Queer Animals and Queer Liberation – An Introduction
Articles Reflecting a Vegan Lifestyle From All-Creatures.org

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FROM The Vegan Rainbow Project
October 2020

Although it is impossible to cover the complexity of nonhuman or human animal queerness in just one post, this post tries to provide an introduction to some of the stories we as humans tell about queer animals, explore some of the debates surrounding animal queerness, and explain why animal liberation is a queer issue.

The world is full of queer animals. By now, many of us have heard stories of same-sex penguin couples, some may know that sex change is quite common amongst fish, or you may have even read about the ‘leaping lesbian lizard’, the female-only species of New Mexico Whiptail lizards. And, after all, humans are queer animals too.

Over the last decades, humans have become increasingly aware of and interested in animal queernes. This has also led
to heated political debates, as acknowledging queerness in other animals required many to challenge their (Western) assumptions about sexuality, sex, and reproduction.

Studies and debates on queer (nonhuman) animals have ranged from biological descriptions of animal queerness,
as presented in books like Bagemihl’s Biological exuberance: Animal homosexuality and natural diversity and Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, gender, and sexuality in nature and people, to sociological debates surrounding questions such as the queerness of human-animal relationships[1]. Unsurprisingly, animal queerness is also discussed in the LGBTQIA+ community. Zoos have even capitalized on this by organizing events like ‘Gay Night at the Zoo’, or by announcing that “London Zoo celebrates same-sex penguin couples for Pride weekend”. 'Gay' penguins have even become so popular, that a recent image film about the city of Cologne – also commonly referred to as the Gay Capital of Germany – featured two bowtie-wearing penguins standing next to a rainbow flag (seen at 0:57).

Although it is impossible to cover the complexity of nonhuman or human animal queerness in just one post, this post tries to provide an introduction to some of the stories we as humans tell about queer animals, explore some of the debates surrounding animal queerness, and explain why animal liberation is a queer issue....

 

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