LGBTQ+ and Polyamory in Animals: Yes, It's Natural | Antonia Forster | TEDxBristol

[Applause] sometimes saying just three words out loud is enough to change the rest of your life your three words might be I love you they might be I'm leaving for me the three words of this I am bisexual and I am polyamorous to stand here on this stage and say those words might seem like no big deal and in many ways you're right it's not after all I'm not really saying anything controversial being bisexual just means that I love people of all kinds men or women or anyone in between being polyamorous means that I'm not monogamous in other words I think it's possible to have more than one loving relationship at the same time I'm also single so clearly that's working out for me I'm very open about Who I am with my friends and my colleagues but I kept it a secret from my family for my entire life because I was scared they wouldn't accept me and I didn't want to lose them that all changed one month ago when I finally came out of the closet to my family some of my family members have been extremely loving and accepting and others unfortunately had a very negative reaction one member of my immediate family even told me that I could not go ahead with this talk because this is something disgusting this is something that I shouldn't be proud of I was threatened I was blackmailed I was even bribed I had to think long and hard about whether to go ahead with this talk it was a difficult decision I really love my family and I respect their opinions but ultimately it comes down to this I am NOT going to hide because I am not ashamed of Who I am sadly my story with my family is not unique there are countless numbers of people who might be going through something similar right now and of all the shocking words that were said three words in particular stood out to me three words that I have heard over and over and over and those words are this it's not natural those words are so often used as a weapon against people who are LGBTQ all people who are polyamorous or even women who don't fit into traditional gender roles those words are particularly interesting to me because first and foremost I am a biologist so I am fascinated by the study of what is and is not natural I like to spend the next 10 minutes really breaking down this idea trying to understand what it really means and having a look at some of the amazing things that we do actually see in nature so natural by definition means things that occur in nature in the world of plants and animals and I'm not suggesting that we are exactly the same as animals but obviously not we do lots of things that are not natural we drive cars and we talk on phones and we wear clothes and technically if you're going to argue it that way straight marriage is not actually natural because you don't see animals getting married unless you've got an Etsy account and too much time on your hands but you don't see anyone protesting it's straight weddings on the basis that they're not natural because that would be ridiculous the idea that everything natural is good and unnatural is bad is something called the gaia fallacy and it's very easy to disprove because cyanide is natural that doesn't mean it's good for you so clearly that argument falls apart but it did actually get me wondering do we see homosexuality and bisexuality in animals and the answer is yes we do homosexuality has been documented in more than 1,500 different species of animals and in a third of those regularly everything from Asian elephants to African elephants to Lions giraffes dolphins penguins dragonflies and every species of great ape our closest ancestor that's orangutangs gorillas chimpanzees and bonobos in fact in bonobos the vast majority of individuals are bisexual and 60% of mating behavior happens between two females homosexual animal couples also raise young in New York's Central Park Zoo there are two penguins called Roy and silo two males who formed a romantic pair and a zookeeper saw them trying to hatch a stone he also had an egg left over from a heterosexual couple who are not nesting it so he gave that egged Roy and silo and they took turns nesting it and they did a great job and it hatched into a healthy female chick called tango and as it turns out tango grew up and also happened to be gay their story was written up into a children's book called tango makes three and it's used to teach children that love is what actually makes a family so clearly we do see homosexuality and bisexuality in animals it's all about things like trans or non-binary what else is natural before we go any further we have to understand the difference between gender and sex so to do this I'm going to use this illustration by Sam killerman it's called the gender bred person informative and delicious this shows quite clearly the difference between your gender identity that's who you are your orientation that's who love or are attracted to your sex which is your physical body and your gender expression that's how you dress each of these things is a spectrum not a binary and by that I mean it's all shades of grey it's not black and white it's easy for us to understand that gender expression is a spectrum because sometimes I wear trousers and sometimes I wear a skirt your orientation is also a spectrum just because I'm bi it doesn't mean that I like men and women all the time equally in the same way for the same reasons it's more complicated than that and it can change over time as well your gender is also aspect there are lots of people who will identify as a hundred percent male or a hundred percent female but there are plenty of people who will identify with aspects of both gender or neither or maybe queer or gender fluid but gender is a social construct it doesn't exist in animals so from now on I'm only going to be talking about biological sex now in humans broadly speaking our sex is determined by our chromosomes so in biological males they look like this an X and a Y chromosome in biological females we have two x chromosomes it's very important to remember that even at this fundamental level there is variation there are people who have extra sets of chromosomes people who have different combinations or people who are intersex who have both sets of genitals so even the thing that we may consider a binary simply is not but broadly speaking we can say that sex is determined by chromosomes in humans so is this true of all animals let's have a think about the birds and the bees starting with the birds birds do have sex chromosomes but males have two the same and females have two different the opposite of humans so already we can see that our human model is not the norm in bees it is radically different there are three types of bee there's a queen who is a female there's a worker who is also a female and then there's a drone those are the males so when you see a colony of bees working away those are all females the male's don't do any work I'm not making any kind of social commentary here please I'm only talking about bees so the males are only born in order to have sex and then they die it's a short life and a queen mates once in her life and then she stores the sperm and that means that she can control very precisely whether she's laying a male or a female because if she fertilizes the egg then it becomes a female and if she doesn't then it becomes a male it also means that male bees have no father which is a very strange fact to try and wrap your head around you can see why it's studying the animal world really forces us to question our most fundamental assumptions about sex and about reproduction another assumption that people often have is that male animals have a penis and female animals don't and that's not even true in humans but it's also not true in animals this is a female spotted hyena can hear some giggling at the front brace yourselves [Applause] the female has genitals which are called a pseudo penis is actually a modified clitoris and it looks just like the male genitalia except it's larger she also gives birth through it which is quite an achievement both males and females can have erections and that is actually a sign of surrender or submission so that's an interesting take on a behavior that we in our human ignorance might tend to associate with dominance now so far the animals we've talked about have permanent sexes by which I mean they're either male or female and that doesn't change over time but in many animals sex is more fluid and it does change that's what we call a sequential hermaphrodite one example is a clownfish in a school of clownfish there's usually only one female she's the biggest fish and she's the top-ranked in the hierarchy so she is very important and if she dies then the next biggest fish which is a male turns into a female to replace her it would have made the movie Finding Nemo entirely different there are even animals which are both sexes at the same time my favorite example is the banana slug its latin name is da loco phallus which means enormous penis in Latin so you know what they're famous for and actually it comes out of their forehead like some kind of pornographic unicorn I love biology now all of them have both sets of genitals male and females when they want to mate they form a beautiful yellow yin-yang like this and each inserts its male organ into the female organ of the other but it's so large that quite often it will get stuck and when that happens they have to work together to chew it off I don't want to alarm you but sea slugs take it a step further their genitals are sharp like a spear and they stab it into the side of the other individual in a process called traumatic insemination and yes it is traumatic this harms the receiver but it benefits the giver because it means that the other individual has to carry the young in flatworms which you can see here this has evolved into a competitive behavior which is known as penis fencing the animal world is obviously incredibly diverse we see a whole lot of different behaviors in some animals they've dispensed with the battle of the sexes entirely and there's only one sex this is a desert grassland whiptail lizard an animal in which there are only females there are never any males they lay eggs which are unfertilized and those hatch into their daughters more females in a process called parthenogenesis but what's really interesting is they don't lay eggs all the time they only do it when they've been mounted or climbed on top of by another female there are even animals in which there are more than two sexes this is a creature called tetrahymena thermofoil a-- it's a single-cell animal and it has seven different mating types which functionally are exactly like sexes now that may seem really shocking and bizarre but there are animals which go even further or organisms I should say which go even further this is a fungus called skits a phylum communy and it has not seven different mating types but twenty-eight thousand so if you were asked it's a phylum community fungus on tinder you would have a real bad time the world of nature is diverse and eye-opening and amazing clearly biology cannot be used to justify bigotry in fact I would say the opposite is true the more we look and study the natural world the more we are forced to question our own most fundamental assumptions if you remember only three words from my talk let it be as follows this all of this this is natural thank you very much as a science communicator I know that we took in a lot of information just then and I like to summarize my talks in ways that are short and memorable and funny so I'd like to summarize what we've just learned in the form of a rap when you've got the natural send this trap too recklessly heck on me almost I think the specialty is a foolish move you should be careful especially with the words you choose because this this girl is loose control over the news and science in defiance of your views so let's break it down what is natural it's what actually happens in non-human animals to cannibals what happens in nature doesn't mean that it's desirable behavior so clearly there's no basis to this sexist little pieces but I'd like to break it down and then we'll pick up the pieces because I want to pick apart the many ways in which it's wrong sit back and relax the students now remember we're not talking about gender just sex gender is a spectrum it's more complex when you think of sex it's more between your legs it's more in sperm and eggs the X Y and X X but check the text you find this extra set so don't forget the rest there's also intersects so never know assuming that it's simple in humans in animals is even more confusing so let's talk about the birds and the bees - the word on the street is the Fiza more real expertise that our bees need and the colonies are all female and when the Queen needs a cup of free bells she lays and fertilized eggs that means male bees never have a father the only born to have sex with the new Queens then they die living life like a vulture this is just the start because when you look at what the sex is it falls apart to say what a sex is it can't be hard because there's plenty of animals where they have Birchbox like banana slugs the method is madness lobster love because they've got da letto phallus both have a penis like a really weird form it's on the head like some kind of phallic unicorn and that's natural I love that I'm really adding filler here because I love that bit but my point is that nature is gonna so perfectly [Music] may have left you astounded kids another creature that has 28,000 that's right the skits of Island fungus it salty must be humongous back to mammals because we act like animals we think we're rational when in fact we're vulnerable here's a radical fact your sexual member doesn't have too much respect for your gender for example some ladies they have a penis but time you choose humans but also hyenas they have the pseudo penis lots of modify clitoris and they give birth through it maybe a little bit of a masochist can you imagine this another fun fact about the matter is when either sex is submitting they erect their member like a little white flag of surrender biology is wild mad diverse I think there's only one thing left to say in this verse let's check it audience and what their knowledge is and never piss on a bisexual biologist right here you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 77,353

Rating: 4.7885461 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Science (hard), Animals, Biology, Discrimination, Education, LGBT, Music (performance), Rap, Science, Sex, Social Change

Id: bK6EwIoQl34

Length: 19min 45sec (1185 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/SoundShark88]

Im sorry, I just can't take a grown woman with bright green hair seriously. And that rap at the end....pure cringiness

[u/SoundShark88]

What happend to Ted Talks? When I clicked on it, these were the 4 next videos on the right:

The Bible: A queer positive book | Rev. Dr. Cheri DiNovo | TEDxToronto

Are five husbands better than one? Kimber McKay at TEDxUMontana

Toilets, bowties, gender and me | Audrey Mason-Hyde | TEDxAdelaide

Man for a day, woman for a day. | Diane Torr | TEDxStGeorg

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People make fun of Joe for being a quasi-intellectual who's really just a stupid stoner, but this kind of retardedness makes him look like Einstein

[u/kriznis]

I get that animals do gay stuff sometimes, but are there really trans animals? (No I didn't watch this shit) I don't know the difference between G & Q, so maybe there's a question there too.