aster

And thus sets the tone of their whole dynamic.

I just really love dumb boy Fitzroy and enabler supportive Rainer you guys

my favourite part of the Evolutionary Biology courses I took at the University of Toronto was learning that several bird species have 3+ sexes? the ruff bird is a great example - each male variant has a different (and successful!) reproductive strategy, and a different chromosomal sequence.

unlike the ruff bird, human sex falls into a bimodal distribution - this means there are two strong peaks (”typical” male and female morphs), with a whole lot in between.

evolution is nice way of saying “statistics played out longterm among living organisms”, and evolutionarily successful traits….aren’t something to hold up as natural or moral, or representative of an advanced state. it’s literally just fuck tactics that make your group size increase.

(though fucking isn’t always the best route, as asexual reproduction is massively advantageous as a short-term strategy, and certain species dominate the landscape by switching between sexual/asexual depending on environmental conditions)

besides all that, the strength of humankind has always been our ability to work together communally, and that’s straight science. so even if you went down the extremely problematic path of valuing fellow humans based on their potential evolutionary contribution (coughs, eugenics, coughs), there would still be zero scientific basis behind discriminating against trans, non-binary and intersex people. 

And the drab one:

The two morphs have very different behavior. The bright ones are more aggressive, setting up territories and defending them, being more aggressive about defending against predators. They sing more often.

The dull ones are quieter and less aggressive. They are more attentive to the nest, and better at feeding nestlings.

The morphs tend to make a good pairing for raising children because they specialize in different roles. The dull-colored birds, being more camouflaged, are safer when sitting on the nest, and are better able to hide. The bright-colored birds, being more visible, are better able to intimidate predators and rivals.

Interestingly though, both color morphs occur in both female and male birds. And birds tend to pair up with both opposite sex and opposite color morph birds. The dimorphism and different roles that, in most birds, are strongly associated with biological sex, in this species has evolved to be abstracted and separated from biological sex.

bdg is out here asking the real questions