which precipitate and normalize sexual activity, rather than the intraspecies competition which facilitates it. Thus, the crucial role of culture finally enters the evolutionary scene. Rather than borrowing from human and animal sexualities to interpret each other, the “rainbow” of diversity present in human and non-human animals must be acknowledged.22 Even among the great apes, some animals are monogamous while others practice promiscuous or even coercive sex. More distantly related animals have entirely different systems of reproduction; some plants are hermaphroditic and sexually reproduce by themselves, for example, while other species like sea horses practice male gestation. The fascinating relationship between environmental factors and a species’ sexual equipment takes place on a massive scale and therefore cannot be boiled down to the agency of individual genes. Selfish gene biology cannot explain why certain forms of sex become normalized within specific animal cultures. For scientists who are ultimately interested in understanding human behavior, selfish gene biology is frighteningly inadequate. Within the dominant discourse, “all forms of sexual behavior” are just “side effects…of the urge to make babies.”23 Animal sexualities boil down to pure reproduction because next to their genes, the animals themselves have no agency in their own behavior. Nonreproductive but socially significant behavior, in great apes for example, is reduced to either instinct gone haywire or understood only within the rubric of the human: bonobos practice “oral sex” while vervet monkeys have a propensity for “sexual harassment.”24 Thus, the traffic between human and animal sexualities when addressing normative sexual behavior is thick. Within selfish gene discourse, animal sexualities only become coherent via analogy to human sexuality, and vice versa. Queering the intersection of human and animal sexualities Given science’s role as an excavator of truth, evolutionary biology’s ability to grapple with normative sexual behavior is less interesting than its ability to explain the mysteries of queer sexualities. Within selfish gene courtship, human courtship is understood using the model of the peacock, with its showboating males and choosy females. Likewise, ape and other sexualities are understood by importing a “modern Western juridical framework.”25 But ultimately, people turn to evolutionary biology not to explain why most humans are reproductive, which popular science can explain, but how in the world some humans are not. Since selfish gene biology posits animals as genetically programmed automatons, they represent an ideal terrain for understanding the role of biology as distinct from culture. The inevitable outcome is an essentialization and subsequent pathologization of the queer which is packed with traffic in meanings. Because animals are boiled down to genes, they can only have reproductive and therefore evolutionarily driven sex. Two male octopuses copulating exhibit “same-sex octopus reproductive behavior” which is reproductive because it derives from the natural instinct to reproduce.26 ____________________ Ibid. (P. 13) Eldredge, Niles. Ibid. (P. 129) 24 Terry, Jennifer. Ibid. (P. 157) 25 Ibid. (P. 157) 26 Ibid. (P. 153) 22 23
44
“PURE” SCIENCE