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Ok. Lucy Cooke's book uses the existence in nature of certain sexual behaviors to make us reconsider our own norms. "If female lemurs can dominate males, then w
by FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Ok. Lucy Cooke's book uses the existence in nature of certain sexual behaviors to make us reconsider our own norms. "If female lemurs can dominate males, then why shouldn't female humans dominate males? If there are same-sex couples of female albatrosses, then why not also of humans?" Etc.
Then --
What is this article, the one about the spiders, trying to say?
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI'm not the one who suggested the book. I just pulled out a descriptive blurb as an alternative to saying something about TFA like "Eww. Undress is an awfully polite way to say rips her skin off." And/or reference Silence of the Lambs. I found it fairly disturbing, what with being female and sympathizing with the female spider, not the male. On the other hand, I don't molt, so I decided to not go there. But that was my first thought.
- elektrontamer 3y agoI did find it disturbing as well at first but reading the rest of the article cleared things up. It's a lot less brutal than it sounds. The male strips "old skin", just before they're ready to molt. So he's not really damaging the female. Which makes sense since harming the female only reduces his chances of reproduction.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoYeah, the description changes as it goes on from "rips her skin off" to "probably helps accelerate the molting process in a surprisingly gentle fashion, then removes the molted skin" at which point it is, in fact, kind of like "Here, honey, let me unzip that hard to reach back zipper on that ball gown and get you out of that." Historically, women often required help to get undressed from the get ups they were expected to wear. Much less so these days.