Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Could completely reframe.
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 pointless 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.
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