Could completely reframe

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Hmmm. Not sure this is one hundred percent accurate.

Gay Star News on Facebook:

Elliot Page is back with a documentary that could completely reframe what we’re told is “natural”

In Second Nature, which Page narrates and co-produces, scientists explore more than 1,500 animal species that display same-sex behaviour, change sex, raise young in Queer pairings and organise themselves outside rigid male-female hierarchies.

Penguins. Albatrosses. Clownfish. Bonobos.

Turns out, the natural world never signed up to “biological reality” as it’s often weaponised.

Page put it bluntly this week: “This idea that nature is organized around a cis heteronormative system is just completely false.”

Well you don’t say. So is this idea that nature is organized around chess, or ballet, or the stock market, or figure skating. But the éclat fades out a little once you remember that there are a vast number of human practices and labels that nature is not organized around so it’s kind of odd to get all agitated about the fact that nature doesn’t have a human vocabulary.

Be careful out there.

Comments

21 responses to “Could completely reframe”

  1. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    Nature isn’t organized around the film industry.

  2. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Heh.

  3. Starskeptic Avatar
    Starskeptic

    They made the naturalistic fallacy into a documentary.

  4. Your Name's not Bruce? Avatar
    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    Elliot Page is back with a documentary that could completely reframe what we’re told is “natural”

    “Reframing” doesn’t change reality, only our perceptions and explanations of it.

    …scientists explore more than 1,500 animal species that display same-sex behaviour, change sex, raise young in Queer pairings and organise themselves outside rigid male-female hierarchies.

    Penguins. Albatrosses. Clownfish. Bonobos.

    Oh, look, it’s the same dishonest, misleading, irrelevant cherry-picking. All these check-marks ticked off in this-grab bag of forced-teamed “science” lack the one thing you hope we won’t notice, the one thing that you so desperately wish it would, because you’ve paid the price in your own flesh. Get back to us when you find humans (or even just a single mammal) that can change sex. This is just a bad-faith smoke screen that rehashes the pintless analogies that can’t support the arguments you can’t make.

    The rest of the animate world is not the balm and comfort you would like it to be, or that you would have us believe. There are a multitude of “is-es” that you would never, ever want to become “oughts.” For every happy, glitter-rainbow story of clownfish and Bonobos, there are dozens of horror shows of unimaginable cruelty, pain, and suffering that would fuel the nightmares of a thousand lifetimes. The stories you would decide to highlight are few and far between compared to the multitude of ones you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Parasitism. Infanticide. Cannibalism. Rape.

    Male lions routinely kill the cubs of females whose young have been fathered by another male. Those females routinely mate with those murderous males.

    Birds that are the young of nest parasites will push the young of the host species out of the nest; in some species of bird, the first to hatch will push the unhatched eggs of what would have been their siblings out of the nest. In lean years, parent birds will let some of their chicks starve because there’s not enough food to go around.

    There are parasites that cause their hosts engage in self-destructive behaviour that allows the parasite to complete its life cycle in the guts of the predator that catches and consumes the first, suicidal host.

    And when it comes down to it, a lot of things that die are eaten alive. That can’t be fun.

    Reaching for “natural” can get you bitten, in more ways then one. There are a whole lot of “natural” things you’d never want to see on the ingredient list of any of the groceries you buy, because they would kill you. Naturally. Horror, death, and pain are as much a part of how the world works as its awe-inspiring beauty and elegance, which is something Darwin felt keenly when he realized the tremendous cost of natural selection. The price of evolution is death of the unfit. Not just the death of the individual, but the extinction of entire species. Those who wish to apply this “natural” logic to human society as a whole are rightly reviled, because even though we arose from this process, we don’t have to employ it ourselves. We get to pick and choose. Do you want to draw upon these perfectly “natural” traits and behaviours and hold them up as models for humans to emulate? I would hope not. We are not lions, or parasitic wasps whose young slowly eat their hosts alive until they’re ready to emerge from the bodies of their victims. And no, we are not clownfish, either. Analogies are never perfect. some are less perfect than others. But mostly, analogy is not reality. It’s an echo or parallel, not identical. Not an “identity.”

    Nature has no moral judgement above that of differential survival of naturally varying offspring, and their reproduction. And that survival is geared to and determined by current conditions. There is no planning for tomorrow, only the eternal now. Future usefulness of current traits is never guaranteed, only the luck of the draw. Today’s dominant phylum can easily become tomorrow’s experiment in taphonmy and fossilization. And “Nature?” No regrets, no tears. It doesn’t do “framing.” It’s not there to provide lessons or morals. It’s examples are multitudinous and contradictory, confounding and shocking human sensibilities. Nature has its own agenda, and making people feel less bad about their own poor, misguided choices is not part of it.

    Sorry “Elliot”. You’re a mutilated, female, human, mammal.

    Try again, but don’t blame “nature” or expect it to plead your case. The laws it follows aren’t ones you will find useful or comforting.

  5. Sonderval Avatar
    Sonderval

    Note the forced teaming and the sleight-of-hand:

    Forced teaming: Probably no-one who is usually called “transphobic” has trouble with gay couples, non-traditional families etc. So what?

    Sleight of hand: So clownfish (and others) do change sex? How exactly do you know that? Don’t tell me it’s by looking at what kind of gametes the individual produces.

    Finally, ducks are known to rape other ducks and even to rape corpses. So perhaps we want to think a bit about using nature as a guideline for society as YNNB also noted.

  6. The Whimster Gap Avatar
    The Whimster Gap

    Clownfish, famously, change sex after a long period of introspection.

  7. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    I’ve noticed Elliot Page’s career seems to have nosedived since she became a stunning and brave transman in 2020. Apart from her role in the Netflix series ‘The Umbrella Academy’, none of her post-2020 roles have gotten much attention. Maybe this documentary is an attempt to get attention for herself.

  8. Athel Cornish-Bowden Avatar
    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    And when it comes down to it, a lot of things that die are eaten alive. That can’t be fun.

    We saw an example of that three days ago: a seagull was busy eating a young pigeon that was still alive.

  9. Piglet Avatar
    Piglet

    What annoys me most about the Argumentum ad Attenborough is that I was one of those nerdy little kids who just loved weird animal facts. It’s cultural appropriation!

    But the main problem with it is that yes, we know that a lot of unique reproductive strategies have evolved. The thing that the clownfish does which is unique and special is never done by humans. How do we know that the seahorse which incubates its young is the male and not the female? Do we ever see that happen in Homo sapiens? Clownfish prove that men cannot become women, and seahorses prove that the human beings who become pregnant are never men.

  10. quixote Avatar
    quixote

    Biologist here (of the research and teaching at uni variety). Just seconding what everyone else here has said. Humans, mammals generally, have sexes that don’t change. Nature’s motto is ‘whatever works,’ and Nature’s definition of ‘working’ is producing offspring. Or helping your genetic relatives to produce offspring. If you want human potential narrowed down to reproduction, by all means, take all your lessons from “Nature” instead of what you can dream.

  11. KBPlayer Avatar
    KBPlayer

    The Darwinian male frog holds the eggs of the female in his vocal sac and eventually spits out baby frogs. It would be convenient to female humans if this manner of reproduction was adopted – but I can’t see it happening soon.

  12. Jim Baerg Avatar
    Jim Baerg

    YNNB: “Get back to us when you find humans (or even just a single mammal) that can change sex.”

    For that matter are there any amniotes that can change sex?

    If a vertebrate reproduces on land the anatomical differences between males and females are greater than if reproduction is in water. So sex change is relatively easy for fish but much harder (impossible?) for reptiles & their descendants.

  13. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    This idea that nature is organized around a cis heteronormative system is just completely false.

    Well, that part of nature that reproduces sexually really kinda is, Elliott.

  14. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    Well evolution doesn’t guarantee that a species won’t evolve into extinction either, so there’s that. Very teleological.

  15. Artymorty Avatar
    Artymorty

    Not to sound too contrarian, but I’d like to put a small asterisk next to the charge of naturalistic fallacy here.

    The naturalistic fallacy is the mistake of applying moral justification to a belief or action based on finding examples of it in “nature”.

    But “natural” also has a real meaning, as in the philosophical term, natural kinds: these are categories that have a basis in material reality rather than subjective human thought.

    The gender-critical argument relies heavily on the argument that the biological sexes are natural kinds — objective, material categories of humans (and all other mammals) with a very clean division between them. Gender activists could just as well throw the charge of naturalistic fallacy at us for making the argument that transgender ideology is bogus because the sexes are natural, “real” categories while “gender identities” are not.

    With enough drilling down, one finds that virtually all moral arguments eventually ground themselves in claims about the material world, about the nature of reality. Every ought is ultimately anchored to an is. This can lead to what I like to call the naturalistic fallacy fallacy: argue about anything long enough and it will start to look like it rests on the naturalistic fallacy.

    For both gay rights and women’s rights, I believe that nature is in fact our friend, not our foe: the material basis of our differences has come to matter more and more in the battle to protect our freedom and dignity.

    Take, for example, the moral argument for banning gay “conversion therapy”. It’s one thing to say, “there’s nothing wrong with being gay, so people shouldn’t be forced to get therapy to un-gay themselves.” But that only gets us up to justifying a ban on forced conversion therapy. The moral argument that homsexuality is harmless justifies gay people’s right to not be forced into therapy to “cure” ourselves of it. Ok. So far, so good, no obvious naturalistic fallacy here. But then: what about gays who want to be straight? There are countless homosexuals who wish they weren’t (Elliot Page probably being one example). Why would we ban them from seeking therapy to at least try to straighten themselves out? Here, the argument suddenly draws upon material reality — nature: science has recently identified homosexuality as an inborn trait that is as-yet not modifiable. The moral argument for banning people from undergoing gay conversion therapy even if they truly want it is that homosexuality is natural, and it’s clinically proven to be harmful to even try to change it with the technology we have today. Now, imagine if doctors get better at brain surgery: it’s not entirely unfathomable that some day soon we will have the technology to modify people’s sexual orientations. Well, guess what? Homosexuals would be even more dependent on the argument that homosexuality is natural to defend ourselves then, wouldn’t we. It’s a tricky bind we could very well end up in.

    So we ought not dismiss the appeal to the “natural” so quickly. It’s becoming more imporant all the time, as technology restructures our civilization.

    Which brings us back to sex, “transgender”, and the medical technology used to modify the cosmetic appearance of people’s sex, like Elliot Page.

    I don’t fault Elliot Page for trying to prove that she’s changed sex by reaching for examples in nature. In fact, I think she’s on the right track to look to nature for answers: by that I mean she should be grounding her facts and her morals in the material world — in reality, which is… nature.

    It’s just that she’s done a terrible job doing that. Cherry-picking things that have nothing to do with material reality as it applies to her specifically. In her case, she really has stumbled into the naturalistic fallacy. Rather than looking at nature and finding comfort in the fact that she is exactly what she is — a female ape, with her own unique personality and attributes, and there’s nothing “wrong” with that — she wandered around the zoo looking for “natural” things that might back up her misguided idea that mammalian sexes aren’t natural categories at all.

    Ironically, she’s at once fallen for the naturalistic fallacy and something of an anti-naturalistic fallacy: she seems to have looked to nature to prove that her sex isn’t natural.

    Leave it to trans to make an illogical pretzel out of everything it touches…

  16. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    A gem, Arty.

  17. Mosnae Avatar
    Mosnae

    Artymorty:

    The moral argument for banning people from undergoing gay conversion therapy even if they truly want it is that homosexuality is natural, and it’s clinically proven to be harmful to even try to change it with the technology we have today. Now, imagine if doctors get better at brain surgery: it’s not entirely unfathomable that some day soon we will have the technology to modify people’s sexual orientations. Well, guess what? Homosexuals would be even more dependent on the argument that homosexuality is natural to defend ourselves then, wouldn’t we. It’s a tricky bind we could very well end up in.

    I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I follow your argument here. If I understand correctly, you first invoke “nature” here to point out that conversion therapy is harmful quackery, and so should be banned even if performed on willing subjects. I agree with this.

    But say we found ourselves in a hypothetical future were one’s sexual orientation could be changed perfectly and painlessly at the press of a button. This is a prospect that seems rather scary, for obvious reasons: I don’t believe pressing the button should ever be a necessity in order to live a happy and fulfilling life, but it’s easy to imagine that homosexuality would suddenly become much rarer due to societal pressure. I am deeply uncomfortable with this. I’m not sure how to justify it; I don’t have a coherent argument at the moment.

    But – I don’t see how such an argument could stem from the innateness of homosexuality. The reason I don’t like the “homosexuality is innate” argument is, quite simply, what if it weren’t? I don’t like seeing slogans like “born this way” getting thrown at homophobic behavior, because I can’t think of a single instance where I would feel alright with such behavior if homosexuals were not, in fact, born this way.

    Now, obviously, in our hypothetical scenario, we’re assuming that one’s sexual orientation cannot be naturally changed on a whim, since the button had to be invented. Perhaps we can go farther and assume that the conversion therapies of our time don’t work either. In order to find a counterexample, we would, then, need to work with the notion that homosexuality is not innate, but is nonetheless fixed – or was, until technology came along.

    And I think that, in such a situation, I would feel just as bad. I don’t see how “nature” would change things here. Regardless of whether we end up banning the button or not, I just don’t see how the particular cause of homosexuality could reasonably have a impact on our decision.

    If you don’t mind, perhaps you could elaborate?

  18. Artymorty Avatar
    Artymorty

    @Mosnae,

    I think you’re on an interesting track, but ultimately you’re answering your own question.

    Like you, I can’t logically find anything inherently wrong with a hypothetical parallel universe in which homosexuals are astronomically rare because in that universe homosexuality is optional thanks to advanced technology, and virtually all of them chose to “cure” themselves of it, by their own free will.

    But the thing is, we kinda live in that universe right now, because that’s one aspect of what trans ideology is. Or at least, the young budding lesbians and gays have been told that they can opt out of their homosexuality by declaring themselves trans. So, homosexuality is very much optional in the minds of many in the new generation. And we’re seeing already the cost to their lives. For the vast majority of budding young homosexuals, they want the fuck out if they’re given the chance. And so do their parents, and teachers, and guidance counsellors. “Trans kids” is nothing if not a massive grab at “solving” the “problem” that is faggotry and dykery. (Pardon my french, but they’re out to destroy us, so, I get touchy.)

    The nuance in my particular take is in this passage here:

    With enough drilling down, one finds that virtually all moral arguments eventually ground themselves in claims about the material world, about the nature of reality. Every ought is ultimately anchored to an is.

    I’m not arguing for a magical objective moral framework that justifies homosexuality as if from nowhere. I am exactly as uncomfortable as you are about the prospect of homosexuality — or sex — being optional to some hypothetical future generation. There’s no “skyhook” (to borrow Richard Dawkins’s term) to save us here, to anchor and ground our beliefs in something greater in some ultimate, objective, measurable way.

    Ultimately, it’s nature itself that I call upon as an authority to ground us: the fact that humanity is a product of nature, and it’s nothing if not continually that, that justifies itself. We better not hack it too much or we’re liable to end up with disaster.

  19. Mosnae Avatar
    Mosnae

    Ah. As in, don’t fix what ain’t broke. Okay, I can understand that.

    One example that came to mind while writing my previous comment was selective abortion. I don’t believe it “harms” female embryos, but it can still end up creating massive social problems, as we see in the case of China. Of course, it’s unlikely that problems this drastic could result from the deletion of homosexuality, but I think the general point still stands. Given all the horrors we’ve managed to cause/create in the last few centuries, it seems like a good rule of thumb not to meddle with nature when there aren’t huge benefits to be gained from it.

    Thank you! As usual, you’ve given me a lot to think about.

  20. Artymorty Avatar
    Artymorty

    Ah, yes! Selective abortion is another excellent example of the same kind of quandary. It calls for a deep dive into moral logic to address it wholly, doesn’t it.

    And you come back up from it and you’re like, whew, this feels like actually rather shaky ground, and it’s scary.

    That means we’re doing our jobs, being critical thinkers!

  21. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    we’re seeing already the cost to their lives

    And not just their individual lives; the entire mess is having an impact on gays and lesbians as a group, as they introduce the idea that gay is an option, and that there is something ‘wrong’ with it that they need to opt out.

    For the vast majority of budding young homosexuals, they want the fuck out if they’re given the chance

    And it appears by an ever growing population of young girls, many of whom may not be same sex oriented, but they don’t like what is expected of being a woman. They want more, and they think the only way to have it is to be male (they may be right on that…we seem to be losing ground rapidly).

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