"Some conservatives and religious groups now admit that homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom, but many of them have also put forward theories to explain the phenomenon," said Myriam Schärz of the Zurich Zoo. "Some argue that homosexuality only occurs when animal populations become too large, or that animals only turn to homosexuality when they have no other alternative, but there is no evidence to back up the population theory, and there is plenty of proof against the harem argument. Dominant silver-back gorillas, for instance, have frequently been seen engaging in homosexual activity and deliberately shunning available females."
"Humans seem to be the only species where homosexuals are not readily accepted in society," Schärz said

I have just one problem with Ms Schärz's conclusion: it is not true that among humans as a species homosexuals are not accepted. The evidence from history and anthropology is that across all periods, and in all major regions of the world, many humans societies (possibly most) have been tolerant or even encouraging of same sex relationships. (In some societies, homosexual activity has even been compulsory for boys or young men.) Compulsory, exclusive heterosexuality for humans, as demanded by the religious right, may be just as unnatural for humans as it is for animals.
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