*cross-posted at wearethethirdwave*
In the few months I have been a volunteer for the Seattle Aquarium, I have realized that this place perpetuates and teaches gender roles. Of course, so do most places. The three reasons why I think the aquarium's situation is worthy of discussion are 1) humans are projecting our ideas about gender roles onto animals 2) impressionable kids are the ones absorbing these ideas 3) I am guilty of most of the behaviors I'm about to criticize. Before I go further, I also want to acknowledge that by “our ideas about gender roles” I am limiting myself to the ideas from the culture that most aquarium visitors and I share (American, white, middle class, culturally Christian, etc.) and am not claiming that all people construct gender roles in the same way.
My job at the Aquarium is to stand near exhibits and answer people’s questions. During these conversations, I’ve noticed that people (including me) consistently address some animals as “she” and some as “he”, regardless of the animal’s actual sex. For example, there is one large, dark red octopus that tries to escape the tank, splashes onlookers with water, and constantly harassed a wolf eel that briefly had the misfortune of sharing the tank. The conversations surrounding this animal are along these lines: “What does he eat?” “Look at his suction cups, [child's name]!” “He must weigh 60 pounds!” etc. This octopus is actually a female. Conversely, elsewhere there is a much smaller, more delicate octopus who usually has pale pink skin. This one is graceful when it glides around, although it prefers to stuff itself into a tiny hole in a corner. I’m not sure what the sex of this octopus is, but I do know that everyone says to their child, “Do you see her back in that hole?” “She’s so shy!” etc. Even I find myself saying “she doesn’t like to come out very often” and “she can change her skin color, although she usually sticks with pink.” Most of the time I realize what I’ve said right after it comes out of my mouth, and I feel bad for reinforcing some kid’s idea that boys are active while girls are meek and like pink. To give a few more examples, the aforementioned wolf eel is always a “he”, even though it is actually female, sharks are “he”s, some tropical fish are “she”s, etc.
Some invertebrates don’t even have a sex, or they can switch back and forth. In these cases, the default pronoun seems to be “he”. I think this phenomenon shows that we still think of male as the default sex, and females as the “other.” So, even if an animal doesn’t have a face, much less a backbone, we still cannot even begin to discuss an animal before giving it a gender, and that gender is male.
On a related note, not only do the visitors and I automatically view these animals through a gendered lens, but there is a heteronormative lens in use as well. For example, sea otters like to hold hands in pairs. When I see this cute sight, my mind is automatically like “couple! boy and girl! romantic!” even though I know in the more thoughtful part of my brain that sea otters hang out in single sex groups…so these pairings are actually two female otters or two male otters. Otters of the same sex swim close together and hold hands, but a male/female pair would never hold hands, let alone float in close proximity to one another unless they were mating. (side note: you don’t need to see this video to understand my point…but if you want to see something adorable…watch this ).
So far, I think I have painted the aquarium, its visitors, and myself pretty negatively, but this isn’t the whole story. I still think that aquariums and zoos can help open people’s eyes: for every conversation where I catch myself calling that dainty octupus a “she”, there are other conversations where I point out that male seahorses are the ones who incubate the eggs, that the feisty octopus and the intimidating wolf eel are females, that many animals in the touch tank are asexual or hermaphroditic, that I’m not sure whether the black tipped reef sharks are male or female, etc. I hope that rather than enforcing gender roles and heteronormativity by projecting them onto animals, I can complicate these stereotypes such that visitors leave the aquarium with more nuanced views…but it is hard to break old habits.
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Heh. A coworker of mine told me a story about when he was watching turtles with his son. The son spotted three turtles, little, medium, and large, and said "Look, it's the daddy turtle, the mommy turtle, and the baby turtle." My coworker thought this was adorable. Being cranky and childless, I immediately said, "Wait a minute, turtles lay eggs, and they don't hang around in family groups. Did you tell your son this or did you let him go on thinking there was a mommy, a daddy, and a baby?" At which my coworker heaved a big sigh and said, "Look, Frum, when you have kids, you're going to tell them that it's a mommy, a daddy, and a baby, too."
Sigh, it's true. I have a 4 year old son, and it's very hard to get him to understand that big, medium and little doesn't always = daddy, mommy and baby. I don't think he's been taught this so much, I just think he's taking what he sees (tall dad, shorter mom, little boy) and applying it to other situations. It is a VERY literal age. :)
On a second note, this does highly irritate me, especially when we make movies about ants or bees and give them human gender roles. Of course, with MALES being the norm. Never mind that such insects are almost always female, though only queens breed. Drones are much fewer in number and their only purpose is to mate with the queen. But I guess if we didn't give them human gender roles, how would our Ant Hero win his Ant Girlfriend??
First off, my kids love the Seattle Aquarium and force us to go there everytime we're in town visiting my family. So I'm there like twice a year. And the otters are still the best thing there, just like when I was a kid.
Anyway, you're totally right about this, and much of this kind of thinking is evident in Animal Planet and Discovery Channel shows on animals. The narration always, always imposes human gender bullshit on the animals. Especially primates. God, it's sooo irritating. On the other hand, if you start pointing this stuff out, you get a lot of hatemail, as I've now learned from experience.
Haha I agree with you about the otters.
With regard to those Animal Planet and Discovery Channel shows, it is tricky. I too find the anthropomorphizing narration annoying, but then I know that most people would respond to me with "well...if the narrator didn't anthropomorphize and gender the animals, fewer people would find the shows interesting enough to watch" and I'm sure how to give a good response to that
edit: I'm NOT sure how to give a good response to that
That is REALLY interesting. Fun food for thought as I continue trying to parent in a feminist and non-hetero-normative way. It is really difficult, as several people have already mentioned, to avoid doing this kind of thing with your kids. My son seems to think that Mommy and Daddy just mean woman and man, so he'll call the guy on the cereal box "daddy" even though this guy clearly isn't his father, and he can identify his father in photos. Also, when I'm choosing a character in one of the Lego video games, it shows two torsos in the background, one red and one blue, and he always calls them "mommy-daddy." I do feel heartened though when one of my closest friends comes for an extended visit and he amends his explanation of family from "Mommy, Daddy, ME!" to "Mommy, Daddy, Kim, ME!" Anyway I'm rambling, but I can't wait to go to an aquarium again and think about gender...
My dad always called everything at the zoo "she" when I was growing up. I now really appreciate just what that meant for my ideas of gender. It kept me from thinking of male as default.
Now we mostly just use "he" or "she" at random, but for some reason my dad always calls spiders "she."
Black widow? heh.
Or Charlotte. :)
That's because most spiders are actually female :)
my dad is a spider nut. much to my arachnophobic dismay. he thinks the huntsman that lives outside our front door is "magnificent" *shudder*
I really liked this post, I volunteer at Highline Community College's Marine Science and Technology Center and also use gendered language when I talk about the animals. I almost always call animals "he" even when I know they are female. Especially with the Kelp crabs. Like, if a kid asks me if they are male or female we turn the crab over and check, but until them I refer to all of the crabs as "that guy over there". I also refer to all of the Sunflower stars as "that guy over there" even though I know that there probably are a few females in the tank.
I think the weirdest gender-related thing I have learned volunteering is that humans have a HARD time imagining sex without physical intercourse. Like, in the Sunflower star tank there will be two Sunflower stars on top of each other and people who visit seem to always think that two animals close to each other=sex. When I try and explain broadcast spawning to them the visitors usually just give me a blank look.
Yeah, its weird how humans project human values and ideas onto animals.
Male is the more gender neutral gender...apparently.
Humans are a lot better at understanding members of our own species than others, so often it's easier to anthropomorphize animals, otherwise you have to start using very detached and technical terms, which are only really appropriate to professional level lectures and research papers.
I don't really know how to combat this other than saying, "No, actually, that's a girl octopus!" 10,000 times a day.
You could always try the "hir" and "Sie" pronouns?
The only problem with "hir" and "sie" in conversation is that I find a lot of people assume I have some weird accent and am mispronouncing "her" and "she". In print, it's much clearer, and even if you're not familiar with the terms it becomes fairly obvious that you're aiming for a mid-gender/non-gender indicative. In conversation... I don't want every conversation I have to be explaining my pronoun use. Honestly I just use "them" and "they" for people, and "it" and "its" for animals.
Well, you do have a point. People always ask if I am German when I use them, ehehe. It and they would work pretty well, too
I understand this is not at all related to the main idea of the post, but why do these otters hold hands?
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe they hold hands in the wild so that they can stick together. Because they almost never go on land, they have to sleep in the water, and they try not to get swept away by ocean currents/winds. So, some otters hold on to or wrap themselves in kelp (seaweed) that is attached to the sea floor, and other otters hold on to those otters. These groups of otters are called "rafts." However, seeing as they also hold hands in zoos, there is probably some sort of of social element too.
When I first saw the title of this post I thought it was going to be about sea horses and the whole male-gives-birth thing. I fell in love with the sea horse when I read in a study on their mating behaviors that they link tails and engage in "reciprocal quivering."