Guest post: Because of hegemonic species essentialism
Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on A new frontier.
in a few years (or months?) everyone will be talking scornfully about cis-species privilege and saying “Do you believe trans-hippos are hippos, yes or no?”
Educate yourself.
“Species” is a social construct. Most people think that “species” refers to a population of organisms the males and females of which can produce fertile offspring, but this definition, aside from its biological essentialism and obvious transphobia, is WRONG. Some hybrids are fertile. Leopons, for example. You didn’t know that, did you? SCIENCE tells us that wild hybrids even occurred in ancient times. Look it up.
Also there is a little thing called Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). And did I mention ring species?
These things are rarely mentioned in mainstream biology classes because of hegemonic species essentialism, but things are simply not as simple as the binary model wherein an individual either “belongs” (note the Western capitalistic language in which a living being is reduced to a possession) to a (single) species or doesn’t.
Thanks, Lady M. As a plant biologist, I regularly explain that the species definition is highly flawed. At best, it applies to mammals. Some species don’t even practice sexual reproduction. Plants actually experience hybrid vigor, where the hybrids are more robust than the parents. It’s time we did away with the stupidity of the current species definition, and tried to find one that will work for us, if indeed we can separate things into individual species at all. More likely, we should place things on a continuum, rather than as discreet entities in many cases.
Thanks for the promotion, Ophelia!
iknklast–See? That’s what I’m saying. Trans hippos are hippos.
And I, as a trans-lemur, am a lemur. I expect to be addressed appropriately.
While we’re in this topic . . . https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/
It’s a big topic.
I wonder if the debate over species categories is exactly parallel with sex categories?
Mel Brooks actually covered this way way back with a character from Spaceballs The Movie: Barf. Half human, half dog… he’s his own best friend!
Actually, I don’t see the relevance of bringing up biology at all. It’s time people learned that belonging to a specific species has nothing to do with physical traits. It’s all a matter of how you think or feel about yourself. Oh, and only an infinitely bigoted and evil monster could possibly take that last sentence to imply that transhippos are not exactly the same as the 1 1/5 ton mammals found in African rivers, and that these should therefore be treated as separate categories.
I’m just sad to note that I’ve seen that exact bullying writing style (“you didn’t know X, did you?” where X is something anyone engaged with the topic would know) quite a lot and it’s not just transactivists who do it.