Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Bighorn Sheep (Berger 1985:334; Geist 1971:161—63, 185, 219). Another possible case of heterosexual interactions being modeled on homosexual ones occurs in Atlantic Spotted Dolphins: during heterosexual copulations some individuals have been observed apparently “mimicking” the sideways mounting position used during interspecies homosexual copulations with Bottlenose Dolphins (Herzing and Johnson 1997:96). Interestingly, the patterning of heterosexual relations after homosexual ones is also found in some human cultures. In medieval Baghdad and Andalusia, for example, the preeminence of (largely intergenerational) homosexual relations was such that heterosexual women often cross-dressed as male youths—sometimes even with painted mustaches—in order to compete with boys for the attentions of men (Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities, pp. 99, 151). In contemporary North America, some men cross-dress as women when having sex with their wives/girlfriends because they enjoy imagining themselves as a lesbian couple, or they become transsexual/transgendered women and live with their female partners in a lesbian relationship (see, for example, Money, J. [1988] Gay, Straight, and In-Between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation, pp. 105-6 [New York: Oxford University Press]; Bolin, A. [1994] “Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy and Diversity,” p. 484, in G. Herdt, ed., Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, pp. 447-85 [New York: Zone Books]; Rothblatt, M. [1995] The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender, pp. 159-60 [New York: Crown]).

23

This is to some extent an arbitrary classification, since these three “types” may overlap with each other or even co-occur to varying degrees within the same species or individual. Nevertheless, they represent broad patterns that are a useful point of departure for discussion.

24

In the words of the scientists studing this species, “Female sexual displays formed a continuum from male-behaving females to normal females” (Buechner and Schloeth 1965:219).

25

Gorilla (Yamagiwa 1987a:13 [table 7], 1987b:36-37 [table 4]); Hanuman Langur (Srivastava et al. 1991:492— 93 [table II]); Bonnet Macaque (Sugiyama 1971:260 [table 9]); Pig-tailed Macaque (Tokuda et al. 1968:291 [table 7]).

26

Western Gull (Hunt et al. 1984).

27

On the rarity of incubation feeding in male-female pairs, see Evans Ogden and Stutchbury 1994:8.

28

Some cases of apparently role-differentiated behavior are not so clearly gendered when examined in more detail. Kitagawa (1988a:65—66) suggests that females in homosexual pairs of Black-winged Stilts can be divided into “malelike” and “femalelike” partners. However, many of the courtship and pair-bonding behaviors that are used to make this distinction, such as “splashing water” or “irrelevant preening,” are described by other sources (e.g., Goriup 1982; Hamilton 1975) as being performed by both sexes in heterosexual pairs. Even if we accept Kitagawa’s classification of some behaviors as more typical of males or females, though, in at least one of the homosexual pairs described, it is difficult to see how this translates into gendered behavior. Both partners in this case performed putatively female activities such as “extending neck” and egg laying, putatively male behaviors such as “half-circling round,” and putatively nongendered activities such as “showing nest spot” and incubation.

29

This behavior is exhibited by females when initiating pair-directed courtships, and by males when pursuing promiscuous matings (cf. Coddington and Cockburn 1995).

30

Swallow-tailed Manakin (Foster 1987:555; Sick 1967:17, 1959:286).

31

On the role differentiation of these parental duties in heterosexual pairs, see Martin et al. 1985:258.

32

Black-headed Gull (based on figs. 3-6, van Rhijn 1985:92-94). These comparisons are drawn from studies of captive birds; however, the behavior of wild Gulls appears to be similar—in a homosexual pair observed in the wild by Kharitonov and Zubakin (1984:103), for example, at least one partner exhibited a combination of both “male” and “female” behaviors.

33