canary of fun ([info]songquake) wrote in [info]queerchoice,
@ 2006-06-10 21:51:00
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interesting article on sexual selection
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php

what do y'all think of this? it how does it fit (or fail to fit) into your understanding of being queer-by-choice? the logical extension to the hypothesis seems to be that animals make choices about sexual activity based on social as well as evolutionary survival. does that make any sense for humans, particularly in western society?

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[info]queerbychoice
2006-06-11 04:02 am UTC (link)
I need to read that book! It sounds a lot like Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, but with more interpretation of the evidence in actual theory.

As for how it fits into queer by choice ideas - well, I don't think any article could be much more queer by choice than this paragraph:
"In our culture, we assume that there is a straight-gay binary, and that you are either one or the other. But if you look at vertebrates, that just isn't the case. You will almost never find animals or primates that are exclusively gay. Other human cultures show the same thing." Since Roughgarden believes that the hetero/homo distinction is a purely cultural creation, and not a fact of biology, she thinks it is only a matter of time before we return to the standard primate model. "I'm convinced that in 50 years, the gay-straight dichotomy will dissolve. I think it just takes too much social energy to preserve. All this campy, flamboyant behavior: It's just such hard work."
I also think that the queer community as a whole needs to respond to homophobia like Dr. Laura's infamous line a few years ago that queer people are "biological mistakes" by publicizing as widely as possible this piece of information: "As Roughgarden points out, 'a "common genetic disease" is a contradiction in terms, and homosexuality is three to four orders of magnitude more common than true genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease.'" Unfortunately, I think a lot of queers currently don't want to publicize that, because they are foolishly convinced that it's better to let people think that our ability to fall in love is a disease and a mistake than to let anyone get the idea that maybe genetics do not predispose us to queerness any more than genetics predispose all human beings to queerness - some people just manage to repress their awareness of their queer potential very effectively, whereas other people (either accidentally or by choice) discover its existence.

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[info]tamerterra
2006-06-11 09:33 am UTC (link)
Word!

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Sleep-deprived thoughts on the subject.
[info]selica_rav
2006-06-11 04:53 am UTC (link)
That's really interesting. It doesn't quite directly seem to point to choice, but to at least point towards sexual behaviour, as opposed to orientation. I think the problem with animals in general is that we tend to think of them as running a lot more on instinct, and responding to environment, than having complex thought processes (as compared to humans). With humans, it is possible to communicate for research, and investigate the reasons that a person chooses to do something. Animals can't communicate their reasoning. We can't ever establish what it is that motivates an animal to do something, other than guessing at possible needs or desires. So I don't think that an argument for choice can really gain that much from animals. However, even if this research wouldn't be directly useful, it points to an inborn capability for attraction to any sex, which is basically essential to choosing queerness. Also, discussing sexual behaviour as relevant to not only reproduction, but also social interaction makes sense to me in terms of choice. To me, that sounds less like a defect, and more of a way of humans choosing to use their capacity for attraction on other humans in ways which most socially benefit themselves, and their community.

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How Bonobo Chimps Use Sex
[info]cgmp
2006-06-11 12:14 pm UTC (link)
Here is an excerpt from a Scientific American article about Bonobo sex. There are tribes in the Amazon rain forests who are sexually open in similar ways, preobably for similar reasons. These observations indicate that sexual contact can be used to difuse conflict and aggression. They suggest that in sexually repressed societies, violence becomes the only alternative in times of conflict or stress.

http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html

Perhaps the bonobo's most typical sexual pattern, undocumented in any other primate, is genito-genital rubbing (or GG rubbing) between adult females. One female facing another clings with arms and legs to a partner that, standing on both hands and feet, lifts her off the ground. The two females then rub their genital swellings laterally together, emitting grins and squeals that probably reflect orgasmic experiences. (Laboratory experiments on stump- tailed macaques have demonstrated that women are not the only female primates capable of physiological orgasm.)

Male bonobos, too, may engage in pseudocopulation but generally perform a variation. Standing back to back, one male briefly rubs his scrotum against the buttocks of another. They also practice so-called penis-fencing, in which two males hang face to face from a branch while rubbing their erect penises together.

"The diversity of erotic contacts in bonobos includes sporadic oral sex, massage of another individual's genitals and intense tongue-kissing. Lest this leave the impression of a pathologically oversexed species, I must add, based on hundreds of hours of watching bonobos, that their sexual activity is rather casual and relaxed. It appears to be a completely natural part of their group life. Like people, bonobos engage in sex only occasionally, not continuously. Furthermore, with the average copulation lasting 13 seconds, sexual contact in bonobos is rather quick by human standards.

That sex is connected to feeding, and even appears to make food sharing possible, has been observed not only in zoos but also in the wild. Nancy Thompson-Handler, then at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, saw bonobos in Zaire's Lomako Forest engage in sex after they had entered trees loaded with ripe figs or when one among them had captured a prey animal, such as a small forest duiker. The flurry of sexual contacts would last for five to 10 minutes, after which the apes would settle down to consume the food.

One explanation for the sexual activity at feeding time could be that excitement over food translates into sexual arousal. This idea may be partly true. Yet another motivation is probably the real cause: competition. There are two reasons to believe sexual activity is the bonobo's answer to avoiding conflict.

First, anything, not just food, that arouses the interest of more than one bonobo at a time tends to result in sexual contact. If two bonobos approach a cardboard box thrown into their enclosure, they will briefly mount each other before playing with the box. Such situations lead to squabbles in most other species. But bonobos are quite tolerant, perhaps because they use sex to divert attention and to diffuse tension.

Second, bonobo sex often occurs in aggressive contexts totally unrelated to food. A jealous male might chase another away from a female, after which the two males reunite and engage in scrotal rubbing. Or after a female hits a juvenile, the latter's mother may lunge at the aggressor, an action that is immediately followed by genital rubbing between the two adults.

I once observed a young male, Kako, inadvertently blocking an older, female juvenile, Leslie, from moving along a branch. First, Leslie pushed him; Kako, who was not very confident in trees, tightened his grip, grinning nervously. Next Leslie gnawed on one of his hands, presumably to loosen his grasp. Kako uttered a sharp peep and stayed put. Then Leslie rubbed her vulva against his shoulder. This gesture calmed Kako, and he moved along the branch. It seemed that Leslie had been very close to using force but instead had reassured both herself and Kako with sexual contact."

John U

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Canela Tribe Info
[info]cgmp
2006-06-11 12:45 pm UTC (link)
One of the tribes I was thinking of in the last post is the Canela. The Smithsonian Institution did a lot of research on them, and saw their sexual behavior as relating to conflict resolution. The National Geographic and Discovery channels bought the film rights and insisted that there be a greater emphasis on multiple partner sexual customs. They changed the name of the film from "Mending ways" to The Intimate Truths of the Canela.

http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/mendingways.htm

John U

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Re: How Bonobo Chimps Use Sex
(Anonymous)
2006-06-15 06:20 pm UTC (link)
"Perhaps the bonobo's most typical sexual pattern, undocumented in any other primate is genito-genital rubbing (or GG rubbing) between adult females."

well there is one other species of primate that does this (think about it for a second)

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so let's do it like they do on the discovery channel
[info]njzero
2006-06-11 10:54 pm UTC (link)
this, to me at least, reads as a pretty big blow to the theory of queer by choice. are there any exchanges on the subject or is it pretty much only being dealt with outside of the q.b.c. sphere?


very interesting post!

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Re: so let's do it like they do on the discovery channel
(Anonymous)
2006-06-15 06:21 pm UTC (link)
"this, to me at least, reads as a pretty big blow to the theory of queer by choice."

but bonobo-style universal bisexuality as the "natural" state of affairs is central to the QBC argument

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(davelwhite)
(Anonymous)
2006-10-19 11:18 pm UTC (link)
I liked the article, although I had heard a rumor of something even more interesting, that some researcher had located animal populations that actually INCREASE their rates of homosexual behavior in response to ecological population pressure (e.g. use it as a form of birth control to avoid overrunning their food supply). This may be total bullshit, but if anybody has heard of a study like that and has a link it would be appreciated.

THAT would be REALLY interesting because it would indicate that current patriarchal-influenced sexual morality, with no brakes on population growth, is so stupid even monkeys don't do it. :) Of course, even if animals CAN'T use gay relationships as birth control, we can, and all those people saying that Technology Will Save Us From Environmental Catastrophe might want to consider that the cultural norms about families and sexuality and friendship ARE a form of technolgy, and perhaps San Francisco is one big research lab for the sustainable mix of families we need for the 22nd Century. :)

Anyhow, I liked the article because the way it described the animals not only questioned the boundary between gay and straight, but also between "sexual love" and "social solidarity" otherwise known as "friendly love." This line is much blurrier in non-Anglo and pre-industrial cultures as I always point out: friendship traditionally means kissing (on the cheek) and dancing and snuggling and declaring eternal devotion, and so everyone in these cultures IS ALREADY involved in serious and affectionate relationships with both sexes, albeit according to bewildering and often sexist rules, since every society has to make up useless rules after all.

I always think that the feminist revolution got people so scared that gender roles would dissolve entirely (which I think, in the very long term, they probably will, except for pregnancy itself, and it will be a good thing); and so societies in the transitional period from patriarchy to equality actually made the definitions of "straight" and "gay" MORE STRICT than they had ever been, and walled themselves off from all sorts of affection and tenderness that had existed before (and served the same purposes as grooming and sexuality serve for the animals). According to this theory, after everybody finally caves in and accepts that gender equality is our destiny, they won't be scared any more, and the dichotomies of straight and gay, lover and friend will dissolve as well.

Maybe someday a best friend and a gay boyfriend and a lesbian girlfriend and a wife and a husband will all be the same thing, just like animals cuddle or have sex depending on what strikes their fancy. Of course, I'm not betting on it in my lifetime. :S

dave

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