Don’t be surprised but clown fish feature …
About Nathan H. Lents
Nathan H. Lents is a professor of biology at the John Jay College of criminal justice in New York. Yes, you read that right. John Jay was set up, according to its website, ‘in the mid-1950s in response to the increased complexity of administering and operating the New York City Police Department and relations between police and the community’ and is a ‘Hispanic- and Minority-Serving Institution’ which wants to ‘educat[e] traditionally underrepresented groups and [is] committed to increasing diversity in the workforce’. You don’t get more social justice warrior than that. The science department naturally has a bias towards forensics, toxicology, etc, though you can do a Cell and Molecular Biology Bachelor of Science.
Lents has been professor with tenure there since 2016, with his past research positions (as per his CV) pertaining to cells.
John Jay’s Gender Studies BA includes a compulsory unit on the ‘Biology of Gender & Sexuality’, which Lents teaches.
By gaining a solid grounding in basic sex-specific anatomy, physiology, and endocrinology, students will have a framework to consider several further topics, such as: gender-based medicine and the masculinized state of priorities in the biomedical industry; intersex and transgender identities and bodies; and reproductive biology and medicine. Finally, the course will examine sexualities in humans and in the animal world.
Part of blurb for Gender & Sexuality module – my emphases
Another compulsory unit is ‘History of Gender and Sexuality: Prehistory to 1650’ which states that ‘gender and sexuality are cultural constructs that represent the social mores of the cultures and times in which they exist’ – i.e. it almost contradicts the assertion made for the other ‘science’ module. You just know what is in these courses; we’ve done this module several times over now.
Thus, this is the august institution that Lents hails from. A eukaryotic cell in a very big pond.
About the interviewer – Lucy Cooke
Nuff said.
The room
About thirty people attended, half and half in terms of the sexes, which is quite unusual, as troon events normally appeal more to women. But this wasn’t strictly a troon event, but a ‘science’ one, so perhaps that explains it.
The book
I did actually buy the book and even started to read it, the intent being a full review, but I got to page 30 and realised the talk very much summed up what is in the book. It’s well written in terms of an easy chatty style, but as for content, let’s just say Richard Dawkins doesn’t have anything to worry about, as Lents isn’t able to make a single coherent scientific argument for the LGBTQIA+ politics he shills for, despite his boast that it is a book about biology, not values (page 11). For example, we have the ‘lesbians have shorter index fingers’ (page 263) theory and ‘lesbian albatrosses’, which turn out to be female birds pairing to help with chick rearing, even to the extent that they take turns to reproduce. Even Lents admits this probably suggests that albatross chicks need two parents and that the bird colony had a sex ratio imbalance (page 93).
On transgenderism, as per the index, there are only a handful of pages (pages 215-24) and what Lents has to say is not persuasive, arguing that trans people don’t try to ‘blend in’ with a gender but are ‘trying to stake out space of their own’ (page 217). Then we have the comparison that left-handedness increased after it became less taboo and that ‘lack of terminology for transgender individuals’ (page 219) the reason that the phenomenon of transgenderism is not present anywhere in history.
Most egregious though is the historical example he uses to illustrate his argument, the case of Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650), who he describes as a nun. According to the Wiki entry, Erauso entered a convent aged 4 with siblings and her lone mother, escaping aged 15, after being held in a cell and beaten by nuns and before taking vows. After escape she posed as a man, most likely because she wanted an independent life at a time when women were relegated to the home, an environment she would have never have known. Lents fails to give this salient information. Furthermore, despite admitting ‘we cannot know’ if the story is true, Lents conversely claims Erauso had: ‘[A]n inner identity that drove an outer expression that allowed them to thrive as a man,’ (page 224). Chronic.
The discussion
Why he wrote the book
Lents started teaching about the ‘biology of sex and gender’ about fifteen years ago and asked students to bring research articles along to class for discussion. They kept finding little things in these articles which the researchers themselves were ignoring (a contradiction in terms), which was part of a larger picture of gender and sexual diversity being ignored. Lents saw such conundrums as ‘queer’. Lents felt the way biologists described sex roles was too influenced by archetypes and ‘the best way to be’ a male or female, all linked to reproduction.
Over the last fifteen years there had been a proliferation of labels and identities, especially for young people. No one was just gay or straight anymore, they were pansexual and polyamorous or gender non-binary and sexually fluid. Lents had noted that there had been a reaction to this, which had become ‘more vicious’ over time. That’s when he realised that he had to write this book, to show that gender diversity/experimentation and sexual diversity/experimentation is a normal natural part of animal existence. (I’m not quite sure what he meant by sexual diversity but presumably ‘sexuality’.) The younger generation had rediscovered the connection to the diversity that human culture used to have in these areas and that various animals still have today. He claimed that the book mainly focused on animals, until towards the end, when it focuses on us. Of the ‘gender diverse’ animals he does discuss in the book, he focused on those who were successful and what they added to the social life of these animal communities.
How do genders manifest in animals?
Up front, Lents clarified that his use of the word gender (aka sexist stereotypes) was different to way it was normally used. There were the sexes, male, female, hermaphrodite, etc. Gender, Lents told us, was ‘how you are that’. There wasn’t just one kind of female in species, there wasn’t just one kind of male. The different versions of maleness and femaleness could not be called different sexes but you could liken them to gender, as Joan Roughgarden had (Roughgarden is a trans-identified male biologist, whose book was politely savaged in a Guardian book review).
And we were straight onto clown fish …
… well, actually the blue gill sunfish to be correct, but it turned out to be almost as ridiculous an example. Lents spent far too long explaining that the males of this species have different spawning techniques, one being alpha male, the other being satellite (which appeared to be akin in his mind to being ‘top’ and ‘bottom’). These males also work together more or less cohesively to protect egg nests from predation. This, apparently, is fish doing ‘gender’. His explanation of how the colony behaved could well have been learnt from a wikipedia entry, as far as I’m concerned. Lents also claimed that the females of the species hadn’t been studied and that the different types of male blue gill sunfish, were ‘born into the lifestyle’. Ooh, so much science.
Lents says that more interesting behaviours like this could be noticed if people spent less time focussing on alpha males, conveniently tying in with the current pyramid of oppression LGBT+ activists have signed up to.
He said that the satellite males were previously noted to be ‘female mimics’, destroying his assertion that the fish hadn’t been studied before. Lents disagreed with the term ‘female mimicry’ being used in the literature and felt instead males were doing ‘unexpected things.’ He also believes there are no true cases of female mimicry and the animals where such behaviours are seen are very aware of who is male and who is female. For example, when sun fish alpha males and satellite males ‘court’, they bump genitals, but don’t release sperm. Then Lents said that alpha males with satellites are more attractive to females, so it seems the example he was so enamoured by, wasn’t quite as ‘queer’ as he’d hoped.
The Western Marsh Harrier
Male Western Marsh Harriers are mutually aggressive and the bigger ones have their own territory, Lents said, however there were male harriers who were able to co-operate with females to combat a predator. Such males had female plumage and were smaller than the normal ‘alpha’ males.
Sadly, however, it appears that Lents (and Cooke for that matter, who had clearly pre-discussed the interview in advance) hadn’t done his homework, as the links I looked up all stated that female harriers are noticeably larger than males and weigh significantly more.
Lents said that male birds with female plumage avoided aggression from other males and also got to mate with females. Thus, everyone won, the females got two different types of male to chose from, with different strengths.
Again, this is not a ‘queer’ explanation of animal behaviour.
Without diversity we cease to evolve
Thus sexual reproduction is really a bit like DEI, innit? (Okay, they didn’t say that but they were very close. They wanted to, let’s put it like that.) Lents said people were scared of thinking about sexual diversity. Cooke was frustrated by the binary nature of sexual reproduction which had come from the ‘Victorian nature of science’, whereas today we knew about the ‘many ways of being’. Animals didn’t just have sex to reproduce, they did to have fun too!
Gay lions
While most prides are made up of one dominant male and harem of females, the other male lions make their own pride and hang out together to have sex. Within a male-only pride, rank was established through sex, rather than fighting, and also facilitated bonding, said Lents. I have no idea of the veracity of this but he did refer to a clip (possibly the one below), where a tourist had taken footage of two males ‘having sex’ (it doesn’t appear to me to be penetration to me and the ‘bottom’ looks seriously disinterested).
Lents said that it was very rare for humans to have sex just to procreate and that this was ‘basically true’ for animals, ignoring the face that some animal mating behaviour only occurs when females are in heat.
The advantages of same sex sexual activity
The apparent advantages for animals to have same sex sexual activity was to reduce tension and promote reconciliation. If that was the case though, you’d expect to see a lot more of it, no? And Lents had no examples of any animals which are exclusively bisexual. Instead, he returned to the topic he clearly felt most confident about; humans. Positive hormones make us feel better and we’re good at cooperating with each other, which was helped along by mutual sexual contact (rather than, say, verbal communication). He also claimed that human groups who live close to nature have much more relaxed sexual morays than us Westerners have had for the last few centuries, but failed to mentioned who he was talking about. As far as I’m aware, all the tribes currently still following ancient traditions have rigid taboos.
Bisexuality in animals
The optimum way of being, if you’re a social animal, is to be bisexual, said Cooke. Lents said if you write off half the population, there are lots of missed opportunities, for reconciliation, etc, sounding very much like he was talking about humans again, though I read him as a gay man. He assured us he wasn’t trying to imply we were all gay, suggesting he had already forgotten he was supposed to be talking about bisexuality. We were the most adaptable primate of all. Lents wouldn’t have it that being ‘queer’ was an unnatural phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Just like murder wasn’t unnatural: for example, gorillas can kill the offspring of a rival. Or paedophilia. Or rape. Great argument. Though at least Lents managed to remember that those things were all outlawed for good reason.
How do you see your book fitting into the current discussions about the culture war?
None of the people who need to read it, will, reflected Lents sadly (funnily enough Rowling never responded to his tweet). Instead the book would give allies ammunition in the form of information. The trans community was under attack more than it ever has been. If even one transgender person read the book and felt better about themselves, it will have all been worth it. Lents didn’t want to settle for tolerance, he wanted the celebration of trans lives, as diversity is best for all of us. What trans people could teach about our own gender was also of enormous value.
The sex binary
Lents argued that sex wasn’t binary, but that gametes were, and wanted to emphasis that secondary sex characteristics varied a great deal, which allowed him to use the word ‘bimodal’ rather a lot. In explaining ‘bimodal’ though, he let slip that blood profiles differed between the sexes and that anatomists couldn’t always tell sex by looking at structures, forgetting to mention DNA always could.
Running away with himself, he also claimed that there were handfuls of people who could produce both gametes. He also felt that the presence of ‘ovarian tissue in a testis’ was a win (rather than a development glitch) and that the ‘messiness’ was where the interesting biology is and the one which matters more. You don’t go to the doctors to talk to them about your gametes, said Lents, unless you were trying to get pregnant.
Q&A
What do we know about the behaviours of other hominid species?
Neanderthal had used tools which suggested division of labour between the sexes, said Lents. Oops. Lents repeated his feeble claim that it wasn’t possible to tell sex from pelvis size/shape alone. He also claimed that upper body dimorphism was non-existent, including cranium size, but admitted there wasn’t much evidence to go on.
Lents said that homo sapiens had experienced feminisation as a species, as our faces had shrunk, which seemed to correlate with lower levels of testosterone. Both males and females produced progesterone, testosterone and oestrogen, and these could all convert.
Who in the Trump administration would benefit most from reading this book?
You’d have to find a literate person first of all! Lents wanted people at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) to read it, as it was gutting programmes which looked at women as a separate category, Lents claimed, adding that even if the study included both males and females, if the study looked at ‘women’s health separately’, it was being stopped (one suspects the NIH has probably stipulated for woman to be clearly defined as female). Lents went on to claim a colleague had just had a grant cancelled into a study of triple negative breast cancer because she was studying it in women of colour. I have no idea of the veracity of such a claim, of course, but it is true, I think, that the Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer approach to government-backed science projects, a direct result of the backlash against woke scientists, like Lents.
Anything queer-related was also being cancelled, even midstream, when almost all the money had been spent, which meant results would never become available. This was the least efficient thing to do.
A man stood up and mentioned hidras in India. And Shivaa. Shivaa is all genders. Were the papers Lents read written by Westerners?
Native Americans had lots of genders and had no problems with homosexuality, Lents told us. It is just us with our bad ideas. On the animal science he has looked at, it was almost exclusively Western papers he had looked at. All the indigenous knowledge had been steamrolled by us colonisers. Japanese primatology was one of the few separate disciplines. The language of science was English and it was a tyranny, said Cooke, and Lents agreed.
God forbid, people communicate with each other in a shared language, eh?
Conclusion
How these books are getting published and dubbed ‘popular science’ is truly a mystery. Lents wouldn’t last a minute in the ring with an evolutionary biologist. The publisher, Canongate, is an independent, mostly dealing with fiction (phnarr), and has a commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. But not to the truth.
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