Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 November 3

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 3

Transgender behaviors in other mammals?

Obviously transgender behavior is well documented, and an undeniable aspect of human behavior. What, if any evidence is there of other animals displaying behaviors that would suggest some sort of rebellion or attitude that would be consistent with a gender queer or transgender interests? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.229.145.52 (talk) 14:13, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "transgender behavior", but we have an article on Homosexual behavior in animals. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 15:03, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Cows have a 21 day Estrous cycle. Contradicting the information in the article Cattle that "Mounting is a playful behaviour shown by calves of both sexes and by bulls but not by cows" dairy herders report that an individual cow will show signs of being in heat by mounting behaviour towards other cows in the herd. AllBestFaith (talk) 15:22, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I've adjusted that article. I would have said that the behaviour is not common in full-grown cows. Bellowing is the most obvious sign that they are on heat. Dbfirs 08:56, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

That behavior is common in freemartin cows. From our article: "Freemartinism is the normal outcome of mixed-sex twins in all cattle species that have been studied, and it also occurs occasionally in other mammals including sheep, goats and pigs." But this is more of the animal equivalent to intersex individuals than transgender. StuRat (talk) 15:37, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

(I hope you don't mind me broadening the Q to all animals.) There is a cuttlefish where some males will change their coloration to that of females, on the side facing the other males, in order to sneak past the males and get at the females: [1]. The side facing the females remains looking typically male.

Some animals can actually change their sex, too. See Sex_change#In_animals. StuRat (talk) 15:32, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) There's a concept called Sequential hermaphroditism, which is when some animals can change sexes during their lives. It should be noted that gender is not the same concept as sex. Gender is a psychological construct, sex is a biological one; I'm not quite sure how one can analyze the psychology of, say, a clownfish to determine what its gender is. However, they can change sex. --Jayron32 15:36, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

• Not exactly transgenderism, but immature salmon which have not yet journeyed to the sea, where they attain adult size and become sexually dimorphic, are known as parr. Basically they appear sexually immature to adult males, yet in some places as many as 20% of the immature males produce sperm. They are not attacked by mature males, but they sneak in and fertilize the eggs that females lay only in nests protected by adult males. See precocious parr and Shampoo (film). μηδείς (talk) 03:14, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Possibly actual transgenderism: Male scorpionflies will sometimes pretend to be females in order to attract a male and steal his nuptial gift for his own use [2]. Now, this is not any sort of "rebellion" or rejection of gender norms - it is a clearly advantageous behavior geared toward survival and reproduction. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:56, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure that analogy holds up. Transgender people are not putting on an artifice. They are not "pretending" to be a different gender. --Jayron32 11:54, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Ref please, substantiating that no one claiming to be is transgender is ever pretending.There are various reasons someone might take on a gender role for a time. (Certainly "No True Transgender" is pretending.)Edison (talk) 20:17, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

You want a reference that someone who is earnest is earnest? Of course, people can lie about anything, but then they wouldn't actually be the thing we are lying about. If I lied about being a teacher for my profession, that wouldn't make me a teacher, would it? If I were a genuine teacher, then I would actually be a teacher. If a person were genuinely transgendered, then they are transgendered. If they are pretending to be transgendered, then they aren't. I never said that people could not pretend to be transgendered. I said that transgendered people are not pretending. Because if they were pretending, then they wouldn't actually transgendered. Because that's what pretending means. QED. Do you really need a link to a dictionary definition of "pretending" here, or can I trust you to find it on your own? --Jayron32 19:23, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

You may be confusing transgenderism with transvestism. (I was my French teacher as a witch, as well as Tom Baker as Doctor Who in highschool.) This was a matter of clothing, not gender identity, or the desire for full or partial gender reassignment. μηδείς (talk) 01:11, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Private fostering

I'm not even sure if that's the right name, or if this is the right desk.

Fostering is an ancient practice; every society has some way of taking care of children when the parents can't. I know about baby farming and wetnurses too; although our articles imply they're historic, they continue under other guises (unlike fosterage, which is dead and buried). In the past half-century or so, in rich countries, fostering has become more and more overseen - if not run - by the state (as opposed to charities, often religious-based). With the exception of kinship care, fostering is official and bureaucratised. The British government requires anyone (except for tightly defined close family) to register, if taking care of a child for more than a few days. Some of this legislation came about in the wake of the murder of Victoria Climbié in 2000. That case brought to public attention the practice of raising a child not one's own, without going through child services.

There is another whole subset, not mentioned in Foster care in the United Kingdom. I've found it very difficult to get information, precisely because it was (or is?) "under the radar". What I understand is that babies were given by their African parents into the care of rural white English families. If the parents were students (usually of medicine or nursing), when they graduated, they reclaimed their children and returned home, often Nigeria. If the parents were working, they came to visit on the weekends; when they had achieved stability of job and housing in the UK, they eventually took the children back to raise themselves. The parents paid, not very much, for this foster care, and there's no implication that they were unmarried or stigmatised. I've come across two brief BFI interviews, "Fostering Nigerian Children" (1965) and "Foster Mother to Eleven Children" (1970), that made me curious. In both these clips, the interviewer clearly believes the caregivers' assertion that they are not in this for the money. (Wife: I've spent all my husband's bank balance on this. Husband: It's a form of practical Christianity.) Each unrelated clip depicts a set-up of about a dozen children, from babies to young schoolchildren.

Can anyone find written information on this phenomenon, whether memoirs, anecdotes, or scholarly studies? Presumably some of these children remember their experiences, and have reflected on them as adults? And some of them may be well-connected in Nigeria (or whatever their home country is), given that their parents were afforded such educational opportunities in the 1960s. What ramifications can be traced down the generations? Did it happen in other countries? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 21:34, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

• Not a memoir directly, but fostering was common and expected in Colonial America, and is discussed in works like John Demos's work on Plymouth Colony titled A Little Commonwealth. It might be a good place to start your research. --Jayron32 11:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, but I referred only to the earlier material in order to distance this type of fostering from it. I'm seeking to find out about this C20 black urban African/white rural England set-up, and situations closely related to it. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 14:49, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I see. This article deals with early 21st century situation. Does it help? This one also is from the early 21st century. It seems to be broadly about what you are seeking. --Jayron32 17:25, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

The Open Democracy report is distressing but but only mentions private arrangements in passing. The Guardian article, however, is spot on. But I've then googled the names of the writer and the lawyer she interviews, and it leads to nothing else substantial. Surely some academic has investigated voluntary fostering? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:32, 4 November 2016 (UTC)