Status Updates From Queer Ducks (and Other Anim...

I agree with the reviewers who wrote that this book was accessible. I like that the language was easy to understand because some of the academic writing that I read in college was very dry. Reading it could be a slog. Reading this book wasn't a slog. It was very informative, enlightening, and humorous.

I appreciate how Eliot mentioned that culture places restrictions on sexuality and gender expression. I agree with this especially since I majored in Sociology in college. His thoughts about creating in groups and out groups resonated with me as well.

176 of pages not including acknowledgements, glossary, notes, selected bibliography, index, etc. 225 total. Finished after midnight so write down August 30.

There are 130 different bird species on the record as having same-sex behaviors. They’ll engage in same-sex behaviors as far as courtship or mating. So there’s evidence of it, and I find it fascinating.

I agree with Dylan about this. It is intriguing that a lot of bird species exhibit same-sex behaviors.

It does feel like the more you spend time in nature, it brings about this radical acceptance and empathy. Everything just is.

I love this quote and I appreciate how Eliot mentioned empathy because empathy is very important to me.

I'm tired, but I powered through that chapter. I enjoyed learning about polyamorous geese. 🙂

“Don’t be afraid to reach out to a biologist, after you’ve read their book or a paper. A lot of my opportunities started that way, just by expressing interest, being persistent and enthusiastic. Don’t feel like you have to follow the expected path, to earn a lot of money and get married, etc. You get to make your own way.” Thanks Eliot :’)

I appreciate the author not including all names for scientists/researchers with homosexual opinions. They don’t need the free promotion and it doesn’t hinder the storytelling.

“…animal sexuality resists simplification. It certainly doesn’t march neatly onto an ark in boy-girl pairs.”

Rams and bulls and bison aren’t just any old animal in the culture of the United States, right? They’re also the ultimate symbols of our rugged frontier version of masculinity. Think of our sports teams, the LA Rams, the Chicago Bulls. The Dodge Ram and Chevrolet Bison trucks.

I hadn't thought about this, but it's an excellent point.

Certainly the research and public opinion around them has, as always, as much to say about human attitudes as it does about the animals’ own sexuality.

I'm guessing that some researchers can bring their own biases into scientific research.

For some reason, I'm feeling squicked out by reading about bull sex. I don't know why, but that's how I feel rn. 😖

I'd like to finish this chapter tonight, but I'm exhausted. I'll finish it tomorrow morning.

There was a particular bloom in female-female households in New England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, enough that the term “Boston marriage” came to describe women cohabitating and spending their lives together, whether the union was sexual or not.)

I love learning historical facts like this. 🙂 They can be interesting.

The idea that switching sexes is bad is filled with a very toxic transphobic, homophobic, sexist rhetoric about what it means being female, and implies that being female is worse than being male or male-like.

I'm surprised that a cishet man like Max gives a fuck about any of this, but I guess there are exceptions to everything. And some cishet men think outside of themselves.

But science is something we will never finish; it’s always progressing and changing as our worldview changes.

I hadn't thought of science in this way before, but I like that Max said this.

I'm too tired to make sense of science talk rn. Even science talk that's accessible. Luckily, The City of Slaughter *FINALLY* downloaded to my Kindle. 😁😍🎊🎊

In human society, gender is not just about sex. Gender is made. It’s about race, it’s about class, it’s about all these other things that are not present in the societies of nonhumans.

Again, this is true. *nods*

I took a History of Gender and Sexuality course and had a light-bulb moment: “Oh, sex and gender are made-up things, and I don’t have to do them! There’s not something wrong with me, it’s just a whole lot of nonsense used by the state, and science, to consolidate their power.”

I'm glad that Beans realized this because it's true!! 😉

Since the velvet-horns don’t mate, they don’t produce their own offspring, but if they come across an orphaned fawn, they will incorporate them into their group to rear.

It's very interesting to learn about intersex deer and how they can help with rearing/raising fawns.