Penguin feelings hurt; ignored by conservatives

From a BBC news story, 3 June 2009:

Two "gay" male penguins have hatched a chick and are now rearing it as its adoptive parents, says a German zoo.

The zoo, in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, says the adult males – Z and Vielpunkt – were given an egg which was rejected by its biological parents.

It says the couple are now happily rearing the chick, said to have reached four weeks old.

[snip]

Z and Vielpunkt, both males, gladly accepted their ‘Easter gift’ and got straight down to raising it," said a zoo statement.

Since the chick arrived, they have been behaving just as you would expect a heterosexual couple to do. The two happy fathers spend their days attentively protecting, caring for and feeding their adopted offspring." Z and Vielpunkt are one of three pairs of penguins at the zoo that that have displayed homosexual mating behaviour.

Since the 1990s, homosexual behaviour has been documented in hundreds of species. Bonobo chimps are particularly interesting in that some 60 percent of sexual activity within this species are homosexual liaisons between females.

It is not as if animals have suddenly become homosexual. Historically, zoologists have observed homosexual behaviour, but, clouded by prevailing attitudes, they classed their observations of opposite sex behaviour as "sex" and same-sex behaviour as "play". So, of course, there were no reports of homosexual sex.

Part of the problem was that previously, the "accepted wisdom" in the West -- and in those days the great majority of scientists traipsing around the world looking at animals were Westerners -- was that homosexuality was unnatural, and chosen (mis)behaviour. Since it was by definition unnatural, no one expected to see it in the natural world. Since animals did not have free will, they could not possibly be choosing to "sin". So what they saw in the wild couldn't possibly be sexual, the animals they were only playing.

Z and Vielpunkt are hardly the first male penguins to pairbond and raise a chick. There have been earlier cases, most famously, Roy and Silo, a pair of chinstrap penguins, raising Tango at New York's Central Park Zoo.

You might think that anti-gay conservatives would have a hard time dealing with such evidence of the naturalness of homosexuality. But many of them don't. Their response is typically one of two kinds, the first more bullheaded, the second subtler:

The first type of response rejects any evolutionary relationship between animals and humans. How does studying animals say anything about humans? it counters. Humans, after all, are not descended from monkeys.

Here you see an association between anti-gay positions and creationist beliefs. One does not cause the other, but the latter certainly boosts the former, enabling rejection of evidence from the natural world.

The second type of response accepts that observations of the natural world can tell us something about the innate properties of the human species, but asks: So what if homosexuality is found in animals? Humans have free will and should know better what's right and what's wrong. Just because animals engage in homosexual behaviour does not mean that humans should follow suit.

The riposte to this response is: Why must free will be exercised in only one way, choosing heterosexuality over homosexuality? Where does the notion of homosexuality as wrong or immoral come from?

* * * * *

 
Both these responses come out of a trait strongly associated with the conservative personality, and which a reader reminded me of in an email he/she sent to me recently. The word used in the email was "ethnocentrism", but the particular trait is not as specific to ethnicity as suggested. More accurately, it is a tendency to give heightened importance to the distinction between the in-group and the out-group. The conservative personality takes greater pride in, and exhibits greater loyalty to the in-group, while having a lower regard for the out-group. Sometimes, the out-group is seen as threatening, which in turn promotes aggressive behaviour towards them.

The in-group can be along the lines of ethnicity, race, religion, class, gender or even species.

Racial chauvinism, for example, is often associated with conservative personality traits. There is a tendency to frown on inter-racial relationships and a dismissive attitude towards the value of other cultures. It segues into racial supremicism.

Religious chauvinism leads to a feeling of superiority -- sometimes sneeringly so -- over people of different faiths, and even more towards atheists. Because they see others as lesser humans, they can behave very insensitively towards them. There is a resistance to interfaith and ecumenical dialogue, out of fear of contamination -- and one can only be contaminated if the outsider is seen as unclean and unworthy -- but also out of a feeling that the other is not an equal.

What is considered the in-group is situational. A conservative person can think of himself as Teochew when dissing other Chinese dialect groups, or as Chinese when dissing Malays and Indians. A minute later, he may see himself as Evangelical Christian when dissing Taoists, Hindus, Buddhists (all "idolators" in their parlance), Muslims and Catholics, whose pope is often labelled "AntiChrist" by fundamentalist protestant churches.

When we get to talking about penguins, the in-group that conservative minds automatically flick to is the human race. There is discomfort with the notion that we are part of the animal kingdom, there is a dread that anything we learn about animals is applicable to us. The relatedness and biological equality that is implied violates the psychological need to stand apart from and above those "beasts"

Creationist beliefs are thus very appealing to this group of people. If not that, then at least great store is put in the question of free will, in order to demarcate a bright line between "animalistic" behaviour and us, who are capable of "better".

Let me illustrate graphically how a person with a conservative personality sees the world around him compared to one without that mindset. Both subject persons, hypothetical Lee and Kwan in my examples, belong to the "yellow" group, whatever yellow may denote -- ethnicity, religion, species or gender.

On the left is how the world is seen by Lee. In his view, he is part of a complex, varied world. It is not obvious that any one group is necessarily superior to another.

On the right is the perspective of a conservative person, Kwan. His in-group concerns him strongly and he generally takes a dim view of out-groups. Moreover, having a clear idea of the boundary is important to him otherwise the in/out distinction becomes hopelessly subverted. Ethnic conservatives disapprove of inter-ethnic marriages and place great importance on "mother tongue", traditional celebrations and other markers of identity. Religious conservatives get into a twist over syncretism, and tend to demand purity in their creed, which in turn leads to fundamentalist interpretations.

Another observation you may make is that the mental world that conservatives inhabit is smaller, and more homogenous -- and this homogeneity may be more imagined than real -- than non-conservatives'. This is simply because the out-group is more discounted from consideration by conservatives.

* * * * *

 
A corollary from this analysis would be: Singapore cannot afford to have conservatism as the personality trait of most of its people. We are a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, critically dependent on an open economy, trading and communicating with the rest of the world. All sorts of people come and go.

The conservative tendency to retreat into one's in-group, to display suspicion and distaste for out-groups, and disdain for the creative chaos, syncretism or whatever one might call the experimental and hopefully fruitful intermixing of different ideas and peoples, is actually inimical to our best interests.

How can we speak of racial and religious tolerance when the natural tendency of conservative personality types is to look down on and distance themselves from others? How can we speak of being engaged with an ever-changing world when they have an instinctive fear of both "destabilising" change and an uncomfortably different wider world?

Yet, we have spent decades promoting and defending conservative values, in the education system, in our censorship rules, and through state-led myth-making, e.g. "mainstream values", "Asian values", not least, the whole jingoistic Singapore exceptionalism story.

That too? Yes, that too. Take a look at the two graphical illustrations above. Which one better represents the way Singaporeans are taught to see themselves in relation to the rest of Southeast Asia? As one on a canvas of many, or as a bright clean dot in a dim, dirty neighbourhood?

© Yawning Bread 

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