Eve’s Reviews > Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality > Status Update

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.

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.

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.