How do we know that homophobia doesn't exist in other species?

I’m wondering how we would quantify homophobia in another species?

This is a good question, and I’m searching away, but I haven’t heard of any studies or observations at all.

Interesting Q. My first dog was homosexual, and would often get beaten up by other male dogs, but I figured that it was because his pheromonal output was probably inappropriate, and therefore considered a “threat” to the others somehow. Differences from the norm are often not tolerated by others in the same species, for example an albino baby might be abandoned or ignored because it threatens the others by not having the right camouflage for the survival of the rest.

We don’t. We can’t even decide on if cats and dogs feel love in a way that humans would recognize, so how on Earth would we possibly be able to know if they have communication and language on a level that we deem necessary in order to create cultural constructs such as homophobia? Would we call it homophobia if they just kinda kept away from the gay ones, but didn’t engage in philosophical debate as to why they should? Could we even define homophobia that clearly? But it does make for a very nice bumper sticker.

Because irrationality requires one to first be rational. ;-)

Most actions in the animal kingdom are instinct-driven, or about pleasure seeking. So homosexuality makes sense. Caring what something else is doing when it isn’t about your food, your sleep, your pleasure, or your in-group doesn’t make that much sense.

Maybe because animals aren’t really capable of reflecting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sort of assumed animals don’t exactly judge, because they don’t reflect, they don’t think ‘backwards’.
Some animals of course do have memories, but I think for example a dog would react like this on seeing homosexuality: “Why hey, that male dog is doing sexual activities with this other male dog.” and nothing more. They don’t use their memory to compare those things, so they can’t find anything ‘out of the ordinary’.

Animals, at least some of them are a lot more sophisticated than we give them credit for being, so I’m not thinking it’s not possible.

@iamthemob @Hacksawhawk Do you have actual proof that animals don’t have these capabilities? The absence of proof of something is not itself proof of absence.

It seems to be common sense that, say, a male goat, a heterosexual male goat would not want to be raped by another male goat. I’m not sure where you heard that only one species exhibits homophobia, but logic dictates that other animals would attempt to evade sexual attempts of the same sex or even go fight or flight mode. It logically seems a common fear.

@MyNewtBoobs Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

@Afos22 Really? Because just you don’t come up with any proof that I have pot in my apartment doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just because we haven’t found life on other planets yet doesn’t mean it’s not there. It means we don’t know.

I don’t think that any other animals would be affected if they noticed two same gender animals having sex. I don’t think it would even register in their minds.

@JilltheTooth My first dog was homosexual

Huh?

I think the question is involuntarily misleading. Homosexuality in nature is not exclusive as it is with humans. Homosexuality is, after all, a tendency and not an absolute.

For there to be homophobia there would have to be a clear distinction in an animal’s sexuality, but since there generally is not, going so far as entire male-only packs of lions having sex with each other as the norm and mating with females when they find them, instead of incorporating them in the pack, as there wasn’t in ancient Greece, for instance, it’s incredibly difficult to think homophobia would make sense in that context.

After all how does it make sense for a population that has no concern with a certain facet of their existence to be split about it? It would be like the ancient Greeks being homophobic and pedophobic. It was the norm and had no social stigma attached to it, what the fuck was there to be phobic about?

@MyNewtBoobs – I’ve never seen evidence of it, and it doesn’t make sense to me that it would exist. From what I’ve seen, in most animals there is at most a limited sense of self, other, etc. which is a form of conciousness. But anxiety over the behavior of two entities that are not related to you in any way requires complex abstract thinking, assumptions about intent, and a concern for what that means for the future. I have yet to see anything really demonstrate that in any animals…and if there is evidence, it must be a small amount.

Therefore, I find it completely reasonable to believe that they do not have the capability for useless, abstract fears.

We’re talking about “reflection” and “philosophy”, but I don’t think most expressions of homophobia require that. It’s less of people thinking about the philosophical ramifications of homosexuality than it is “I don’t want no damn faggots in my Aryan neighborhood”. In animals, it wouldn’t be a “position”, it would be expressed by avoiding or attacking the male animals who hump the other male ones. And you’d have to have to some way to test that that is really what they are avoiding or going after…

I know people like to talk about homosexuality in animals as some sort of justification for homosexuality in humans, but animals don’t really have “sexual orientation”, so it’s not much of a valid comparison.

@Thammuz – very good point. There are significantly fewer instances of homosexual pairings in nature (although they do exist) as there are instances of homosexual activity (which is more opportunistic generally).

But in many ways, homophobia could be mirrored in a manner similar to that version of homosexuality – if it were a repeated reaction to an incidental relationship.

@MyNewtBoobs Do you agree that a ball hitting a wall also means that the wall hits the ball?

@MyNewtBoobs Not exactly ‘proof in the box’ proof. We’re not gonna find the answer in the brain (maybe we will, but never mind that). But to put things radically: If they did have those capabilities, they’d be having wars now and would be living in skyscrapers. This just to make my point clear, I realize it’s quite an absurd statement.
If they did have those capabilities they could for example start using tools like we did in our primitive years. But they don’t, because they don’t have the capacity like we do.

Imagine a monkey that can’t reach a banana. Now it’s possible that the monkey finds a branch and uses it to catch the banana (only if the branch is nearby). What it can’t do, is postpone it’s desire for the banana and start thinking for better and more practical ways of gathering bananas. Animals are as it were ‘stuck’ to their desires and are therefore unable to reflect and unable to make tools like we can.

This as an attempt for proof, it might be sufficient, it might not, but it’s all I got. =)

@JilltheTooth – Just wanted to say thanks for posting about your homosexual dog that often got beat up by the other guys in the neighborhood.

Do you think the other dogs ever got bored and consciously decided to go beat the crap out of that <insert derogatory homosexual epithet here> down the street just for kicks?

@Afos22 No it is not. Absence of evidence means we can’t tell one way or the other and, scientifically speaking, that we will take in account the “absence” scenario.

@Hacksawhawk Maybe because [...] of the ordinary’.
Can’t know that, for all you know they might be telepathic and planning to take over the world. It’s one of those great questions that will remain unanswered until we can bypass the whole language barrier problem, and this includes body language.

If they did have those capabilities they could for example start using tools like we did in our primitive years.
Assuming they have the physically necessary quality of being able to hold and handle objects, which most don’t. Primates, who have the closest anatomy to ours, do use some sort of utensils. They create dildos, for instance. Personally, I think they just have smarter priorities than we do, after all, wars and skyscrapers shouldn’t exactly be our species’ proudest achievements.

What it can’t do, is postpone it’s desire for the banana and start thinking for better and more practical ways of gathering bananas.

Except they live in packs precisely to gather food more efficiently and provide for each other when needed. And they can figure out a way to bypass an electric fence by using physics.

@iamthemob But anxiety over the behavior of two entities that are not related to you in any way requires complex abstract thinking, assumptions about intent, and a concern for what that means for the future.

Actually, not even that is enough for homophobia. Animals who went as far as what you described would just think “good, more pussy/dick for me then”. Social animals (which would be the only ones caring about what another animal of their same pack is doing) have no problem with kicking someone off if they’re doing damage to the pack, but there would be no reason for them to kick someone who’s damaging themselves by not producing offspring of their own. As far as they’re concerned it’s just less people they have to compete with to get their chance to mate and produce their own offspring, there is no harm in keeping them around as long as they’re useful to the pack.

But in many ways, homophobia could be mirrored in a manner similar to that version of homosexuality – if it were a repeated reaction to an incidental relationship.
Could you elaborate on that one?

I don’t think animals have the capability to label too many things.

@Hacksawhawk When does having a brain capable of some logic enable that animal to build as humans do? or even develop language, which is very important to building skyscrapers or expressing contradicting ideas which lead to wars?

@Thammuz Using this logic nothing can be disproved. We know that everything isn’t true.

I realize that my post sounded a bit odd, my point was that I don’t really think it was about “homophobia” per se, but about whether or not the other dogs’ reactions were to my dog’s pheromones just setting the other guys off. Because of that I became very well acquainted with my vet. If we define anything as a phobia it presupposes a fear of that thing, in which case, perception of a threat to the species because of a difference could indeed be construed as a fear reaction, therefore a phobia of sorts.
For the record, he wasn’t attacked unless he was approaching the other dogs in a sexual manner. Gosh, I tried to teach him subtlety and discretion but alas, to no avail.

Edit to add: I knew he was gay because he had no interest in females in heat, ever.

@JilltheTooth I agree fully. My first response expresses a similar logic.

@Thammuz It is indeed possible that animals are in fact intelligent beings, and that actually we are the lesser ones, I leave that possibility open.
The problem is that we can’t decide which one of the species is more intelligent, because we are so different in reasoning. You could very well assume that animals are very intelligent, but that intelligence is nevertheless not the same as ours. So then we’ve got our intelligence and animals have their intelligence, and neither the animals nor humans are capable of saying which form of intelligence is the more intelligent, because we each look from our own point of view. We don’t have a completely objective view on the world.

I could say humans are in terms of reason the superior because we have skyscrapers, medicines, cup holders, etc… But animals could very well say the same (being the cleverer ones) just because of these reasons!
There’s that quote of Douglas Adams where he says that the dolphins always thought they were the clever ones exactly because of the reasons we give to make us sound clever (i.e. skyscrapers, wars, cities, etc…).
I’m not bringing human kind to a superior level (in fact, I’m rather condescending of human kind), all I can say is that animals are different than me in terms of intelligence. Wether we are better or not I can not answer.

@Afos22 I’m very sorry, I’ve tried, but I haven’t quite understood your question.

@Afos22 And that’s precisely the point. If we can’t prove something for certain because there is a lack of data, the right thing to do is not to pronounce yourself on the issue.

Everything can be proven with evidence, the old “you can’t prove a negative” rigmarole is usually bullshit. You can devise tests to prove the presence of something, therefore you can also devise tests to prove its absence, they’re the same thing. The problem with the issue at hand is that we have not way of gathering such evidence because a) we have no actual grasp of what a presence or a lack of such characteristics would entail and b) We have no way, as of yet, to bypass the barrier that exists between our manner of communication and other animals’.

As far as incidental evidence is concerned, there is good reason to think some animals are capable of logical reasoning, see my previous post with the monkey catapult article. Also, they’re clearly able to feel resentment, grief, affection and confusion, all of which build on previous experience, and often show curiosity when faced with something new, a behaviour that doesn’t exist without memory and a use for knowledge.

@Hacksawhawk Precisely my point, which didn’t seem yours as well.

@Hacksawhawk “But to put things radically: If they did have those capabilities, they’d be having wars now and would be living in skyscrapers.” Why?

@Thummaz I agree. The cliche arguments such as “absence of proof is not proof of absence” or “You can’t prove a negative” are just brought about when one side of the argument can not be proven, yet the argument is believed. But, some things have not been proved or disproved. This is one of those things.
My personal belief is that many animals are capable of fears and some are capable of fearing sexual abuse from the same sex.

Although, I am playing devils advocate to either side.

@Afos22 I know, I’m sorry, it was in fact a horrible example. As well as Thammuz pointed out, they don’t have the physical abilities to do so. But as I said, it was radical and thus probably rather absurd.
My point was: If they did have all those capacities we’ve been talking about, wouldn’t they be ‘further’ in improving their lifestyle?
If you’ve read the last post I wrote, then I can explain as well why I just contradicted myself. I used ‘further’ again as a norm from my point of view (human one), the problem is that maybe that norm isn’t applicable to the animal world.
If I assume that pleasure is the goal of animals, then I could say that they aren’t intellectually advanced as we are, because if they were, they’d be sitting in a hot tub drinking their favorite drink from a source that isn’t likely to run out soon.
But again! I can not know what they want, what their standards are, so in fact, what I just said may be wrong as well.
The question, wether we are cleverer than animals or not is, then, in fact an empty question.

@Hacksawhawk But, is cleverness the building blocks of fears? or is it the other way around?

I’ve always figured homophobia in humans was actually a more complex fear of being raped at least when it comes to homophobia in males. If a male human is 6’4 and 300 pounds, well, he can pretty much fuck whatever he wants as long as it’s smaller than him which includes most humans, male and female. This basic fear has extended to include all human, homosexual males. Maybe a feeling of homophobia towards people of the opposite sex stems from a fear of the reduction of the pool of mates. If two women want to have sex with each other, that’s two fewer females that want to mate.

Anyhoo, I always figured that “homophobia” in animals was similar, but more basic. @JilltheTooth‘s dog who would try and hump males who were spewing out hormones was threatening them physically and also distracting them from getting a potential mate.

@KatawaGrey

I agree, and, I’d also add, as a petite woman, I have seen some mighty scary lesbian gals that have made me feel the same way. lol Not a slam on lesbianism, just a fact

And then there is cross species attraction too, my female chinsese goose is completely OBSESSED with one of my neighbors sheep. There are 4, 3 white and 1 black, and her fixation is on just one of the white ones.

This breeding season she has shown NO interest in my gander Marwyn, and is constantly following the sheep around the fence line. If I don;t close my ranch gate she will leave the property and follow the sheep all the way up the road!

Explain that? lolol

@Coloma

Maybe she wants to make goslings like this and figures that’s the way to do it?

@crisw

I love the Sebastopols!

Animals discriminate, exclude, shun and even attack individuals of their group all the time for a variety of reasons, some discernible, others not so much.

My guess – purely unscientific, anecdotal, and likely biased – is that their actions in such matters are limited by pragmatism. Wild animals spend far more time simply trying to eat and survive than people and so they don’t have the time or energy to devote to the levels of what we’d classify as “hate crimes” (of which homophobia might qualify).

While an animal may fight participation in homosexual sex, that in and of itself is not homophobia, that is merely not wanting to get screwed.

Homophobia embodies wanting to prevent any homosexual sex by members of the species. We do not observe other species trying to punish or disrupt homosexual acts by other members of the species. Only humans do that.

@Afos22 Like iamthemob already more or less implied: irrationality comes with rationality. Of course wars and huge blocks of buildings destroying this earth is irrational. Just as homophobia is irrational! That’s why human kind sucks… We are horrible.

The ideas of homosexuality and homophobia are relatively new. They are human ideas and therefore cannot be contributed to any other species. That’s not to say other species my shun or attack non-normative behavior, I just doubt the reason is homophobia.

@Hacksawhawk The rationality of homophobia has been touched on above.

I agree with @tinyfaery. Humans love to classify things and also like to state what is normal and what isn’t. We didn’t make this planet and our society is far from perfect, so we should be the last to dictate what is acceptable and what’s not(to a certain degree, because there are some things that are just plain wrong).

@Afos22 Where?

@zenvelo Has said pretty much what I was thinking. Animals are mostly too self centered to care what other animals are doing with or to each other. I’ve seen dogs, cats, rodents, birds and cows having all varieties of non-procreative sexual activity and while the animal ‘on the bottom” would frequently bite or fight the other animal, I’ve never seen other animals show any interest in the two animals who were going at it.

It’s not really homophobic to fight someone off if they just randomly walked up to you and started humping away. I mean.. really..

Also, for many pack animals, a sexual act is a display of dominance. I’ve seen this with rodents quite a bit and dogs a few times. You will see two animals fighting and then one will start forcing sex on the other one. I’ve seen two males, two females, I’ve seen a female humping a male (which I don’t think there is a human equivalent to that.. it’s like.. straight sex, but doing it wrong..) I don’t think animals are thinking of sexual orientation when they do this dominance sex.

All in all, I just don’t think they think like we do, or think enough to have concepts like homophobia.

@Thammuz katawagrey and jillthetooth

It just doesn’t. There’s no proof because proof is not needed. There are so much more important things to spend time and money on researching.

If homophobia existed in other species, the homosexuals of that species would have been killed off a long time ago (over time). These species do not have laws against killing homosexuals. And it’s certainly not likely that these homosexual animals, of the past, hid their homosexuality.

Humans are the only animals that seem to have an incredibly good grasp on hate.

@Afos22 They proved animals also agree that no means no, not that homophobia exists in dogs. Furthermore @KatawaGrey hasn’t actually brought any evidence to the table, just conjectures that deviate entirely from the meaning of the word homophobia the moment we start talking about animals.

Whether you take the literalist point of view and define homophobia as the irrational fear of homosexual individuals or you agree with the broader, more common definition, as “haterd towards homosexuals”, neither are proven by the fact that some dogs discouraged another male’s sexual interest in them. Homophobia is a behaviour that is directed towards an entire group, regardless of the actions of the individual, what @JilltheTooth described is homophobic in the same sense in which a woman who doesn’t want to have sex with you is heterophobic.

Not wanting a particular partner doesn’t imply fearing said partner because of its sexual preference rather than its behaviour towards you, nor does it imply hating it and its whole cathegory for the same reason.

As for @KatawaGrey‘s point on homophobia, i have only one thing to say: on average, men react better to lesbian porn than to heterosexual porn, sexual excitement wise. By contrast, homophobic men tend to have a greater sexual reaction to male-on-male porn than non-homophobic ones. As reported by this study of which i can’t find a complete copy on the web, though i read excerpts here and there.

So, honestly, i doubt the point is fear of being raped. I fear rape as much as the next person (the same way i fear being hit by a car, falling down a manhole, etcetera), and i would say that hardly qualifies as a phobia, read an irrational fear.

Furthermore this hardly seems as a stepping stone for hating/fearing the whole homosexual cathegory without stepping full on into logical fallacy and, hence, irrationality, territory.

Slice it any way you want: if you fear/hate an entire category because of something you might potentially be victim of from some of the individuals in that category that’s not rational, that’s fallacy ridden reasoning from beginning to end. And it would be fallacy ridden even if you actually were a victim, even though it would be a little more understandable.

It is rational to fear rape, it is not rational to fear every person that could potentially want to rape you. If it were, women would go around with high voltage chastity belts and males would wear cast iron underpants, oddly enough they don’t.

@Afos22

Homophobia is not a fear of homosexuals. It does not cause people to fear when homosexuals are around, and to run from them. In many cases, it causes some to seek them out.

Homophobia, according to Wikipedia, is:

Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian and gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behaviour although these are usually covered under biphobia and transphobia. Intersex and asexual people are also sometimes included. Definitions refer variably to antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, and irrational fear.

I think I quite agree.

@iamthemob And even if it were, that explaination still wouldn’t make it rational.

I take it as a fear of homosexuals. Not homo hatred or homo-prejudice. If that was not the initial or current meaning of it, ignore my position. I was also coming from a scientific and logical stand point.

@Afos22

That is not the meaning of the word, and it hasn’t ever been the meaning. Non-clinical phobias come in many forms. Such terms are primarily understood as negative attitudes towards certain categories of people or other things, used in an analogy with the medical usage of the term. Usually these kinds of “phobias” are described as fear, dislike, disapproval, prejudice, hatred, discrimination, or hostility towards the object of the “phobia”. Often this attitude is based on prejudices and is a particular case of most xenophobia.

Below are some examples:

Chemophobia – prejudice against artificial substances in favour of “natural” substances.

Ephebiphobia – fear or dislike of youth or adolescents.

Xenophobia – fear or dislike of strangers or the unknown, sometimes used to describe nationalistic political beliefs and movements. It is also used in fictional work to describe the fear or dislike of space aliens.

Homophobia to some people within this discussion.

@Afos22

It’s semantics to argue about the possible interpretations, when it is clear, socially, what is generally meant by the term.

When we talk about homophobia, we are clearly using it in the same manner as “racism.” Do you not agree? Is there a reasonable argument for not accepting that is the commonly understood definition of the term?

I see resort to the definitional problems from one side and not the other. Those who want to believe they do not carry a prejudice seem to focus on it. I would ask: what is the point?

I’m open to the possibility that I could be wrong in my definition. But, I’d like to know from @KatawaGrey whether she meant fear (phobia) of homosexuality and homosexual animals or ridicule, discrimination, or prejudice within the animal kingdom.

@iamthemob My argument, whether reasonable or unreasonable, is that the word phobia originates from the “Greek φόβος,Phobos, meaning “fear” or “morbid fear””

If we were to discus if hatred of homosexual animals, the word homophobic should be replaced by the word homosexualmisia, which means exactly what you believe the word ‘homophobia’ entails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobia
http://wordinfo.info/unit/2554/ip:8/il:M
http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/homosexualmisia

@Afos22

When it comes to animals, that is an interesting question.

@Afos22 Ok, now that that’s out of the way, could you address my point, which stands regardless because I addressed both possible definitions?

@Thammuz Yes. Although, your point is a little hard to find through all of the responses. But, are you referring to something you said about the logical fallacy of jumping from fearing/hating one animal to fearing/hating the entire group of animals?

@Afos22 Sort of, more accurately the fallacy of considering a reaction against a single individual’s unwanted sexual attentions on par with fearing/hating any individual who shows that behaviour a priori.

For instance, we never find dogs who intrude on some other dogs’ homosexual activities, or avoid dogs that have shown homosexual behaviour towards other dogs but not towards them in particular. Meanwhile, we do find those traits in homophobic humans, going so far as killing eachother because of that particular behaviour; see biblical laws, koranic laws, and other laws scattered all around the globe with no particular religious affiliation (look at me being impartial to religious nutters, what’s wrong with me today?).

You can say “we never find dogs who…”, and you would be correct. I am not a dog expert nor do I claim to be one. I have not seen dogs do any thing on this ‘list’. But at least one person has. @JilltheTooth. What we need in here is an expert on animals to tell us whether they do do these few things that you consider homophobic, instead of blindly dismissing them because we have not seen any dogs do it among all the dogs that you and I have studied.

But, I know I’ve missed some other point you have. So, please fill me in. ;)

High likelihood (but not evidence) of absence comes from observing many times, in many different ways, and still never finding what one is looking for. You may argue that the observation is flawed, and you may be right, but think about it: how many specialists in animal studies exist? How different are their approaches? Would it really be that hard for them to notice that a homosexual animal has been ostracized or physically attacked by others in its community, or that perhaps it was given a smaller share of food (or none at all)? Or that it was expelled from its flock after being observed in engaging in homosexual behavior? Moreover: until recently most of those specialists denied their observations of homosexuality in nature, quite likely due to their religious beliefs. If so, wouldn’t they be willing to readily report any instance of homophobia that they observed as justification of their own beliefs? If so, we can expand the number of accountable observations (for this particular matter) over quite a long time range and be even more sure. Even if we found just 1 more species with homophobic behavior, that would not change the main idea: that homophobia seems very very rare across species.