Many people have tried to justify their homophobia by claiming
that queer identities and relationships are “not natural” and don’t occur in
other living creatures (witness the tired classic “Adam and Eve, not Adam and
Steve”). However, Queer Ducks shows that same-sex relationships are just
as common in the animal kingdom as they are among humans.
The book is as much a memoir about growing up closeted as it
is a book about animal sexuality. Schrefer himself knew he was gay at a young
age but could not be open about his sexuality at the time. Even when he came
out, he initially thought of queer behavior in animals as a dead end, but after
looking through scientific articles he discovered numerous examples of same-sex
behavior throughout the animal kingdom from primates, deer, insects and more.
Queer Ducks is careful to distinguish between
homosexuality and heterosexuality in humans and same-sex behavior in animals.
The former two terms specifically refer to human orientations and identities,
while the latter is an observation of animal behavior; researchers can’t
directly know what goes on in an animal’s head, after all. The book does describe many animals as being
“bisexual”- in this case referring to observed behavior where animals mate with
and form close bonds with members of the same sex while still engaging in
procreation with the opposite sex.
Male bottlenose
dolphins, for example, regularly form strong, affectionate same-sex
partnerships, though both will mate with female dolphins. A similar dynamic
occurs with Japanese macaques, where females form strong same-sex bonds and
will otherwise ignore males except for reproduction.
While Schrefer acknowledges it is hard to say if animals are
transgender since humans cannot directly ask them about their mental state, Queer
Ducks does talk about physically intersex animals such as “velvet-horn”
deer, which have male genitalia but bodies that look more physically female. It
should be noted that intersex animals are not the same biologically as
hermaphrodites. Intersex animals can have a mosaic of both male and female
secondary sexual traits, but they occur in groups where the majority of individuals
have only one type of sex organ, such as mammals or birds. Hermaphrodites, on
the other hand, are animals where each individual usually has both male and
female gametes, such as slugs. Animals that change physical sex during their
life- such as parrot fish- are also called hermaphrodites.
Schrefer is careful to explain that Queer Ducks is not
arguing that human sexuality should be directly compared to animal sexuality.
He is well aware of the long history of bigoted rhetoric equating homosexuality
with bestiality. Instead, he clarifies:
“We can no longer
argue that humans are alone in their queerness, that nonheteronormative human
sexualities and gender identities are unnatural because they don’t exist in the
rest of the animal kingdom… Queerness is a well-established and fundamental
part of nature. If queerness is ‘wrong,’ then you’d better be willing to say
that the entire animal kingdom is wrong.”
Queer Ducks is humorous and snarky but also sensitive
and compassionate; the author makes a segue to talk about the usage of the word
“queer”, acknowledging that while it has been reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community,
there are still some people who are uncomfortable with that term, and their
discomfort is legitimate. The book is also very frank about sex, but never
vulgar. There are jokes about sex, but
no “dick jokes”.
You can get a copy of Queer Ducks from HarperCollins
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