Mother Nature’s Natural Diversity of Sexuality

Quite often, those who don’t understand us claim we, Kuchus (or LGBTQ+ people) are ‘un-natural’. So wicked and deformed that ‘even animals don’t do what we do’. That is, have sex between individuals of the same sex.

That accusation can be quite potent, and cutting, in Africa. In Uganda.
In our environment, we are soaked in ignorance about sex and sexuality; a conservative reticence about such intimate issues, a general lack of understanding of sex and sexuality and, complete ignorance and myths about sex other than heterosexual sex (in the missionary position). We kuchus have to educate ourselves to the facts of life, swimming past the prejudice, and ignorance, and frank lies as told in our world.
Because Mother Nature and the Creator, in their purported wisdom and knowledge, don’t know the constraints that we humans hand to them.

Sexual Diversity is natural and part of nature.

I don’t know about ‘making them male and female’. I don’t know about the ‘couples of Noah’s Ark’.
What I know is that the natural world has abundant evidence of Same Sex behaviours in multiple animals and birds. And that there are quite a number of examples in nature of animals switching sexes (true) and even flipping genders as necessary. Without provoking hell fires and brimstone, no.

Humans are naïve and inquisitive.., and of course sex is one of the most interesting things on earth (I confess!). The little that we know as a matter of fact is amazing. Anti-gay, anti-homosexuality activists who dismiss us as being ‘un-natural’, ‘worse than animals’, ‘deranged’ are simply ignorant, a very common human ailment, curable by knowledge.

Nature has galleons of evidence of Same Sex behaviour.

To date, same sex behaviour has been observed and confirmed in more than 1,500 animal species. The more we study animals and observe them in sexual behaviour, the more that is confirmed. Multiple studies. Multiple observers. Over a whole length of time since we humans started observations, from our domesticated animals!

In some species, experts actually note:

 

… 'Within a select number of species, homosexual activity is widespread and occurs at levels that approach or sometimes even surpass heterosexual activity.'

 

And, with regards to how widespread same sex behaviour might be, it is noted;

 

““Some studies claim homosexuality may be a common as being found in up to 95 percent of all animal species””

 

Those observations apply to observed same sex behaviour by animals. And birds. And yes, even insects and others!
It is important to appreciate that Same Sex Behaviour is not simply sex: genital contact to orgasm. It is nuanced and varied. Grooming, genital contact, and frank intercourse occur. But so does social coupling, courtship, forming of long lasting pairs, parenting and nurturing of offspring like eggs, taking care of younglings as a couple. Seems like instead of ‘copying’ what heterosexual couples do, as our detractors say,( laughing at LGBTQ+ families,) we are actually reproducing in human life what occurs spontaneously in nature. Even to the forming of family/clan groups that are safe spaces for the same sex couple, (kudos flamingos!).

 

Sex switching, gender switching.

 

And, shame…, we worry about the rightness and wrongness of human sexual behaviour? Nature, in nature, there is shameless switching and flipping of the sexes. Go worry about your ‘morality’, and the simple changing of the dress covering you (or girls dressing like boys etc)…, nature very conveniently and naturally switches the sex, as and when nature believes it necessary. Now, isn’t that amazing!

 

“For example, clownfish exhibit gender nonconformity. All clownfish are born male , but the dominant males in the school turn female to lay eggs and reproduce.”

 

“Hawkfish, on the other hand, are even more gender nonconforming. They are born female, but once reaching adulthood, they can switch back and forth between male and female depending on the favorability in a given situation.”

 

And those are not the only sex switching animals. Check out this site on Wikipedia. Just follow the references at the bottom of the page.

Why, why that humongous diversity in mother nature?

I don’t know the reasons why. It is, which is simply amazing to the likes of me. But as to why there is such a huge diversity of sexuality in nature, I don’t know, and apparently the experts themselves don’t know.

Some speculate that it is nature being nature. It simply doesn’t have to explain to proud, hubris prone humanity what is. We observe, we perceive and see what is. We accept, or not. Nature continues to be nature. If we haven’t worked out the reasons, that is OUR problem as inquisitive humans. Nature simply is. We speculate this;

 

“There have been many different theories – including not enough females, establishing dominance, or blowing off steam – that may explain why animals might engage in homosexual behavior.
But the researchers believe their observations actually support a whole new theory – that the males who have sex together have an evolutionary advantage over their heterosexual counterparts.”

 

Others speculate that same sex behaviour helps to protect the pack directly or indirectly, protecting the group’s child-bearing members or even an insurance policy for offspring. The pack benefits in passing on genetics to off-spring, rather than a particular individual. Or it is practice for more effective sex leading to child bearing. Or it is to aid in social bonds. The reasons are many, and pure speculation. We don’t know. We just know it is.

Nature is humbling. Truly humbling.

It would be a lie to say I knew all this stuff before; and of course lots of people, kuchu and non-kuchu don’t know it. Maybe in the rarefied airs of universities.., but this is real life, nature out there, breathing and thinking and moving, even as we hit each other on the head. It is humbling.

Utility? For now, I don’t know. But good news to know that I am not weird, nor as ‘un-natural’ as I am famously known to be in Uganda, and in Africa. The mud is muddy, and sticky. Takes good knowledge to challenge and slough it off. And to actually wonder, what else is actually hidden, right out there in plain sight?
I humbly use the final words in the short article that set me off on this investigative journey.

 

“quote from Alex Johnson of Orion Magazine, who wrote about this topic:

“What, then, is natural? All of it. None of it. Instead of using the more-than-human world as justification for or against certain behavior and characteristics, let’s use the more-than-human world as a humbling indication of the capacity and diversity of all life on Earth.””

 

gug