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

I wasn't expecting a fucking Harry Potter reference in this chapter. 🤮😵‍💫😖 I wasn't expecting a Harry Potter reference in this book at *ALL*.

Continued from my previous update.

I don't like the implied sexism in the last sentence of that excerpt. 😑😥 It didn't surprise me when Eliot explained that there could be sexism in ancient Greece.

I enjoyed learning more specific information about male-male relationships in ancient Greece. My previous knowledge about that topic was very general.

To be attracted to other men wasn’t a source of stigma—it was the reverse, a sign of healthy masculinity. In fact, people looked at men who didn’t enjoy sex with other men as suspiciously effeminate, because they seemed drawn toward the female inside of them.

That's really interesting because I get so focused on how homophobic society tends to be now, but some societies weren't like that historically.

Omg I need to remember to mention this next time i am around antlers on the wall- male deer often rub their antlers on vegetation as a form of masturbation

Some white-tailed deer have male genitalia and antlers, but they never shed off the velvet and their bodies are more like does, and they live separate from does and bucks. This is kinda cute, kinda sad

Dimorphic- 2 distinct types / looks

Parasitoid- a wasp that completes its life cycle inside another bug and then lives free as an adult

“When a male Giraffe sniffs a female’s rear end- without any mounting, erection, penetration, or ejaculation– he is described as being sexually interested in her […] Yet when a male Giraffe sniffs another male’s genitals, mounts him with an erect penis, and ejaculates– then he is engaging in ‘aggressive’ or ‘dominance’ behavior […]”

So true!! I never thought about that

Continued from my previous update.

I'm grateful that I learned about intersectional identities in college. It's good to be familiar with and understand that concept.

Yeah, I’m super excited about all these popular Black scientists and science communicators coming up because I can’t imagine what position or what space my fellow Black grad students would be in if we’d had our own “Steve Irwin moments” growing up. We are succeeding through a struggle. Imagine if we didn’t have that struggle.

That hits hard, but reading that didn't surprise me.

Continued from my previous update.

In all seriousness, don't the father penguins sit on the eggs in nature? That's another example where human gender roles differ from what occurs in nature.

When I teach that in class, my students are always like, “It’s so cool! The dad stays and takes care of the offspring!” And I’m like, “Why does that get us all excited?” I get it; male parenting is cool. But we have to remember that what piques our interest also determines what questions we ask and the way we interpret our results.

*blasts Stay At Home Dad by Macklemore*

I look forward to learning more about the fruit flies tomorrow.

I'm too tired to finish this chapter tonight, but I'm proud of myself for getting almost a quarter of the way through after a few days of starting this book. 😁

What about social bonding—which we know is really important for fitness, by the way, right? Social bonds are really important for well-being. Managing conflicts and managing stress and tension are really important for well-being. We’ve been fixated on one side of the story.

This is food for thought. I imagine that this mindset could push primatologists to think outside of the box about animal behaviors.

Same-sex behavior in general is something that people often talk about in female bonobos, who have a reputation as the sexy hippie apes.

One of my teachers in college referred to bonobos as the 'hippies' of the apes. I'm familiar with this vocabulary wrt bonobos.

I hadn't learned about the bonobos in several years, so I appreciated the memory refresher. It was intriguing to re-learn about the specifics of their sexuality. I didn't know that humans were so genetically close to bonobos. That was cool to learn about as well. ☺️

As sex researcher James Weinrich put it, “If animals do something that we like, we call it natural. If they do what we don’t like, we call it ‘animalistic.’”

That's insightful and it's a good point.

Continued from my previous update.

One example that I can think with a specific race being compared to an animal throughout history makes me nauseous. That's because the example that I'm thinking of is sickening and horrid.

To be compared to animals is loaded, particularly for people who have already been mockingly compared to an animal on the basis of their race, sexuality, or gender expression.

I'm glad that Elliot brought this up and did his research on this topic because it's important to have basic knowledge about this at the bare minimum.

My Kindle is being glitchy rn. I'll copy and paste some excerpts later as well as my thoughts on them.

I'm learning a lot from this book already and I'm glad about that. I'm a nerd who loves learning, especially about social sciences and history. 😉

On to read about the author and learn about doodle bugs! I only knew about same-sex relations among bonobos prior to starting this book. I learned about that in a high school science class and an anthropology class in college. The teacher of the anthropology class was truly a gem and a sweetheart. ❤️

As recently as 1980, a US government document removed all references to homosexual behavior from a scientist’s report on killer whales. It can’t have been easy to fit a killer whale into the closet, but somehow they managed it.

The last sentence made me smile. I appreciate the humor.

(George Murray Levick, the explorer who wrote about homosexual behavior in Adélie penguins in 1911, hid his observations using the Greek alphabet as code—and they were still cut from the official expedition reports.)

It sounds like someone was desperate to cover up a discovery that conflicted with their heteronormative bias. I'm disappointed but not surprised. 🙄😖

I've been interested in reading this book for a while. It feels like a book I would've read in college or that would've been assigned in one of my college sociology classes.