Can Dogs Be Gay? Y and No... Let's Talk Doggy Sexual Inty!

Contents:

• CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
• CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
• CAN DOGS BE GAY? WELL, Y AND NO…
• HEADLE-GRABBG SUPPOSEDLY HOMOSEXUAL BULL 'FELY NOT GAY'

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

Wh most speci, homosexual sex has been documented only sporadilly, and there appear to be few s of dividual animals who engage exclively. ” But the journal that published the paper, Blogy Letters, sent out a prs release a few days after the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. A Denver-based publitn for gay parents weled any and all new rears om “the extensive lbian albatross parent muny.

” A gay rights advote e-mailed Young, askg her to fly a rabow flag above each female-female nt, to intify them and show solidary. In 1999, Bagemihl published “Blogil Exuberance, ” a book that pulled together a lossal amount of prev piecemeal rearch and showed how blogists’ bias had margalized animal homosexualy for the last 150 years — sometim nocently enough, sometim an eptn of anthropomorphic disgt. Homosexualy is a tough se, bee appears to vlate that central te, that all of sexual behavr is about reproductn.

Given this big umbrella of theory, the very existence of homosexual behavr animals n feel a ltle like imperable nonsense, somethg a rearcher uld spend years bangg his or her head agast the wall liberatg.

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

The difficulty of that challenge, more than any implic or explic homophobia, may be why past blogists skirted the THE LAST DECADE, however, Pl Vasey and others have begun velopg new hypoth based on actual, prolonged observatn of different animals, cipherg the ways given homosexual behavrs may have evolved and the evolutnary role they might play wh the ntext of dividual speci. So far, the only real ncln this relatively small body of lerature seems to pot to, llectively, is a kd of flatg, meta-ncln: a sgle explanatn of homosexual behavr animals may not be possible, bee thkg of “homosexual behavr animals” as a sgle scientific subject might not make much sense. But that shouldn’t trick to thkg that homosexual behavr has some equivalent, anizg purpose — that the two are tidy oppos.

But we’re quick to nceive of that great range of activi the way most handily tracks to our anthropomorphic pot of view: put crassly, all those different animals jt seem to be dog gay sex stuff wh one another. ”Somethg siar may be happeng wh what we perceive to be homosexual sex an array of animal speci: we may be groupg together a big grab bag of behavrs based on only a superficial siary.

CAN DOGS BE GAY? WELL, Y AND NO…

The Stanford blogist Joan Roughgarn told me to thk of all the animals as “multaskg” wh their private ’s also possible that some homosexual behavrs don’t provi a nventnal evolutnary advantage; but neher do they upend everythg we know about blogy. As Z put , “There’s a lot of slop the system — which, ” she was sure to add, “is not the same as sayg homosexualy is a mistake. Homosexual activy is often observed animal populatns wh a shortage of one sex — the wild but more equently at zoos.

Young’s hband, a blogil nsultant, was actually an thor of the paper, along wh Brenda Zn (who is also not gay, for what ’s worth). Young found the assumptn offensive — not bee she was beg mistaken for gay, but bee she was beg mistaken for a bad scientist; the people seemed to prume that her rearch was promised by a personal agenda.

HEADLE-GRABBG SUPPOSEDLY HOMOSEXUAL BULL 'FELY NOT GAY'

Several people I spoke to told me their own sexual inti eher helped spur or mata their tert the topic; Bce Bagemihl argued that gay and lbian people are “often better equipped to tect heterosexist bias when vtigatg the subject simply bee we enunter so equently our everyday liv. ” He is gay, he add, but that fact didn’t seem to tract om his RETROSPECT, the big, sloshg stew of anthropomorphic analys that Young’s paper provoked the culture uldn’t have been ls surprisg.