Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

There are a number of genuine connections and points of correspondence between animal and human homosexuality, as well as significant differences. There are also numerous pitfalls in attempting to extrapolate from animal to human behavior, or vice versa. This chapter explores a number of specific animal-human comparisons and the issues surrounding them. For example, we’ll address claims that certain aspects of homosexuality are uniquely human, such as various types of sexual orientation, or the treatment of homosexual and transgendered individuals in the larger society. Also to be discussed are the special insights into human behavior offered by primate homosexuality (especially cultural behavior), and the rationale and motivations behind making cross-species comparisons in the first place (especially where the dubious concept of “naturalness” is concerned). Overall, a cautionary note must be sounded: while it is tempting to jump to broad conclusions about human homosexuality based on animal behavior (or vice versa), the full complexity and richness of homosexual expression in both animals and people must be considered. Only then will we begin to understand both the uniqueness and the commonalities of each.

From Pederasty to Butch-Femme: Uniquely Human?

One of the most significant results to emerge from the study of human homosexuality over the past few decades is the enormous variety of forms that this activity takes. From pederasty or “boy love” in ancient Greece, to ritualized homosexual initiation in New Guinea, to butch-femme lesbian relationships, to situational homosexuality in prisons, to contemporary North American gay couples—homosexuality has assumed many guises across history, cultures, and social situations. Thus, while homosexual desires and activities are probably ubiquitous, the specific forms that they assume are intimately shaped by particular sociohistorical contexts. Instead of talking about homosexuality, we should really speak in terms of homosexualities, plural, for there are many variations on the theme of same-sex relations.²

Animal homosexuality puts a new twist on this observation, since nearly every type of same-sex activity found among humans has its counterpart in the animal kingdom. Comparisons between animal and human homosexuality are inevitably muddled, however, by the lack of an adequate understanding and classification of different types of homosexuality. The confusion surrounding this subject is readily apparent: activities as different as pair-bonding between female Kangaroos and same-sex mounting in male Bighorn Sheep and Bottlenose Dolphins, for example, have all been compared to the sort of homosexual activity that occurs among human beings in prisons.³ The problem with analogies like this—which are inevitably imperfect and inaccurate—is that something like “prison homosexuality” is itself actually a conflation of many different behavioral variables and diverse patterns of same-sex activity, as are the “corresponding” animal behaviors.⁴ In addition to the actual form of the homosexual activity involved (pair-bonding, sexual behavior, etc.), many other factors must be considered, such as consensuality, age, gender presentation of partners, and so on. Thus, a particular example of homosexual activity—whether animal or human—is in reality a unique amalgamation or “blend” of multiple factors, any one of which may be shared with other forms of homosexual activity without necessarily conferring identity between the overall patterns they represent. Comparisons of homosexuality in animals and humans that fail to recognize such complexities are simply misleading.

It is helpful in this regard to think of homosexuality in terms of a number of independent axes, each of which is a continuum joining two “opposite” ends of a particular category (as suggested by researchers Stephen Donaldson and Wayne Dynes, who have developed a typology for human homosexuality based on this framework). ⁵ For example, one axis might represent the degree to which the homosexual interaction is gendered or role-based (ranging from the heavily role-oriented homosexuality of Native American two-spirits or Euro-American butch-femme lesbians, to the nongendered homosexuality of the South African San peoples or some gay couples in contemporary Euro-American culture). Another axis would represent the age relationship of the partners involved (ranging from no age difference to a clearly age-differentiated interaction); another represents sexual orientation of participants (homosexual ↔ bisexual ↔ heterosexual); another consensuality (forced or nonconsensual ↔ freely chosen or consensual); another genetic relatedness of partners (incestuous ↔ unrelated); another social status or position of same-sex activity (socially sanctioned ↔ socially condemned); and so on.