Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

For example, it is often erroneously thought that indigenous “subsistence” cultures are characterized by a scarcity of resources and an arduous, even desperate, struggle for survival, in contrast to modern industrial societies that have an abundance of resources and ample leisure time—when in fact the actual circumstances are usually reversed. 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.” For further discussion, see Sahlins, M. (1972) Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine Publishing); Lee, R. B. (1979) The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Mander, “Lessons in Stone-Age Economics,” chapter 14 in In the Absence of the Sacred.

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cummings, e. e. (1963) Complete Poems 1913—1962, p. 749 (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).

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For more on the “problem” of sexual reproduction, see Dunbrack, R. L., C. Coffin, and R. Howe (1995) “The Cost of Males and the Paradox of Sex: An Experimental Investigation of the Short-Term Competitive Advantages of Evolution in Sexual Populations,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 262:45-49; Collins, R. J. (1994) “Artificial Evolution and the Paradox of Sex,” in R. Parton, ed., Computing With Biological Metaphors, pp. 244—63 (London: Chapman & Hall); Slater, P. J. B., and T. R. Halliday, eds., (1994) Behavior and Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Michod, R. E., and B. R. Levin, eds., (1987) The Evolution of Sex: An Examination of Current Ideas (Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates); Alexander, R. D., and D. W. Tinkle (1981) Natural Selection and Social Behavior: Recent Research and New Theory (New York: Chiron Press); Daly, M. (1978) “The Cost of Mating,” American Naturalist 112:771-74.

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In fact, a number of zoologists have independently characterized homosexual (and alternate heterosexual) activities as “energetically expensive,” “wasteful,” “inefficient,” or “excessive.” See, for example, Fry et al. (1987:40) on same-sex pairing in Western Gulls; Schlein et al. (1981:285) on homosexual courtship in Tsetse and House Flies; Moynihan (1990:17) on noncopulatory mounting in Blue-bellied Rollers; Thomas et al. (1979:135) on the “wasting” of sperm during male homosexual interactions in Little Brown Bats; Moller (1987:207-8) on the “communal displays” (group courtship and promiscuous sexual activity) of House Sparrows; Ens (1992:72) on the “spectacular ceremonies” among nonbreeding Oystercatchers and Black-billed Magpies that involve the expenditure of “vast amounts of energy”; J. D. Paterson in Small (p. 92), on the “excessive” nonreproductive heterosexual activity of female primates that entails considerable “inefficiency” and “energy wastage” (Small, M. F. [1988] “Female Primate Sexual Behavior and Conception: Are There Really Sperm to Spare?” Current Anthropology 29:81—100); and Miller et al. (1996:468) on the “excess” sexual selection involved in the violent, often nonreproductive heterosexual matings between different species of fur seals. For an early characterization of some animal behaviors being motivated by an “excess” of sexual (and other) drives, see Tinbergen, N. (1952) “‘Derived’ Activities: Their Causation, Biological Significance, Origin, and Emancipation During Evolution,” especially pp. 15, 24, Quarterly Review of Biology 27:1— 32. For an early, nonscientific theory of (male) homosexuality as the expression of natural “superabundance,” “excess,” and “prodigality,” see Gide, A. (1925/1983) Corydon, especially pp. 41, 48, 68 (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux).

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von Hildebrand, M. (1988) “An Amazonian Tribe’s View of Cosmology,” in Bunyard and Goldsmith, Gaia: The Thesis, the Mechanisms, and the Implications, pp. 186-195.

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Bataille, Accursed Share, vol. 1, p. 28.

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