The Top 7 Feminist Animals

This blog doesn't usually devote time towards zoology in crappy student publications, but I'm afraid I just had to comment on this pile of shit. Here we have a brilliant example of shitty scientific journalism in action, written by some moron who I can assure you has never even studied the subject in question. I shouldn't care what gets published in student magazines, but it fucking angers me that this shit is actually promoted as science considering the quality of the argument is non existent, there being numerous factual innacuracies, and a social message being shoehorned in for good measure. The writer in question hails from Emerson College, which has a total number of zero modules dedicated to zoology on their prospectus. That key detail is about to become very clear:
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https://www.theodysseyonline.com/top-feminist-animals
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With the very first line we're already being sold the classic feminist narrative that all women have it hard, and all men are just happy for it to be that way. The good news is that according to this writer that's not the case in the animal world, and feminist animals are in abundance. Surely if lowly animals can get gender equality right then humans must also follow suit. That really is the low standard of argument we're dealing with here. Of course animals can't be feminists, as they have no knowledge of human society, and can't comprehend this ideological nonsense. Sure, you may be able to cherrypick traits to mangle into your narrative, but describing animal behaviour as 'feminist' shows a complete lack of understanding in behavioural ecology. What's even stranger is the idea that anyone would advocate human society to be more in touch with radically different beings, especially considering in most cases the behaviour that this writer aspires towards isn't even biologically possible.

I'm not aware of any person with at least one brain cell that claims societies in nature determine human society, nor are they claiming that feminism has manifested itself in natural populations. Yet here we are, bastardising the great subject of zoology on a false premise. Human society is not accurately comparable with animal societies, and the quicker this writer learns this simple truth the better. I suppose we better get this shitshow over with. Roll out example number one:

I'm not quite sure why you've highlighted meerkats as ideal feminists, and a good part of me thinks you're just bringing up these examples to spite men. I don't know what would give me such an impression, but maybe it's something to do with your complete denial that male meerkats even exist unless it's to breed with the dominant female. I'm not sure I'm willing to take lessons in animal behaviour from a writer who idolises the African meerkat, which is a great example apart from the small issue that this animal doesn't exist. There's no such thing as an African meerkat, but for argument's sake I'll assume you've just incorrectly identified the only species of meerkat; the meerkat. Why do you expect me to just eat up your unsourced information when you can't even identify the animal you're claiming to be informed about?

I'd honestly love to see some sources, because this is some very sketchy evidence that isn't supported by the primary literature. For starters it's entirely misleading to proclaim there is an alpha female in a mob of meerkats. It's more accurate to say there is a dominant breeding pair that is able to manipulate the reproductive rights of subordinates. Funny how the lack of freedom over reproductive rights is supported as feminist in this example of meerkats, yet opposition to bodily autonomy in women is met with cries of sexism. It's clear this writer knows absolutely nothing about meerkat reproduction, as not only do subordinates have the ability to breed, but they actively kill offspring of the dominant pair. Meerkats avoid inbreeding by preferring to mate with unrelated immigrant males. If only alpha pairs were able to breed then that would do nothing to solve the problem of consanguinity.
I'm now wondering why you would think that tales of infanticide and selective breeding are feminist qualities to shout about, so meerkats are probably not the best example if we're going to start proclaiming feminism is this great and wonderful phenomenon found in nature.

Please tell me this is satire. I must be imagining things, but there appears to be a published article claiming that killer whales are intersectional feminists. The words 'killer' and 'whale' shouldn't be capitalised by the way, and neither should 'orca' for that matter. Still, that's not the most pressing issue. Calling killer whales intersectional feminists is probably the bigger one. Just how the fuck can you claim they're intersectional feminists with the information provided?

It probably won't surprise you that there are factual inaccuracies with this example, but let's just quickly address these. Killer whales actually live in pods, but it is true that these are formed of multiple matrilines, but this doesn't mean there isn't conflict to be found in these groups. Conflict is present at every level of life, and just because you proclaim an organism to be feminist doesn't exclude them from this fact. I have no idea how all these points relate to intersectional feminism, and I can only assume the author read about a social structure relating to women and instantly tied that in with feminism. There's clearly zero relationship between intersectional feminism and killer whales, so let's just move on.

I would like to point out that beauty standards are subjective to each organism, which is bad news for this journalist, who would only be considered attractive in a pack of rabies infested stray dogs. This example however is just a weak excuse to bash men, but then again so is the whole fucking article. Surely only a sociopath would find inspiration from this unique mating strategy, and I personally find it deplorable that this writer is happily endorsing this kind of behaviour for human populations. It's not intersectionally feminist to try and dictate reproduction.

I can't quite put my finger on why humans haven't adopted the attributes of bees. Might have something to do with our common ancestor being 630 million years old. That's a lot of time, and the primary reason why humans and bees live in vastly different societies. In any case, I'm not sure forcing workers to become sterile, the need for eusociality, and shorter lifespans are what I would describe as a human utopia. Just to clarify, this author is seriously suggesting that it would be beneficial for humans to have a single queen that laid over 1500 eggs a day, which aside from being biologically impossible, is just mental. I don't know why laying more eggs from fewer individuals is desirable for human achievement, but it's not exactly doing bees a world of good considering many species are declining in population.

Let's just ignore the fact that male lions protect the pride, because portraying them as lazy slackers is the only way we're going to be able to sell this lion centred feminism to the masses. Bashing men sure is fun. Really all you've done here is describe a social structure with alpha males, which are common in a great number of social animals. Alpha males arise for a number of reasons, but one big factor is because fact lions are polygynous. Humans form monogamous bonds, and so alpha males are unable to arise, making this comparison between lion and human sexual dynamics bogus.

All these examples of feminism in nature try and create this narrative that feminism naturally blossoms out of sexist hierarchies in animals. Not only is this complete bullshit, as sexism isn't a concept in the natural world, but it's irrelevant in this example, as social hardships are being weakly linked to cooperative breeding. In reality lions are thought to cooperatively breed to ensure pride members have similar development cycles, and therefore can't take advantage of weaker pride members. This behaviour has nothing to do with female lions feeling sorry for each other, and you can paint the image that male lions are complete assholes all you want, but the facts are that infanticide is a common behaviour in animals, and as we've seen in meerkats is not limited to one sex. Infanticide in lions is a very prominent example of why natural systems shouldn't be manipulated into some sort of idyllic paradise. Nature's a hard place, and probably not something you should aspire to be like. That should be the mantra for this piece, but unfortunately there are still two more examples to go.

Firstly, you have no idea what zoology students get up to in their spare time, and secondly, the ability to fertilise eggs without insemination from males is not necessarily an advantageous strategy. Not that parthenogenesis is biologically possible in humans anyway, which is yet more reasons to suggest supporting it is a weird argument. You also forget to mention that Komodo dragons store sperm instead of self-fertilisation, which is a very important detail, and means the male still fertilises the eggs by proxy.

This method of reproduction is certainly very interesting, but there's a very good reason why humans copulate via the costly mechanism of sexual reproduction, and this is in order to maintain genetic diversity. Why would humans want to incur the costs of parthenogenesis, without gaining any benefits from sexual reproduction? I guess I've now learnt that sexual reproduction is in direct conflict with the feminist ideology. I don't know how feminists think educating future generations works when they can't reproduce, especially when they're promoting the idea that only male offspring can be born. I'm not even going to respond to that Jurassic Park point. No scientific writer presenting serious topics would ever resort to fiction as evidence. Pathogenesis incidentally had nothing to do with the collapse of the said fictional theme park, but that's another story for another day.

I'm sure Amy Schumer is delighted about being directly compared to a fucking elephant, but I better keep that humorous thought to myself or Miss Schumer is likely to steal my material. I don't know why feminists are aspiring to behave like elephants, but it's a pretty poor reason when all they do is hang around in matriarchal herds, which as far as I'm concerned is segregating the sexes, and not promoting equality. Sorry, they 'thrive in matriarchal pacts'. That's probably why African elephants are listed as 'vulnerable' by the IUCN. Seriously though, I'm getting sick and tired of this writer promoting female dominated societies as utopian when in actual fact the animal's 'feminist traits' are doing fuck all. The amount of fundamental information you have to actively ignore to reach these slanted conclusions is just astonishing.

Elephants, by the way, are not plus sized, they're elephant-sized, and they certainly don't promote the idea of being healthily obese; or feminist for that matter. Male elephants also don't fuck everything they see, and as with anything in evolution there's a tradeoff between mate selection in both sexes. I implore you to make points based off of scientific evidence instead of just creating your own stories.

I doubt it was the author's intention to irritate me, but as a zoologist I'm pissed off. How can I not be angered by the atrocious standard of journalism on display here when I devote my life to studying this subject? The article presents the idea that oppressing women cannot possibly be natural, yet provides absolutely no evidence that this is impossible in humans. The writer couldn't even find any examples from related species, and instead we get this waffle detailing the lives of animals that couldn't be further away from humans in terms of sociality. Is it any wonder why more and more people are being put off by this ridiculous idea of what feminism is all about when articles like this are just a weak excuse to bash men. Some of these examples are so ridiculous they appear to support some sort of dystopian future where only women survive. How any of these examples are in any way desirable is beyond me, but I suppose that doesn't matter when you can just misrepresent facts throughout the whole fucking article.

Here we have yet another naturalistic fallacy parading as serious biology. The writer themselves even sings the praises of the natural world with the very title of this piece. I hate to ruin her fun but nature is a harsh world where often ireddemable behaviour is selected for and actively encouraged in the struggle for survival. We could just as easily write a piece detailing examples of how alpha males mistreating the females in their group leads to preferable societies, and therefore claim oppressing women should be supported in humans because it's found in nature. I doubt my article would ever be published, so why the fuck are we excusing the sort of shit displayed by this rotten mound of feces.