Bruce Bagemihl - Biological Exuberance

In fact, multiple nonsexual measures of dominance often fail to correspond even among themselves, and this has led some scientists to suggest that the entire concept of dominance needs to be seriously reexamined, if not abandoned altogether. While it may have some relevance for some behaviors in some species, dominance (or rank) is not a fixed or monolithic determinant of animal behavior. Its interaction with other factors is complex and context-dependent, and it should not be accorded the status of a preeminent form of social organization that it has traditionally been granted. 93Primatologist Linda Fedigan advocates a more sophisticated approach to the role of dominance in animal behavior, eloquently summarized in the following statement. Although her comments are specifically about primates, they are relevant for other species as well:

We often oversimplify the phenomena categorized together as dominance, as well as overestimating the importance of physical coercion in day-to-day primate life…. An additional focus on alliances based on kinship, friendship, consortship, and roles, and on social power revealed in phenomena such as leadership, attention-structure, social facilitation, and inhibition, may help us to better understand the dynamics of primate social interaction. Also it may help us to place competition and cooperation among social primates in proper perspective as intertwined rather than opposing forces, and female as well as male primates in their proper perspective as playing major roles in primate “politics” through their participation in alliance systems. 94

Considering the wide range of evidence against a dominance analysis of animal homosexuality—as well as a number of explicit statements by zoologists questioning or entirely discounting dominance as a factor in same-sex activities 95—it is surprising that this “explanation” keeps reappearing in the scientific literature whenever homosexual behavior is discussed. Yet reappear it does, even in several studies published in the 1990s. As recently as 1995, in fact, dominance was invoked in a discussion of mounting between male Zebras, and this explanation still has enough currency that scientists felt compelled to refute it in a 1994 account of homosexual copulation in Tree Swallows. In looking through the many examples of the way that this “explanation” has been used, it becomes apparent that the relevance of dominance is often asserted without any supporting evidence, then cited and re-cited in subsequent studies to create a chain of misconstrual, as it were, extending across many decades of scientific investigation. Again and again, early characterizations of homosexual activity as dominance behavior—often hastily proposed on the initial (and unexpected) discovery of this behavior in a species—have been refuted by later, more careful investigations of the phenomenon. 96Yet frequently only the earlier studies are cited by researchers, perpetuating the myth that this is a valid characterization of the behavior. For example, in a 1974 report that described same-sex mounting in Whiptail Wallabies, a zoologist referred to dominance interpretations of Rhesus Macaque homosexuality even though more recent studies had invalidated—or at the very least, called into question—such an analysis for this species. 97

At times, the very word dominance itself becomes simply code for “homosexual mounting,” repeated mantralike until it finally loses what little meaning it had to begin with. “Dominance” interpretations have in fact been applied to same-sex mounting regardless of how overtly sexual it is. The relatively “perfunctory” mounts between female Tree Kangaroos or male Bonnet Macaques, as well as interactions involving direct clitoral stimulation to orgasm between female Rhesus Macaques, and full anal penetration and ejaculation in Giraffes, have all been categorized as nonsexual “dominance” activities at one time or another. Even though many scientists have gone on record against a dominance interpretation—thereby challenging the stronghold of this analytic framework—information that contradicts a dominance analysis is sometimes troublesomely discounted or omitted from studies. For example, in several reports on dominance in Bighorn rams, same-sex mounting and courtship activities (as well as certain aggressive interactions) were deliberately excluded from statistical calculations because they frequently involved “subordinates” acting as “dominants,” i.e., they did not conform to the dominance hierarchy. One scientist even classified some instances of same-sex mounting in Crested Black Macaques as “dysfunctional” because they failed to reflect the dominance system or exhibit any other “useful” properties. 98

Nor is this merely a question of relevance to scientists, or simply a matter of esoteric academic interpretation. The assertions made by zoologists about the “functions” of homosexual behavior are often picked up and repeated, unsubstantiated, in popular works on animals, becoming part of our “common knowledge” of these creatures. In a detailed survey of primate homosexuality published in 1995, zoologist and anthropologist Paul L. Vasey finally and definitively put the dominance interpretation of homosexuality in its proper perspective, stating that “while dominance is probably an important component of some primate homosexual behavior, it can only partially account for these complex interactions.” 99We can only hope that his colleagues—and ultimately, those who convey the wonders of animal behavior to all of us—will take these words to heart once and for all.

In nearly a quarter of all animals in which homosexuality has been observed and analyzed, the behavior has been classified as some other form of nonsexual activity besides (or in addition to) dominance. Reluctant to ascribe sexual motivations to activities that occur between animals of the same gender, scientists in many cases have been forced to come up with alternative “functions.” These include some rather far-fetched suggestions, such as the idea (quoted above) that fellatio between male Orang-utans is a “nutritive” behavior, or that episodes of cavorting and genital stimulation between male West Indian Manatees are “contests of stamina.” 101At various times, homosexuality has also been classified as a form of aggression (not necessarily related to dominance), appeasement or placation, play, tension reduction, greeting or social bonding, reassurance or reconciliation, coalition or alliance formation, and “barter” for food or other “favors.” It is striking that virtually all of these functions are in fact reasonable and possible components of sexuality—as any reflection on the nature of sexual interactions in humans will reveal—and indeed in some species homosexual interactions do bear characteristics of some or all of these activities. However, in the vast majority of cases these functions are ascribed to a behavior instead of, rather than along with, a sexual component—and only when the behavior occurs between two males or two females. According to Paul L. Vasey, “While homosexual behavior may serve some social roles, these are often interpreted by zoologists as the primary reason for such interactions and usually seen as negating any sexual component to this behavior. By contrast, heterosexual interactions are invariably seen as being primarily sexual with some possible secondary social functions.” 102

Thus, a widespread double standard exists when it comes to classifying behavior as “sexual.” Desexing is selectively applied to homosexual but not heterosexual activities, according to a number of different strategies. The first and most obvious is when scientists explicitly classify the same behavior as sexual when it takes place between members of the opposite sex and nonsexual when it involves members of the same sex. This is readily apparent in the following statement: “Mounting [in Bison] can be referred to as ‘mock copulation.’ It seems appropriate to classify this action as sexual behavior only when it is directed towards females. The gesture, however, was also directed to males which suggests that it also has a social function.” Likewise, because a behavior often associated with courtship in Asiatic Mouflons and other Mountain Sheep (the foreleg kick) was observed more frequently between individuals of the same sex than of the opposite sex, one zoologist concluded that this activity must therefore be aggression rather than courtship. Primatologists reassigned what they had initially classified as sexual behavior in Stumptail Macaques to the category of aggressive or dominance behavior when it took place in homosexual pairs, while marine biologists reclassified courtship and mating activity in Dugongs as nonsexual play behavior once they learned both participants were actually male. Ornithologists studying the courtship display of Laysan Albatrosses also questioned whether this behavior was “truly” related to pair-bonding or mating after they discovered that some courting birds were of the same sex. Finally, because (male) Dwarf Mongooses and Bonnet Macaques are as likely to mount same-sex as opposite-sex partners, scientists decided this behavior must be nonsexual. 103This is not to say that behaviors cannot have different meanings or “functions” in same-sex versus opposite-sex contexts, only that the erasure by zoologists of sexual interpretations from same-sex contexts has been categorical and nearly ubiquitous.