The Human Pack

I should be at the store doing my grocery shopping; instead I had stuff tumbling over itself in my head and thought I should let some of it out before it's lost for good -- or takes over so deep I can't do anything else. This is a result of clicking on links from *this* to *that* to *hey, over here!* so I can't point you directly to any specific articles. It also has to do with Romance Novels and Erotic Romance and M/M Romance and...anyway. Onward.

One of the bits I read this morning was about homosexuality in animals, observations made by the people who make those kinds of observations about animals, and observations made by the people who make those kinds of observations about other people. And overwhelmingly, what I've noticed over the years, boils down to this: animals engage in homosexual behavior. Some of them flit from partner to partner, never bothering to learn names -- or even gender -- of the partner-of-the-moment, sowing their seed copiously. It may or may not take, depending on the partner's gender and fertility and whatnot, but...there you are. Those are the party/frat boys of the animal world. Others engage in long-term/permanent relationships with Just One Partner -- whether or not reproduction is involved depends on the genitalia. Still others are in long-term sexual relationships with members of the same genital club but will briefly defect just long enough to (hopefully) propagate the species, obeying primal biological necessity, before returning to the beloved partner.

Sound like any people you know?

The next thing I observed is the sheer volume of paranormal fantasy/romance, whether of a straight version or M/M persuasion, wherein one or more of the main characters is a shapeshifter or werebeing. Many many of these are series; plenty of the series follow a single couple through myriad trials and adventures along their course to True Love Ever After, but an equal if not greater number focus on different couples within a single unit -- pack or family or both. (Statistically, unless the pack is composed of unrelated persons who were cast out from their family groups for being gay, I seriously doubt there are *that many* gay werewolves in a single pack, though. Not that I mind, I'm just sayin'...) (and, yeah, just so you know...I've read WAY more of these in the M/M category. Probably because that's what I'm mostly reading right now.)

The difference is that within a pack of animals with no human side, those animals displaying "homosexual tendencies" are not cast out of their group, they are not treated as pariahs. As long as they can fend for themselves, other animals seem to be pretty much live-and-let-live about it. (What, do my freckles give me "redheaded tendencies"? I don't really understand that phrase -- I understand the individual words, but I think the usage is, at best, disingenuous.)

So here's what I think. I think we, as humans, are not as far removed from the animal as we would like to think we are. We believe the opposable thumb bestows some special form of self-awareness, a sense of Holier-Than-Thou, makes us somehow MORE than strictly Animal. And, in a sense, we do have some of that. We have fire. We have technology. We have domesticated animals and domesticated vegetables. And yet...does that make us better off? In the sense that we can now expand our living space to include areas that were once too cold or too hot, yes, perhaps. In the sense that we can support the kind of population growth that a lack of biological-imperative-driven fertility periods seems to inspire, yes. In the sense that we can now, to an extent, control the length or our lifespans, I suppose (although, really, that seems unnecessarily cruel in some ways. I don't exactly relish the day when I will be unable to care for myself and will have to sit through unending hours of same.)

But how are we putting that self-awareness to the test? Are we choosing to use it for general good? Are we accepting that we have the same proclivities as our animalian ancestors? We are all in search of food to eat, water to drink, shelter from cold and wet. We know that others are in need of the same things. Yet we choose to focus on superficial externals -- genitalia, sexuality -- as an excuse to decide who we feel deserves our time and attention, rather than helping out wherever we can and leaving the rest to be sorted by whoever's in charge of sorting (God, or some equivalent thereof, for most of us.)

'Scuse me; I got a bit derailed there. I was trying to make a point about pack behavior.

The pack is a unit of its own, composed of multiple individuals, and can go by many names in the animal kingdom -- hive, flock, herd...they all mean the same. When unaffected by people, these tend in general, although not exclusively, of loosely-related family groups.

And we humans have an urge to belong to a pack , or sometimes several of them. We define our packs differently. Your pack may be a family group, or a group of friends. It may be a business association, an arts council, a religious organization, a political affiliation. You may surround yourself with a pack connected by the same school, social group, ethnicity or geographic location. But you are part of at least one pack, and most probably more. And you change, from pack to pack -- the people in your family may see one You, while your office pack sees someone else with no relationship to the other beyond superficialities of appearance and home address.  Perhaps you are conflicted, because the goals and ideals of one of your groups is in distinct contravention to another -- how do you reconcile a social life in which you're in love with someone of the same sex as yourself with a profoundly fundamentalist religious belief?

Maybe we need to start looking at all of the world as one big pack. Animals don't kick other animals out of the pack for any reason. We're not wholly animals anymore. We are aware of our actions; shouldn't our actions be *more* than those of animals? Even animals show compassion toward pack members who are injured; when did we (humanity as a whole) lose our ability to show compassion to all our fellows? Nobody says you have to like me, or want to make the same choices I made, but compassion dictates that you help me if they turn out to be the wrong choices. Compassion says that you support my right to live my life in a way that doesn't actually harm you.