Biological Exuberance Quotes

“Biological Exuberance is, above all, an affirmation of life's vitality and infinite possibilities: a worldview that is once primordial and futuristic, in which gender is kaleidoscopic, sexualities are multiple, and the categories of male and female are fluid and transmutable. A world, in short, exactly like the one we inhabit.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“In nearly a quarter of all animals in which homosexuality has been observed and analyzed, the behavior has been classified as some other form of nonsexual activity besides (or in addition to) dominance. Reluctant to ascribe sexual motivations to activities that occur between animals of the same gender, scientists in many cases have been formed to come up with alternative "functions". These include some rather far-fetched suggestions, such as the idea that fellatio with male orang-utans is a "nutritive" behavior, or that episodes of cavorting and genital stimulation between male West Indian manatees are "contests of stamina". At various times, homosexuality has been classified as a form of aggression (not necessarily related to dominance), appeasement or placation, play, tension reduction, greeting or social bonding, reassurance or reconciliation, coalition or alliance formations, and "barter" for food or other "favors". It is striking that virtually all of these functions are in fact reasonable and possible components of sexuality - as any reflection on the nature of sexual interactions in humans will reveal - and indeed in some species homosexual interactions do bear characteristics of some or all of these activities. However, in the vast majority of cases these functions are ascribed to a behavior *instead of*, rather than *along with*, a sexual component - and only when the behavior occurs between two males or two females. According to Paul L. Vasey, "While homosexual behavior may serve some social roles, these are often interpreted by zoologists as the primary reason for such interactions and usually seen as negating any sexual component to this behavior. By contrast, heterosexual interactions are invariably seen as being primarily sexual with some possible secondary social functions.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“The vehement pathologizing of transgender encapsulates the entire discussion surrounding the "cause" of alternate sexual and gender expression in animals. Phenomena such as homosexuality or gender mixing are never seen as neutral or expected variations along a sexual and gender continuum (or continua), but rather as abnormal or exceptional conditions that require explanation. At the root of this perception is the idea that homosexuality and transgender are dysfunctional behaviors or conditions because they do not lead to reproduction.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“The "pseudoheterosexual" interpretation of animal behavior offers striking parallels to stereotypical views about human homosexuality. Scientific puzzlement over assigning animals "male" or "female" roles echoes the refrain often heard by gay and lesbian people, who are frequently asked, "Which one plays the man (or woman)?" The assumption is that homosexual relationships must be modeled after heterosexual ones - a view that is as narrow a conception of human relationships as it is of animal sexuality.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“The scientific discourse surrounding animal homosexuality has been preoccupied with finding an *explanation* for the phenomenon, often at the expense of providing comprehensive descriptive information about, or acknowledgement of, the actual extent and diversity of same-sex activity throughout the animal kingdom. Rather than being seen as a part of a spectrum of natural variation in sexual and gender expression, homosexuality and transgender are viewed as exceptions or anomalies that somehow stand outside the natural order and must therefore be "explained" or "rationalized".”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“Ironically, by denying the sexual component of many same-sex activities and seeking alternative "functions", scientists have inadvertantly ascribed a much richer and varied palette of behavioral nuances to homosexual interactions than is often granted to heterosexual ones. Because heterosexuality is linked so inextricably to reproduction, its nonsexual "functions" are often overlooked, whereas because homosexuality is typically disassociated from reproduction, its sexual aspects are often denied. By bringing these two views together - by recognizing that both same-sex and opposite-sex behaviors can be all these things and sexual, too - we will have come very close indeed to embracing a fully integrated or *whole* view of animal life and sexuality.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“This near-obsessive focus on penetration and ejaculation - indeed, on "measuring" various aspects of sexual activity to begin with - reveals a profoundly phallocentric and "goal-oriented" view of sexuality on the part of most biologists. Not just homosexual activity, but noninsertive sexual acts, female sexuality and orgasmic response, oral sex and masturbation, copulations in species (such as birds) where males do not have a penis - any form of sex whatsoever that does not involve penis-vagina penetration falls off the map of such a narrow definition.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“As we have seen, one way in that zoologists have tried to avoid classifying same-sex activity as "homosexual" is by using terminology and behavioral categories that deny it is a sexual activity at all. This approach also extends to the interpretations, explanations, and "functions" attributed to same-sex behavior, even when it involves the most overt and explicit of activities. Astounding as it sounds, a number of scientists have actually argued that when a female bonobo wraps her legs around another female, rubbing her own clitoris against her partner's while emitting screms of enjoyment, this is actually "greeting" behavior, or "appeasement" behavior, or "reassurance" behavior, or "reconciliation" behavior, or "tension-regulation" behavior, or "social bonding" behavior, or "food exchange" behavior - almost anything, it seems, besides *pleasurable sexual* behavior. Similar "interpretations" have been proposed for many other species (involving both males and females), allowing scientists to claim that these animals do not really engage in "genuine" (i.e., purely sexual) homosexual activity. But what heterosexual activity is ever "purely" sexual?”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“The attitude that homosexual activity is not "genuine" sexual, courtship, or pair-bonding behavior is also sometimes made explicit in the descriptions and terminology used by researchers... This attitude is also encoded directly in the words used for homosexual behaviors: rarely do animals of the same sex ever simply "copulate" or "court" or "mate" with one another (as do animals of the opposite sex). Instead, male walruses indulge in "mock courtship" with each other, male African elephants and gorillas have "sham matings", while female sage grouse and male hanuman langurs and common chimpanzees engage in "pseudo-matings". Musk-oxen participate in "mock copulations", mallard ducks of the same sex form "pseudo-pairs" with each other, and blue-bellied rollers have "fake" sexual activity. Male lions engage in "feigned coitus" with one another, male orang-utans and savanna baboons take part in "pseudo-sexual" mountings and other behaviors, while mule deer and hammerheads exhibit "false mounting"...
Even the use of the term 'homosexual' is controversial. Although the majority of scientific sources on same-sex activity classify the behavior explicitly as "homosexual" - and a handful even use the more loaded terms 'gay' or 'lesbian' - many scientists are nevertheless loath to apply this term to any animal behavior. In fact, a whole "avoidance" vocabulary of alternate, and putatively more "neutral", words have come into use... The use of "alternate" words such as 'unisexual' is sometimes advocated precisely because of the homophobia derived by the term 'homosexual': one scientist reports that an article on animal behavior containing 'homosexual' in its title was widely received with a "lurid snicker" by biologists, many of whom never got beyond the "sensationalistic wording" of the title to actually read its contents.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“In many ways, the treatment of animal homosexuality in the scientific discourse has closely parallelled the discussion of human homosexuality in society at large. Homosexuality in both animals and people has been considered, at various times, to be a pathological condition; a social aberration; an "immoral", "sinful", or "criminal" perversion; an artificial product of confinement or the unavailability of the opposite sex; a reversal or "inversion" of heterosexual "roles"; a "phase" that younger animals go through on the path to heterosexuality; an exceptional but unimportant activity; a useless and puzzling curiosity; and a functional behavior that "stimulates" or "contributes to" heterosexuality. In many other respects, however, the outright hostility to animal homosexuality has transcended all historical trends. One need only look at the litany of derogatory terms, which have remained essentially constant from the late 1800s to the present day, used to describe this behavior: words such as strange, bizarre, perverse, aberrant, deviant, abnormal, anomalous, and unnatural have all been used routinely in "objective" scientific descriptions of the phenomenon and continue to be used (one of the most recent examples is from 1997). In addition, heterosexual behavior is consistently defined in numerous scientific accounts as "normal" in contrast to homosexual activity...
In a direct carryover from attitudes toward human homosexuality, same-sex activity is routinely described as being "forced" on other animals when there is no evidence that it is, and a whole range of "distressful" emotions are projected onto the individual who experiences such "unwanted advances"...
In other cases, zoologists have problematized homosexual activity or imputed an inherent inadequacy, instability, or incompetence to same-sex relations, when the supporting evidence for this is scanty or questionable at best and nonexistent at worst.”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“The historical record also shows that attitudes toward homosexuality have little to do with whether people believe it occurs in animals or not, and consequently, in its "naturalness". True, throughout much of recorded history, the charge of "unnaturalness" - including the claim that homosexuality did not occur in animals - was used to justify every imaginable form of sanction, control, and repression against homosexuality. But many other interpretations of "naturalness" were also prevalent at various times. Indeed, the very fact that homosexuality was thought to be "unnatural" - that is, not found in nature - was sometimes used to justify its *superiority* to heterosexuality. In ancient Greece, for example, same-sex love was thought to be purer than opposite-sex love because it did not involve procreation or "animal-like" passions. On the other hand, homosexuality was sometimes condemned precisely because it was considered *closer* to "nature", reflecting the base, uncontrolled sexual instincts of the animal world. The Nazis used this reasoning (in part) to target homosexuals and other "subhumans" for the concentration camps (where homosexual men subjected to medical experiments were referred to as test animals), while sexual relations between women were disparaginly characterized as "animal love" in late eighteenth-century New England . The irrationality of such beliefs is highlighted in cases where charges of "unnaturalness" were combined, paradoxically, with accusations of animalistic behavior. Some early Latin texts, for instance, simultaneously condemned homosexuals for exhibiting behavior unknown in animals while also denouncing them for imitating particular species (such as the hyena or hare) that were believed to indulge in homosexuality.
In our own time, the fact that a given characteristic of a minority human population is biologically determined has little to do with whether that population should be - or is - discriminated against. Racial minorities, for example, can claim a biological basis for their difference, yet this has done little to eliminate racial prejudice. Religious groups, on the other hand, can claim no such biological prerogative, and yet this does not invalidate the entitlement of such groups to freedom from discrimination. It should be clear, then, that whether homosexuality is biologically determined or not - none of these things guarantee the acceptance or rejection of homosexuality or in itself renders homosexuality "valid" or "illegitimate".”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

“Industrial society is essentially a system of enforced scarcity, in which basic necessities such as housing, food, and shelter are denied to the vast majority of people except in exchange for labor that occupies 40-60 hours a week of an adult's time. In contrast, detailed studies of the economies of a number of hunter-gatherer societies (including those living in the most "arduous" of environments such as the deserts of southern Africa) have revealed a "workweek" of only 15-25 hours for all adults (not just a privileged few). So abundant are the basic resources, minimal the material needs, and equitable the forms of social organization (which make resources freely available to all) that the remainder of people's time in such societies is occupied by "leisure activities".”
― Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity