An article on same-sex sexual contact in animals and the outraged reception of this research from many mainstream biologists helps perfectly to illustrate why sociobiology is, as science, useless: biologists’ interpretations of animal sexual behavior remain one of the healthiest repositories of every patriarchal and heterosexist prejudice you could think of.

Some true classics:

• Mainstream zoologists are shocked and alarmed by such queer activities as male lions head-rubbing and rolling with each other, or male whales caressing each other with fins, none of this involving actual genital contact. This tells us more about male zoologists’ hang-ups about physical intimacy between men than it tells us about whether there are queer animals or not.

• Mainstream sociobiologists seem to simply refuse to admit that animals might engage in sexual contact because it is pleasurable; one colleague of a primatologist who dared to suggest this as an explanation of lesbian sexual contact between Japanese macques remarked Well, if that was the case we’d all be in the aisle now having sex.

• Zoologists such as Tim Clutton-Brock of the University of Cambridge argue that

  “true” homosexuality–if strictly defined as male anal penetration by males who show no interest in females–is virtually unknown among wild mammals. They argue that animals who mount same-sex partners and the like are behaving aggressively or merely practising for heterosexual encounters. Or they may be advertising their availability, or trying to make a heterosexual partner jealous.

  I shouldn’t even have to say anything to ridicule this, but a few notes are in order: (i) Who the hell defines true homosexuality as male anal penetration by males who show no interest in females? Have lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, or even exclusively gay men who don’t particularly like anal sex, simply ceased to exist? (ii) What does the definition of mounting as an aggressive act tell you about the view of heterosexual sex being espoused? (iii) Aren’t these the exact statements that unrepentant homophobes make about LGBTM humans (e.g., they’re just experimenting, it’s just a phase, they’re trying to make their heterosexual partner jealous, etc.). It is explained that the favored theory of primatologists trying to cope with the fact of widespread lesbianism in Japanese macques was that it was a response to a shortage of male attention – because, as we all know, those dykes just need to find the right man.

All this helps highlight one of the main problems with the gene-programmed outlook of sociobiology: it simply refuses to acknowledge that there might be accidental consequences of evolution which have no basis in selected adaptations, but merely ride in on gene-complexes that are selected for other features. For example, there is clearly no genetic basis for the human practice of writing Petrarchan sonnets, but it is a consequence of our brains being adapted to cognitive and emotive processing for the purposes of survival. Since sociobiologists feel compelled, however, to find an evolutionary function for every behavior, they invariably subsitute in their own cultural prejudices about the proper purpose of behaviors. Thus, the purpose (or evolutionary function) of sex is assumed to be procreation, a page straight out of Catholic dogma.

Well, there are lots of different functions I could think of other than babies for generalized sexuality (such as reinforcing social relationships), which don’t require special explanations such as mistaken identity or dominance or jealousy for queer sexualities. And it may just be that sexual practice is an accidental feature of evolutionary adaptations rather than a functional adaptation in the first place. But since sociobiology rules such explanations out a priori, it inevitably has to substitute in all kinds of incedibly overt Right-wing cultural conservative ideology and pass it off as Eternal Laws of Nature. It is for this reason that late 20th/early 21st century Sociobiology has become the modern equivalent of late 19th/early 20th century racist anthropology as the naturalization of reactionary ideology.

A wonderful article by Pagan Kennedy explores the concept of the platonic Boston marriage between two straight women who have committed to living with each other [Ms.]. It also begins to explore the features of the patriarchal world that make this kind of arrangement so hard for so many women. An interesting sidebar: the emergence and sensationalism of lesbianism (we’ll call it pseudolesbian from here on out to distinguish it from actual women-loving-women) in male-dominated culture was emerging precisely at the same time as the most pitched part of the battle for suffrage, and women’s inclusion into the political sphere in general. Pseudolesbianism emerged again as a pornographic staple in the 1970s as the Second Wave entered its most pitched and giddiest phase. It seems like the pornographic sexualization of intimate relationships between women is the primordial Backlash, and is used as a bludgeon to help keep women isolated from one another in the same way that sexualization of intimacy is used to keep men and women from forming deep friendships and the same way that faggot is used to abort any emotional or physical intimacy between men. In each of the cases the relationships formed are then shuttled off into some anonymous-ideal form of relating: through Femininity, through Heterosexuality, through Masculinity. Of course, the effect of each is very different: Masculinity is culturally conditioned to dominance, aggression, authoritarianism, instrumental reason; Femininity to submission, passivity, emotion; Heterosexuality is what you get when you put the two of them together. We need to begin the project that Kennedy evokes so beautifully, of learning to live together and be present to one another, imagining alternative ways without the bludgeon of a patriarchal sexuality invading that life. (Well, hell, you might argue: it’s not just this platonic stuff; we also need to relearn how to have sexual relationships without the bludgeon of a patriarchal sexuality invading that life. And you’d be right).

Carson Brown wrote a fabulous article on virgins (or the celibate) as The New Sexual Deviant [Bitch Magazine], doing an excellent job of calling attention to the male-centric nature of the so-called sexual revolution which has merely flip-flopped the old formula that Only Sluts Say Yes to Only Neurotic Prudes Say No. Of course, ultimately, this is nothing new: it’s just the playing out of the male Left vs. male Right culture wars that have been going on over the past century that were initiated by the battle between Freud and the traditionalists. The article does a good job of elaborating the sexist suppositions of both the anti-virginity and pro-virginity crowds.

My only complaint: Brown argues

It certainly makes sense: How are capitalists supposed to market their stuff if people aren’t actively pursuing sex? How are they supposed to sell cars, clothes, beers, breakfast cereal, perfume, make-up, or travel on the premise that their products will get you laid if people are content to not get laid? So the market pulls out all the stops to ensure that we will remain sex-obsessed, so that we’ll buy things.

Well, yeah, ok, but who is constructing sex as rebellion in the first place? Who is controlling the big capitalist corporations and media outlets that use faux-rebellion to make money? The answer in both cases is: men. The one thing that Pat Robertson and Hugh Hefner can agree on is that sex = rebellion, orgasms = liberation. The question they bicker over is whether this rebellion is good or bad. Ultimately, corporate capitalism would find other rebellions to construct and market. I think we have to recognize that the enemy here isn’t capitalism. Or rather, that capitalism is subordinate to the real enemy: male supremacy.

In the in a shocking development file: The Guardian Council of Iran has rejected the candidacy of all 45 women [Independent Media Center] who applied to run for the Presidency of Iran. The Iranian constitution states that all Presidential candidates must be political men, which the Guardian Council interprets to mean: No Girls Allowed. Of course, here in the US we don’t need a Guardian Council. The power structures of the Demopublican parties, and their stranglehold over electoral politics, have done a fine enough job of blocking women from running for President over the past century despite all of the progress of women’s liberation. But you can buck the system: Vote Woodhull in 2004!

The New York Times has published an interesting article on gender differences in e-mail communications. Not surprisingly, males and females tend to show pretty much the same communication patterns in e-mails as they do normally: men tend to be more taciturn, instrumental, and transactional. Women tend to be more voluble, open, and relational. This dovetails interestingly with other findings that corporate CEOs, the quintessential alpha males, are are very terse in their e-mails whereas lower-ranking workers tend to be more formal. I suspect that this has more to do with tersity being a male behavior, and therefore valued, than tersity being valued, and therefore becoming a male behavior. In either case, though, there may be some hope yet: some researchers have also found that the disinhibiting effects of e-mail actually help some men communicate intimacies and feelings that they’d never communicate face-to-face.