Gendering animals (a paper arguing that animals might have gender...)

submitted by BiologyIsReal from link.springer.com

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[–]lefterfield 15 insightful - 3 fun15 insightful - 2 fun16 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

fits naturally with some traditional Indigenous ways of thinking about other animals and their relations with humans.

Riiiight. WHICH "Indigenous ways of thinking"? Some indigenous people considered owning livestock bizarre. These types always seem to assume tribal culture was a monolith across multiple regions.

But the whole idea of it is insane anyway. To have a concept of social gender an animal would need to have a sense of 'self.' There are very few animals that are known to have this. Cats and dogs don't seem to. We've barely scratched the surface of understanding animal communication in any species. What could this possibly reveal other than a lot of human assumptions and gender ideology?

[–]BiologyIsReal[S] 12 insightful - 3 fun12 insightful - 2 fun13 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Considering the same people think indigenous people lived in a gender utopia untill the white man introduced to them the concept of sex, I don't trust these claims.

I can only read the abstract, but I would bet the authors did enough mental gymnastics in this paper to win an Olympic medal. The whole idea is insane as you say. Animal behaviour may vary between the sexes, but that doesn't mean they have a concept of gender.

[–]grixit 7 insightful - 11 fun7 insightful - 10 fun8 insightful - 11 fun -  (1 child)

Considering the same people think indigenous people lived in a gender utopia untill the white man introduced to them the concept of sex, I don't trust these claims.

Columbus wrote exensively about the behavior of natives on Hispanola, especially the way they would sometimes split in two to reproduce, since their anatomy was totally unrelated to sex.

[–]lefterfield 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

OMG, lol!