Scientists Decide Bisexual Animals Don't Have A Sexual Orientation

A five-and-a-half-inch deep-sea squid that lives a solitary life up to half a mile down in the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean is the latest addition to the hundreds of species that are known to engage in same-sex sex.

[Dr. Hendrik J.T. Hoving, author of “A shot in the dark: same-sex sexual behavior in a deep-sea squid,"] was prepared for attention to the same-sex behavior and was ready for people to conflate squid and human behavior and announce the discovery of gay squid.

He fended off that notion, reiterating that the squid has no discernible sexual orientation, and that a tentacled invertebrate that shoots sperm into its mate’s flesh really has nothing to do with human behavior. -- from today's New York Times

Sigh. Plus ça change, blah blah. It's weird: Years ago, the entire scientific world announced that animals were straight. Every single one. Penguins mated for life. Geese actually bought each other engagement rings. On the odd occasion when a scientist would catch, say, a couple male dogs going at it, an explanation was immediately offered:

Those dogs are really confused.

I actually wrote to National Geographic when one of their articles declared that seahorses having homosexual sex were simply confused. "How did your esteemed scientists come to this conclusion?" I asked. "Did the seahorses back off when erections appeared, or did they go 'Oops!' afterward?"

Now creatures that fuck anything that moves aren't bisexual: they simply have no sexual orientation. This strikes me as petty. It's like if you show your Dooney & Burke clutch to a fashionista friend, and she says, "You know, if it isn't Louis Vuitton, it's not really a bag."

As we delve deeper into it, we realize these folks are being awfully petty. They raise all sorts of odd conditions to keep the squid from being homosexual. "The squid aren't actually fucking," they insinuate. "They're just shooting sperm onto each other." Oh. Okay. If that doesn't count as authentic sex, then I've been a virgin since January '02. "These aren't people we're talking about: they're tentacled invertebrates."

Dr. Hoving, meet Dr. E. C. Spada:


The Times is unattractively desperate.

[The male squid] pay no attention to the sex of other squid. Understandably so. They live alone in the dark, males and females are hard to tell apart, and only occasionally do squids pass in the night.

"We'd fuck a dude too if it was dark, and we were lonely," they're saying. I'm not sure how they can glom this generalization onto incommunicado invertebrates, though. Somehow they know that the squid aren't thinking, "Hey, here's a hot little dude!" but rather, "Well, at least I found something to fuck!"

In the end, we realize that nothing has changed. The scientists are nuts, the media is nuts. It's the same old story. Animals are hetero until we can't pretend they aren't, but that still doesn't mean they're gay.

They're simply nothing. Nothing at all.

Which doesn't exactly make progress towards gay equality, but I guess somebody's gotta be in the center of the Hollywood Squares.

I love scientific studies about sex and gender. Problem is, if you examine the details, too often they sound like bullshit. Such is the case with a recent study that said people can guess, with some degree of accuracy, whether a person is gay after seeing them for just 50 milliseconds.

Ambady and Rule swipe photographs of men from dating websites, carefully choosing only headshots that don't feature "facial hair, jewelry, glasses, or other accessories."

You know, I'm no scientist, but already I'm finding this surprising. I mean, I'd never have guessed there are ninety dudes on ManHunt.com who don't have eyebrows.

Half the photos are self-identified gay men, and half are straight men. Result? The test subjects correctly guess sexual orientation between 57 percent and 70 percent, depending on viewing time.

Even Ambady and Rule admit there are problems. The photos they use are taken by the men themselves, and they suggest that maybe hetero men try to look extra-hetero in their dating-website photos, while gay men try to look extra-gay. I'll agree with the former, but not the latter. I mean, I've cruised SmokinGayDudez.com before and have yet to see someone try to look hotter by holding up a Streisand CD.

At this point I realize I'm lost. Why were "facial hair, jewelry, glasses, or other accessories" excluded? My guess is because, say, a pearl choker might tip somebody off that a subject is gay. But then why did they allow hairstyles? Call me crazy, but I don't think the world needs a study called "Does a Mullet Make a Guy Look Hetero?"

Ambady and Rule catch on too, so they repeat the study. The second time around they steal casual photos of dudes from Facebook. Because, you know, gay guys won't have that extra-gay look when they're at a party, hammered and slipping singles into the jockstraps of go-go boys. This time around they cut out the hairstyles too.

And the accuracy rate drops. It's still better than chance, at 54%, but that's a significant drop.

Their conclusion?

People can accurately judge sexual orientation, and very quickly. It comes in handy. "Women need to be able to rule out unsuitable mates, while men need to determine who their potential competition is."

A reviewer calls the success at quick identification "impressive."

Me, yawn. I can't help but notice that up to 20% of their accuracy was lost with the hairstyles. I realize this study tried to prove that relatively accurate judgments are made very quickly, but I don't understand why they care. Do you really need to stare at a guy to decide that his perm makes him look straight? Do you need to sit there and ruminate on whether that eyeliner makes him look gay?

Plus, this study would be rendered entirely meaningless with the disclosure that 4% of the subjects pluck their eyebrows. Because, c'mon, heteros never know when to stop.