September 19, 2012

Moose don't have a God to tell them what to boink: homophobia, transphobia, science, and religion

The apartment next to mine has a front stoop that manages to carry conversations with perfect clarity to my apartment's second story window.

Normally these conversations are about the usual uninteresting things that college freshman-aged people talk about, like how crazy a party was, or how much they are looking forwards to getting drunk, but occasionally a turdbit [sic] wafts it's way into my living room.

"God didn't create more than two sexes."

I'll admit, my ears perked up at such a nonsensical claim as this. It seemed that this was about to be used as the supporting statement for some hateful bullshit, so I listened in:

The person in question, went on to expound, "I mean, if I looked at your dog, and I was like, 'your dog has a penis, but I think it might be a girl' you'd be like... that wouldn't make any sense."

She went on to explain that this was the reason why gay marriage doesn't make sense.

Ah, Transphobia and homophobia wrapped into one conflating statement!

There's so much wrong with this line of thinking, it's hard to figure out where to start. Having overheard this conversation, however, a roommate of mine and I discussed and came to the following counterpoints:

* 'God' didn't 'create' any sexes at all.
Biology created sex. Evolution created sex. And when it was creating sex, there was still a lot of asexuality going on, even amongst species with divergent sex traits. For instance, Clownfish, the little guys who live in Sea Anemones, and many other species of salt water fish, have only a single sex organ that produces male sex cells early in life, and after a few years, goes on to produce female sex cells. There are species of lizard that reproduce either sexually, if there are males around, or asexually (laying fully fertile eggs without the input of another lizard's DNA) if there aren't any.

* Gender identity and sex are totally different things.
A nifty little cliche to distinguish between sex and gender is, "Sex is what's on the outside, gender is what's on the inside." But it's actually more complex than that. (Of course it is.)

Gender identity is a social construct. Dogs probably don't have gender identity, because they probably don't have the cognitive capacity to tell themselves that sort of a narrative about "society" and their place in it. I love dogs, and they have high Emotional Intelligence, but I really dont' think they're smart enough for human concepts like that. I mean, dogs smell each other's butts.


* Dogs don't get married.
Dogs also don't exhibit a whole lot of sexual discretion. If they did get married, they would probably, in addition to getting both straight and gay married (and cheating constantly, just like humans), also marry plush toys and people's legs. For example:

Exhibit A:



A female miniature pincher being dominant in the bedroom

Exhibit B:



A dog engaging in premarital coitus, making the Baby Dog Jesus cry

And they do so shamelessly and publicly! Most humans who have sex with plush toys do so privately in their own homes. So dogs aren't the best analogue for human social behaviour, especially in regards to marriage, a concept which for dogs, does not exist.

* There are tons of gay animals.
FACT: homosexuality exists in nature, and it's everywhere. Everything from dogs, moose, to parasites in your intestine, all exhibit homosexual behaviour. Even bed bugs do it.

From Wikipedia:
Male bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) are sexually attracted to any newly fed individual and this results in homosexual mounting. This occurs in heterosexual mounting by the traumatic insemination in which the male pierces the female abdomen with his needle-like penis. In homosexual mating this risks abdominal injuries as males lack the female counteradaptive spermalege structure.



Seen here: a bed bug gay bar

* Moose and deer will mount anything when in rut, be it another moose or deer (regardless of gender)*, a bison (regardless of whether it's just lawn ornament**) or your pickup truck***.

*Exhibit a




**Exhibit B




***Exhibit c




Basically, the most fundamental argument here is that neither moose, deer, bedbugs nor dogs, have a 'God' to tell them what is appropriate to have sex with and what is not. They will boink anything. They don't shame one another for being gay. They don't have a concept of binary gender, nor binary sexuality. They just boink who, or what, they want to boink. And they seem to be getting along just fine.

But animals are savage!



Sure, animals don't have computers, or advanced civilizations. But that's got nothing to do with homosexuality.

We would not have computers, but for Alan Turing, a theoretical mathematician who in addition to creating the logical foundation for binary code while laying in a field and staring at the sky, was also openly gay during a time in England in which it was illegal to be gay. (Interesting sidenote: he also pretty much single handedly broke the Nazi's "enigma" code, a key factor in winning WWII)

And we wouldn't have an advanced industrialized civilization, nor the concept of macroeconomics, if it wasn't for economic theorist James Maynard Keynes, another openly gay man.

So to wrap things up:

Regardless of whether or not your dog has a penis and thinks it's really a girl dog, that statement is a really lousy supporting statement for whether gay marriage is ethical, natural, etc.

I'm really sick of this argument over gay marriage having to be rehashed every few years, and I really hope to see gay marriage legalized soon. Because frankly, I'm sick of the stupid statements like "Your dog has a penis, therefore gay marriage is wrong."



UPDATE

This:

1 comment:

  1. Pretty sure i almost pee'd myself laughing. I'm going to bed.

    ReplyDelete