Hey there, LGBTQIA+
fam, allies, and haters.
I'm Trace, this is Uno Dos of
Trace, and I've been thinking.
I know that Pride Month is
officially over and all,
I hope you had a great
Pride, but people
should be loud and proud of
their openness and acceptance
all year.
So even though I'm a
bit late to the Pride
Party with this paper, I've
been pondering this for a bit.
Transgender animals,
let's talk about it.
Really quick before
we get into it,
click the Subscribe
and the Bell,
because YouTube has decided
that clicking sub doesn't mean
you actually want
to see videos, you
need to click the bell for that.
True story, definitely do it.
Before we get into
trans animals though,
I want to mention a few things.
One, I have a Bachelors
in Science and Psychology,
which I got with
departmental honors.
And two, while getting that
degree, I had a practicum
and chose sexual
health care education.
I'm not an expert, but I do
have some experience researching
and thinking about why we humans
do the things we do, apart
from my personal
feelings on the matter,
so let's just get
that out of the way.
C, I think we should
start this conversation
by defining some terms.
Sex and gender; according to
Merriam Webster's dictionary,
sex is the sum of the
structural, functional, and
sometimes behavioral
characteristics of organisms
that distinguish males
from females, i.e., sex
is a physical thing.
It's assigned to you at
birth by a doctor who
looks at your
genitalia and documents
your sex usually
based on that alone.
It can also be indicated
by chromosomes or genetics,
especially in IVF situations.
But importantly,
biology is messy,
and those halves
don't always whole.
Just because you have those
things, doesn't mean you
feel that way, but
we're not going
to talk about that too
much in this video.
Now, same dictionary, gender;
it's an adjective, behavioral,
cultural, or psychological
traits typically associated
with one's sex, i.e.,
gender is a social thing.
We in the United States tend to
use the term interchangeably,
gender and sex, sex and gender,
but they're not the same thing.
I think we use gender
to describe sex,
because people don't
like using the word
sex in polite conversation.
They think it's dirty or
vulgar, which I totally get,
I grew up in the Midwest, too.
But again, they're
not the same thing.
Sex is physical, gender
is sociobehavioural.
So those of you used to listen
to my podcast you might know
that I love etymology,
and the word sex
comes from the Middle
English and Latin,
and has always meant
the categorization
of male or female.
But gender's etymology actually
comes from describing language.
Gendered language is
a common occurrence
in romance languages,
so people know who
or what you're describing.
In Spanish, for
example, you would
say el or ella, he or
she, but would also
say profesor or profesora.
Gender's definition
since Middle English
has been how we talk about sex.
Gender didn't mean
sex, but it did
describe it, which
means, like all language,
it has changed,
evolved, and updated
to match society's needs.
So in your head, I hope you
have now taken sex and gender,
and separated them,
physical, sociobehavioural.
Sidebar, gender in romance
languages is also fascinating,
and I highly encourage
you to read up on it,
because the beach in Spanish,
for example, is la playa, which
is feminine for some reason.
And teatro, or theater, is
masculine for some reason.
But why, I don't know.
Maybe you do, look
it up, let me know.
Anyway, end sidebar.
The American Psychological
Association, not exactly
a bastion of progressiveness
or radical thinking,
defines transgender
as quote, "an umbrella
term for persons whose gender
identity, gender expression,
or behavior does not conform
to that typically associated
with the sex to which they
were assigned a birth".
Transgender is a term meaning
the gender of a person
is different from their
sex assignment at birth.
If you take one thing
from this video,
it is that sex and
gender are different.
When we are talking
about sex, we
are commonly talking biology.
But when we're talking about
gender, or say transgender,
we're commonly talking about
psychology, society, and self.
I've said this three
times, I really
don't want to say it again.
So transgender animals;
animals don't often sit back
and think about their
gender in that way,
it just happens to them.
Snakes, lizard, beetles, fish,
birds, and some mammals all
have documented cases where
a male or female changes
what they call their
gender expression.
Which reminds me,
we should probably
define those terms as well.
Gender identity and
expression; gender identity
is what some psychologists
would call covert behavior.
Behavior cannot directly
observe, it's inside the brain.
Because gender
describes how someone
feels, not their physical sex,
they aren't tied together.
So this can mean
some people have
a physical sex that doesn't
match their gender identity.
Gender expression,
on the other hand,
is a way for people to overtly
express this covert behavior.
They may change their
clothing, their hair,
or their physical appearance.
They might even get surgery
to help their overt expression
align with their
covert identity,
but not always,
everyone is different.
We don't know if animals
have any gender identity,
but they definitely
have gender expression.
And sometimes that expression
has transitioned from birth sex
to another gender, because
they're not perfectly
tied together.
One famous example is this lion.
We all know that
lions look like this,
thanks to Disney's recent
documentary, [CHUCKLE] Lion
King.
Males grow manes, while
females remain sleek, and drink
water all seductive-like.
What is happening?
Mmamoriri lives in Botswana,
and though this lion has a mane,
she ain't a lion.
She's a lioness with the gender
expression of a male lion,
and it's pretty intense.
She's roaring, she's mounting
other lionesses, yeah.
A lion's mane is normally
used to attract females,
like homeless-chic for
some humans right now,
so this gender expression
doesn't actually match sex.
It's rare and interesting
in lion behavior,
but not singular,
it does happen.
Why?
No one actually
knows, but they think
it has to do with an excess
of testosterone in her body.
Researchers don't have
a lot of information
about gender-bending
lions, what they
do know is they behave
a bit like lionesses
and a bit like lions.
Mating and hunting like females,
but roaring and scent-marking
like males.
This lion was seen killing
the cubs of neighboring pride,
even after their
neighbors stole a kill.
Cub-killing is definitely
not a normal female behavior,
more male behavior,
but not in this case.
Clownfish are a common aquatic
example of transgender animals,
but they don't just
change expression.
They also are able to
spawn and carry offspring,
because they change sex.
All the little
Nemos are actually
male-presenting hermaphrodites.
When the female
of a school dies,
the dominant male binge
eats, and becomes a female
of the group, literally.
She, note the
pronoun change there,
she has transitioned
and chooses a partner
from the school who becomes
then the dominant male.
Then they go back to one,
to do the whole thing again.
We would call that a transition,
where a gender expression would
change from male to
female, or female to male.
Wrasses also follow
this pattern,
but instead of
transitioning from m to f,
they go female to male, f to m.
When the new male
wrasse takes over
as the leader of the
school of females,
then they are the big boss.
Another example is
the Marsh Harrier,
a Euro-African bird of prey.
This bad boy eats frogs, and
small mammals, and other birds,
it's bad ass.
It summers in the UK and
winters in Africa, class.
Males are brown, ginger, and
gray, with black wingtips,
but not always.
And, in fact, 40% of
males look and act
like the chocolate brown,
yellow-crowned females
of the species.
Their gender expression
is different.
Experts think some of
the males look female
because the species
are highly territorial,
and the males that look female
can breed without fighting off
the other males.
Gender expression for the win.
Spotted hyenas are one of
the most amazing animals
in the gender
expression community,
because they have
pseudo-penises.
Yeah.
The females have
the pseudo-penis,
and it looks so convincing
just looking at a spotted hyena
cannot tell you their sex.
Female hyenas can get erections,
and copulate, and urinate,
they can even birth
through the pseudo-penis.
The pseudo-penis ain't a
dick though, it's a clitoris.
See, even in
humans, the clitoris
and penis come from
the same fetal tissue,
it's called a homologous organ.
But in this case,
it's pretty extreme.
The swollen clitoris
looks a lot like a penis,
and the labia, or
folds of the vulva,
form what looks like testes.
It's an extraordinary example of
transition to gender expression
in the animal kingdom.
There are a lot of
animals that don't
have sex and gender in full
alignment 100% of the time.
And others, the transition
from one gender expression
or actual sex to another.
Sometimes it's due to
an environmental change,
like the loss of a
dominant mate which
triggers hormonal changes,
and other times it's
predetermined by evolution.
But it exists, and it's
real, and it's natural.
But we humans, we aren't
fish, we aren't birds,
we aren't even lions.
We're primates, we're more
advanced, some would say.
Are we subject to these
same laws of nature?
Is the male,
female, and primates
less zero one, or more?
There are advanced primate
examples of sociobehavioral
and matching of sex and gender.
Bonobos and chimps share a
lot of their DNA with us,
so they looked into
their gender expression.
In the wild, chimps and
bonobos are very different.
Chimp males are aggressive,
territorial, political leaders
of their groups,
while females are
focused on nurturing offspring
and social relationships.
With bonobos groups, the
females are in the lead
and the members are less
violent, more polygamous
across the board.
They would share food and
sex rather than fight,
and the two species
are different,
but they are 99.6%
genetically identical.
Researchers say this is a pretty
strong example of differing
gender expression in
primates, but they took it
a bit further by studying
their social grooming
behavior in zoos.
In the wild, social grooming
is more sex determinant,
chimps are more male-male social
grooming oriented, for example.
But Discover Magazine wrote
about research in this area,
quote, "zoo-living apes'
grooming seemed to be more
individuals' history
and personality related,
rather than sex related.
Neither species showed the
sex-typical grooming patterns
displayed by their wild
counterparts, which
is solid evidence that
certain sex roles were
at least partially
environmentally
determined in these species."
To break that down,
they're essentially
saying they expressed
their gender differently.
It's not a one-to-one,
but a fascinating story
nonetheless, and shows
that even animals
have complex relationships
with their own identities,
expressions, and sexualities.
Gender expression
is an intricate set
of social and biological cues,
individual to each animal
and person, and
science seems to show
it is not a choice, but
biological and environmental.
For example, identical
twins are more likely
than fraternal twins to
be transgender together.
And MRI scans of people who say
their gender identity doesn't
match their sex, show
the brain more closely
resembles their identified
sex, than the one that they
were assigned at birth.
And this starts very young.
Quick reminder,
by the way, sex is
assigned because no one checks
your chromosomes and DNA
when you're born.
Doctors look at external
genitalia and decide sex.
Biology is complicated,
and that is not
a 100% successful strategy.
I put together this video
because, for some reason,
people tend to give animals
some kind of deference
that we don't give to humans.
When an animal does
something, we call it natural.
When a human does
it, it's an agenda.
We tend to forget that
humans are animals.
We are part of the
animal kingdom,
and therefore aren't the
black and white, zero and one
sexuality and communication that
some people wish we could be.
Biology is almost never
binary, and it's almost always
a continuum or spectrum of
beautiful, messy evolution,
much of which we don't
entirely understand.
In 2014, one in six
people knew a fellow human
who was openly transgender.
By 2016 it was one in
three, and that's huge.
But it's not like there are
more transgender people now,
it's just that more people
are stepping into the light.
This is not unlike
the openness movements
of the 90s and the aughts, with
the lesbian, gay, and sometimes
bisexual communities.
Estimates of
transgender individuals
in the US population
is something like 0.3%,
or about a million people.
The average American high
school has 752 people,
so that means there
are two or three
people in every school
that see the "T" in LGBT,
and feel something.
In 2019, the United Nations
World Health Organization
finally accepted a revised
classification of diseases
which removed gender identity
disorder from its list
of mental illnesses.
Though, interesting sidebar,
it added gaming disorder
to the list.
Maybe we'll have to
make a video about that.
LGBTQIA+ is an acronym to
describe the complicated
relationship humanity has with
our own gender expression.
Each letter encapsulates
the millions of experiences
that Americans, and many more
millions around the world,
have.
And that's normal.
Animals have this, humans
have this, everyone has this.
And biology and
evolution is amazing.
Thanks for watching,
make sure you subscribe.
Let me know what you thought
of the video in the comments,
and I am Trace I'll
see you in the future.
