Are Most Mares Lesbian? · 3:26pm Mar 31st, 2016
Introduction
I ask this question because I notice that a very common assumption which a lot of fans seem to make is that lesbianism is much more common among the Ponies than among Humans, to the point where Pony mares essentially default to falling in love with other mares. I find this extremely unlikely for several reasons, though the reasons are different based on different assumptions about how Pony sexuality (and especially gender ratios work.
I. Sex Ratio Parity, Weak/No Heat
This is how Human sexuality works. There are roughly as many men as women, and sexual cycles are weak to nonexistent (their main remnant in Humans is menstruation). Consequently, men and women can pair up fairly easily, and with concealed ovulation they can't be sure exactly when they can make babies.
We know the effects of this. Most Humans are heterosexual, most are at least serially-monogamous (the polygyny option which most cultures have is functionally a reward for the most successful males, even in Muslim societies the vast majority of sex is within marriage and the vast majority of marriages are monogamous).
The reason for this is very simple. Anyone who is confirmed homosexual or lesbian is much less likely to breed, and hence their genes can succeed only by aiding their kin to breed and the resultant nieces, nephews and close cousins to succeed. Consequently, the tendency is for the majority (80-90 percent) to be purely heterosexual, with a minority (10-19 percent) who are bisexual (we could break it down further into shadings of sexual preference) and a tiny minority (1-5 percent) who are homosexual.
II. Sex Ratio Parity, Strong Heat
This is not, however, how things work for all or even most mammals. This tends to shock people when they learn it, but Humans are sexually weird in that we have always-on sexuality, and that changes some of the rules of the game. Suppose, for instance, that like most mammals we had "heats" -- during which we were very interested in sex -- and weren't interested in sex at all at other times of the year or month (depending on whether the heats are roughly like menstrual cycles or more like spring breeding seasons).
What happens in a lot of mammals that do this, especially in the case of breeding seasons as opposed to cycles, is that mating has very little relationship to love or friendship. The strongest emotional bonds such creatures have is with their children or their friends of the same sex; while one mates with the most attractive member or members of the opposite sex without regard to friendship, and there's little or no emotional bond between mates off mating season. (Very often, the males of such species have challenge contests before mating and the winning male gets to mate multiple females; most males don't get to mate in most mating seasons).
Some sexual affect may remain outside of mating season, but it's usually directed toward one's friends of the same sex. Friends will masturbate one another, sometimes to climax (as far as we can tell by passive observation) and in general spend their time around one another unless actually taking care of their own offspring (and sometimes a group of friends will co-adopt each other's offspring, especially if the original mother dies or is incapacitated, a behavior of reciprocal selfish altruism with obvious long-term evolutionary advantages.
Might the Ponies be like that? Well, real horses are somewhere in between what I just described and the Human model. In real horses, mares are the long-term dominants in their herds, there is a dominant stallion who may or may not drive off other stallions; the dominant stallion is the father of many to most of the foals. They have a main breeding season and are only interested in sex during that season; they also may (depending on climate, diet, subspecies and variety etc.) have lesser breeding cycles. There appears to be significant emotional bonding between mares and the stallions they mate; mares can turn down stallions they don't like, regardless of dominance.
This is probably because the system I described is the one practiced by low-food-chain prey species, and horses are somewhere in between -- they are herbivores but fairly omnivorous ones, and they are aso large and fierce herbivores (if you consider zebras rather than domestic horses, this becomes obvious) so that they may well decide to fight rather than flee predators; there are many cases on record of equids mobbing and stomping to death over-aggressive predators. So the dominant stallion is more than the winner of a sexual challenge -- he's also the protector of his mares and (probably his) foals, which changes the social-evolutionary calculus a bit.
There are some hints that the Ponies might be a little like this, or at least that younger Pony mares might tend to be. We do notice a tendency on the show for Pony mares to form groups of friends who are extremely affectionate toward one another -- though not actually more affectionate than, for instance, were Victorian upper to middle class young women (it used to be perfectly normal for schoolgirls to hold hands, walk while hugging and even kiss one another on the lips by way of greeting, with no real sexual implications intended or assumed). We notice that the Mane Six in particular mostly don't seem to have serious (or possibly any) romantic/sexual attachments (Rarity is unusual in that she has gigantic crushes, but these don't seem to go anywhere; I personally think that the one of the most likely to be sexually-active and maybe even polyamorous is Fluttershy).
On the other hand there are a lot of aspects of Pony culture that don't look like this. Most notably, they marry. And seem to do so mostly hetrosexually and monogamously. And, based on some dialogue in "Baby Cakes" and The Crystalling, it's very much assumed that the stallion is the biological father of the mare's foals, and that something would be very wrong if he weren't. This is, basically, a very similar mating structure to that which prevails among Humans. Their courtship patterns (most notably shown in "Hearts and Hooves Day" and "Simple Ways") seem to assume male-female monogamous pairing and (I woul argue from the extreme sentimentality shown) a strong assumed relationship between sex and love.
We see no evidence of strong heats. Given sentimentality and monogamy, it would be seen as a very bad thing (as in potentially life-ruining) to mate with the wrong mare or stallion, which means that they would have to have some sort of purdah or haram system, with sexual segregation) during the season or cycle. This would affect their architecture, work patterns, residential patterns, etc. For instance, it would be extremely uncomfortable for Big Mac to live with THREE mares with whom he most definitely did not want to mate (his grandmother and two younger sisters) if heats and the reactions to them were nigh-uncontrollable. He would at least sleep in a different house. The same applies to pretty much every family depicted in the show with mares old enough to go into cycle / heat.
What I went with in the Shadow Wars Story Verse was a weak 21-day cycle, during 3 days of which the mare emits marescent and is both distracted by her own desire and tends to distract other stallions with their desire caused by her scent, but does not make a psychologically-normal Pony uncontrollably-sexual. It's socailly important because it's at the root of female dominance in Pony culture, but it doesn't turn their communities into huge orgies at periodic intervals.
But if there were strong heats, the effect would be to reduce the sentimentalization of sex and make monogamy more difficult. And this would make lesbian affect among mares far more important, because this would be always-on, rather than merely time-dependent. What's more, since mares would have less control over heterosexual mating, lesbian mares would still breed at normal rates, and lesbian couples or even herds could provde a large enough pool of shared resources to aid survival.
Some Pony variants and societies might actually work this way. Just not the ones we have met, and not Equestria, based on what has already been shown.
III. Weak/No Heats, Skewed Sex Ratio
A "skewed sex ratio" has to be less males than females, because the other way around you get a fatal birth dearth. My Changelings would seem to be an exception to this rule, but they get around it by having a streamlined birthing process for everyling save Royals (general rule: the higher the caste the more months in the womb) and a caste of Nurses who tend the embryonic births of Warriors or Workers, who are only carried in the womb for a few weeks to months with many often being carried at the same time. (Effectively, the Changelings are evolving into what amount to eusocial marsupialoids, only not exactly because evolution doesn't work quite that way).
So, suppose that there is 1 stallion to every 6 mares in Equestria, with weak/no heats. What sort of a society do we see, and does this look much like Equestria?
My first point is that any stallion in such a society is very lucky, because he gets on the average six mares of his own social status as wives, or less wives of higher social status, or absurd numbers of mere girlfriends if he doesn't wed. His life is going to largely consist of mares trying to keep him happy so that he'll love them and father children on them.
My second point is that sociobiologically, male homosexuality is almost nonexistent save as a spandrel, because he is the incarnation of his genes that all his relatives should be promoting on kin-altruistic selection criteria -- he's going to have a lot of children. With the skewed sex ratio, male homosexuality becomes less common than among Humans.
My third point is that pure lesbianism becomes a mark of failure in such a society -- any mare who has some sexual claim on a stallion wants to keep herself pregnant by him as long as she has him, because she may never find another one. Only mares who can't find stallions to mate under terms which would let them support their foals will benefit by being lesbians (because they can then support their genes in their kin). This is far more so in this sexual system than in ours.
My fourth point, however, is that female bisexuality becomes more advantageous in such a sexual system than in our own. This is because it's advantageous for co-wives to get along, both in case they have to oppose the stallion and to prevent their doing each other dirty and shattering the polygynous marriage. So yes, Mr. Stallion, you're married not only to six mares, but to six bisexual mares. Who want to have sex with you too. Lucky dog. Now get back into your breeding heap! 
Of course, this system isn't stable, and here's why. The sex ratio skew makes it more advantageous to bear a colt than a filly, as almost all colts will eventually have multiple foals, while some fillies will have no and many will have few foals. Consequently, if there is any way for the parents to skew the sex ratio toward colts, they will. This results in evolution back toward a 1:1 ratio -- we see this even in creatures with absurd levels of sexual dimorphism and polygyny, such as elephant seals.
This is probably not what we're seeing in Equestria, because not only is the culture mildly matriarchal, but stallions seem to be in essentially the same position relative to mares in terms of romantic dynamics as we see in the Human world. Consequently, the stallions are unlikely to be that rare.
IV. Strong Heats, Skewed Sex Ratios
This would mean that there would be an uncontrollable mating urge in cycle / season, and a stallion dearth.
This would result in a very alien looking culture. There would be not much point to romance or sentimentality between members of the opposite sex, because who you liked would have little connection to who you had sex with. Stallions would have very little incentive to help support the foals of mares who were their friends, since there would be only a slight chance that they were the fathers of those foals. Likewise, mares couldn't even assume that the stallions who were their friends would be all that much more likely to have sex with themselves or their herd of female friends than with others, so there'd be little point in trying to attract stallions out of season.
Probably, males and females would live socially-segregated lives save when actually mating. Males would be friends with males, females friends with females. Homosexuality would be the norm for both males and females off-season/cycle, compensated for by brief but uncontrollable heterosexuality in-season/cycle. The reason why homosexuality would be the norm when not actualy mating is that the most important emotional bonds aside from mother-child ("fatherhood" of course would be meaningless save in a strictly genetic sense) would be with one's buddies of the same sex.
This would, needless to say, look nothing like what we see on the Show.
Conclusion:
The Show depicts a romantic, sentimental and sexual culture very similar to an idealized version of the West or Far East (American, British, Japanese). Thus, the sexual biology of the Ponies must be rather similar to our own, at least in broad outline. Therefore, while the culture of Equestria may be far more accepting of homosexuality and lesbianism (I write it that way in the Shadow Wars Story Verse), these must be minority orientations, just as in our world.
Most mares, in short, are not lesbian.
Well reasoned, but I'm pretty sure the stories that posit this position weren't working from serious sociobiological considerations to begin with.
3838942
Well, you do get the "lucky guy surrounded by hot bisexuals who want to have sex with him and each other" in Scenario # 3 (Weak/No Heat, Skewed Sex Ratio), though that's moderately improbable. The "everypony is gay but has straight sex at random during heat" is Scenario # 4.
Scenario # 3 is a lot closer to what we see on the Show than is Scenario # 4. However, there are problems even with # 3 -- for instance, why don't we see Big Mac surrounded by mares more often than in Show (I mean they would be hanging around Sweet Apple Acres to get close to him)? Scenario # 4 is closer to the life of seals than of Humans.
The main problem with # 3 is the strong tendency toward evolution back to a more roughly equal ratio.
3838942
Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of these stories are merely written because a lot of guys like girl on girl stuff. There's nothing wrong with this, but I do take issue with some guys who write this stuff because they think male on male stuff is disgusting.
As for Jordan's post, I will reply with a longer response. There are certain things about it that I like and certain things about it that I don't...
While I agree with everything you said in the article, the conclusion seems a bit off.
Given your argument, and a generally utopic nature of Equestria, I'd assume that the norm would be bisexuality for females and heterosexuality for males (due to skewed sex rates), with strictly heterosexual marriages that are denotion of desire to make babies, rather than just as a way of denoting long-term romantic relationship.
The lack of attention to stallions is then easily explained by the fact that procreation is not very important for ponies. With superior life-spans (see Granny Smith), age spells and near-zero violent deaths, as well as probably controlled population growth, the reproduction rates must necessarily be very low.
First of all, the thing I like about this is you've put a lot of thought into it and explored different modes of animal mating rituals and biology.
The thing, however, that makes me wince is while the ponies are indeed animals, I think the show is depicting them with very human characteristics and I'm sure part of your post was also doing that. Nothing wrong with that. The issue I have is if you are imposing human mating strategies/sexuality on ponies, then a lot of what you have written here is wrong.
I should start by saying I'm a bisexual person (pansexual if you wanna get really pedantic, because I'm attracted to people who are of non-binary gender as well, but I use 'bisexual' because I hate erasure of the term) and this is what got to me:
1.)Not everyone who enters into a sexual relationship wants to breed. I certainly don't, and many other people don't, and I hardly think this is a failing of society. In fact, biologically speaking especially within our own species, it is beneficial to the group as a whole because of overpopulation. If everyone was heterosexual and breeding, things might have gone to hell in a handbasket a lot faster by now. Of course, things are still going to hell in a handbasket anyway regarding the exploding human population, but that's a different topic entirely. If we're taking animals, then homosexuality still exists and this likely does stem overpopulation, as does predation. Furthermore, in animals like wolves, the non-breeders will actually look after the young of their fellow packmates. Kind of like an Auntie/Babysitter structure.
2.) If you are bisexual it does not necessarily mean you aren't monogamous. Therefore, if you are in a polygamous relationship with one male and many wives it does not mean you have to be attracted to your fellow females. In fact, I'd wager that in polygamy it's more like the guy has sex with one wife at a time rather than having group sex. This is even (though not always) true of polyamory, which isn't the same as polygamy. I have polyamorous friends who are happy for their partners to sleep with someone else, but they would rather not do it at the same time as the other partner.
In societies that practice polygamy, it's rare that women have much choice in the matter. They have to get along with the other wives and from what I've read it's more like a sisterly relationship. They are all sharing one man, but that does not mean they'll share each other. I am not attracted to every female I meet. I am actually very monogamous, and one of the greatest misconceptions about us bisexuals is that we are always up for threesomes (MFF threesomes of course, MMF ones are just icky) or that we always want two partners at the same time. Sexuality is about who you're attracted to, not who you shag. If I'm with a guy I'll still appreciate a cute gal and vice versa.
Finally, a thing that doesn't wind me up, but is a neutral point about biology:
Not necessarily. Animals communicate by smell, and a brother or sister is likely to smell unpleasant or undesirable. That's nature's way of making sure the gene pool doesn't run itself into the ground.
3838944
I'm pretty sure of that too. I knew that before I wrote this essay.
Being male heterosexual, I obviously would tend to be more aroused by female-on-female than male-on-male, because I find females more arousing in general, and I am far more likely to want to imagine myself kissing a female than a male (and remember, I'm probably identifying with one or more of the characters, if Story is well-written). But I'm aware of that, and try to avoid rejecting male homosexual elements in stories just because of an irrational "Eww, kissing a guy, ICKY!" sort of reaction.
I have noticed that I have two important female homosexual pairings in my stories so far (Twilight-Luna, though they're unusual; and Fluttershy-Rainbow Dash) and no mentioned male homosexual ones (the kiss between Snips and Snails doesn't really count, as Snips was asleep and Snails was being Glittershell, who in orientation is female-heterosexual). Not sure if this is because important Vanilla-Canon important females outnumber important males so much, or because of the effect I just described.
Of the obvious important Vanilla-Canon male characters, both my Big Mac and my Shining Armor are heterosexual.
My Changelings are all bisexual in orientation, but they have a really wacky reproductive system (by mammalian standards) in any case, and a culture to match.
You probably don't agree on my thoughts about the scarcity value of the rarer sex (and either why this leads to them having great social importance, and why this tends to result in breeding back to rough parity). My reasons for this are explained in detail in "Marriage and Status in Single-Sex Dearths -- an Election or a Marketplace?"
To summarize that essay, my point is that given a single sex dearth, the scarcer sex will have less social status in aspects of the society which are election-like (majority wins) but more social status in aspects of society which are marketplace-like (scarcity increases value). The more totalitarian a society, the more sex will be election-like, or if you prefer, political ("You shall breed in the prescribed manner to serve the State!"). The more classical-liberal a society, the more sex will be market-like, or if you prefer economic: ("It is a truth universally acknowledged that an eligible single stallion must be in want of a wife.")
It is almost always in the interest of a member of the more common sex to treat a member of the rarer sex with heightened respect. Hence, if Ponies be free, a Stallion Dearth means that mares will go out of their way to please stallions ("So of course I told him he was a brilliant artist. He's taking me to the movies next weekend. I think I'll get to be his fourth wife!"). This can only be circumvented by strong social pressures coercing conformity to the opposite ("Here in Saddle Arabia, the Mareality Police go around ensuring that stallions are properly submissive to their owners. Um, we mean wives").
To put it another way, the personal is personal, you're living in a freer society. If the personal is political, you're living in a more totalitarian one.
3838974
In which of the four scenarios? "Skewed sex rate" implies scenario # 3 or # 4.
In any scenario, the point is that babies need emotional and financial support. In a skewed sex rate situation, the problem is that it will be very rare for a child to have the undivided attention of a father, because each father will have many children by several mothers. Hence you get polygynous co-parenting as a solution.
In scenario # 3, sexuality is always on so the mares have to make the stallions love them if they are going to get enough attention to them and their children. Thus marriage is still affectionate and companionate, rather than merely sexual. In scenario # 4, there is no male-female marriage, there are only female herds and males who mate with them more or less at random.
Scenario # 3 looks rather like an idealized version of polygyny from the male POV (with all males high-status and having multiple mates, rather than the low-status males lonely) -- it of course sucks to be female in this scenario. Scenario # 4 is very alien to any Human culture ever seen, and it would look the least like the Show of all four scenarios. Whether this rules or sucks is a matter of taste -- it's outside our normal romantic referents.
Procreation is very important for any species, because even in the case of hypothetical true immortals it would be how they expanded into new areas. It is also important in that it involves controlling how the next generation is raised, and hence their future values.
Earth Ponies potentially have immense life-spans. We haven't seen this to be the case for Unicorns or Pegasi, though I do assume that Equestria has more advanced medical technology than its other technologies, due to the way their culture evolved.
Why do you assume near-zero violent deaths? I think that Ponies very rarely murder other Ponies in peacetime, and in general that they are less violent than Humans, but Ponies are far from the main threat to other Ponies. They live in a world with numerous other sapient species, some of whom are more violent than the Ponies, and some of which can be hostile.
Finally, there are numerous signs in the show that Equestria is expanding. There are at least two cities that look like boom towns (Appleloosa and Dodge Junction) and a tech level equivalent to that of the late 19th / early 20th century, which was a time of tremendous population growth. So their population is probably expanding as well.
There is no sign that one needs permits to have foals.
Oh, also, cute fan theory (in Winningverse for example), that being a kid show, babies are conceived through magic of Love with no need (or without necessity) of actual physiological sperm-and-egg minutiae.
Then, given long-term peace and prosperity of Equestria and low reproductive need, would actually naturally skew the sex ratio towards females
I feel like I should point out that women do tend more towards bisexuality and/or lifetime sexual fluidity than men do. In our world, this is probably a kind of perfect storm of factors: women are encouraged to bond emotionally with anyone close to them, their sexual attraction is less visually/physically oriented than men's, and it's more acceptable to admit to bisexuality and lesbianism than male heterosexuality.
It's hard to say which, of any of those things apply in Equestria, but if that was still the case, and sexual fluidity and homo/bisexuality were openly accepted, attraction between mares could arguably reach parity with heterosexual attraction. Give the specific situation, I suspect it would more take the form of being mildly surprised if a mare isn't attracted to other mares (or even more so, has never been attracted to another mare) and not being surprised that she is attracted to some stallions.
3839018
This is a good point. One wonders whether there are more bisexual women than men, or simply that women have an easier/more accepting time to admitting it than men do, therefore the statistics are skewed.
3839014
Scenario 3
There canonically has been no war in Equestria for millennium, and every on screen conflict had zero causality rate. And I'd assume that murder as a crime is nigh-unheard of in Equestria. Monster attacks would only be a real issue in Everfree or similarity exceptional places.
It is also worth noting that either ponies have an exceptional ability to recover from wounds (see RDs broken wing) in addition to age-spells, so even when accidents or violence happen they would be significantly less lethal than for humans.
And we did have a lengthy discussion on lethality of infectious diseases in EQuestria
Given the map of Equestria, they seem to be surrounded by other countries or oceans, so there is no outward expansion, and the inner expansion seems to affect mostly very inhospitable places (the Appleloosa, which is a desert, or Poniville which is on the edge of monster-infested Everfree)
So I'd say that after a thousand years, the only areas not yet inhabited, are so for some important reason be it a nature preservation or unsuitability to life.
So thousand-year peace, harmony and prosperity, zero expansion rate coupled with sufficiently high technology for planned parenthood and a leader who would tend to think vey very long-term and high Eco-friendliness would necessarily mean that dmorrhic pressure to procreate is incredibly low, both biologically and socially.
So when mares wish to have kids they would have to compete for scarce stallions, but since not many actually do it is a pretty rare occurrence, so it's a non-issue
3839023
Personally, I think there are a lot more bisexual people of both genders, and the statistics/presentation of those things are skewed by by various cultural pressures and factors. I think it's probably true that most people are towards the straight side of the Kinsey scale, but you can look at cultures like the ancient Greeks where male homo- or bisexuality was expected and get a hint of how much of it is culture pushing us towards the "totally straight" extreme.
3839018
I think that women admit it more, and men tend to channel it into extreme loyalty to "buddies" which can reach almost erotic intensity. Nakama, in other words, which note was originally something purely between men (because women wouldn't have been your work-buddies).
Another problem is that males tend to express their sexuality more aggressively, both metaphorically and in actual behavior. Surely you've noticed that when you hear guys talking about sexuality they often use terms better suited to predation or hunting than to forming affectionate bonds? I'm not saying that girls don't do this too, but I do think it's both less common and generally less extreme. Guys also have trouble admitting to their softer emotions.
I do think that there's a lot of intense affection between Equestrian mares, probably more so than between the stallions. I just think that it usually doesn't reach the point of actual making out or sex. I depict two Equestrian mares in a situation where they're not sure how they feel about one another that way being intensely physically-affectionate in Dragonshyness -- they ultimately wind up being lovers later on in the continuity, and then the relationship failing for a number of reasons.
3839033
Our current culture has problems, for "personal is political" reasons, with accepting bisexuality. It tends to be viewed as "which side are you on?", but the truth is that we're all on our own sides.
3838976
I'm saying that they may have different mating rituals and strategies, but that what they do have must be consistent with vanilla canon (even though obviously vanilla canon doesn't cover all of it, by any means, because the show isn't My Little Love Affair or even My Little Marriage). And what they do have must be a robust system given their biology and psychology -- it can't be something that falls apart or is outcompeted by alternatives the moment it's put into practice.
Vanilla canon says that at least some of them get married and that monogamy is expected within marriage, so adultery is obviously seen as bad. Vanilla canon also says that they get romantic and sentimental about their sexual attractions, so out of marriage it's unlikely that they just mate at random. I can even show you an expectation of romantic exclusivity outside of marriage, in "Simple Ways" (admittedly warped by the fact that in both love triangles shown, no romantic love was being requited).
This obviously can cover a lot of societies. I made a deliberate aesthetic decision, based on the vaguely ~1900 Anglosphere / idealized Meiji Japanese tone of a lot of the culture shown in vanilla canon, to make the Equestrians more prudish than ~2016 Westerners. My main difference was that I also made them more accepting of variant sexualities, which I did because it fits the whole philosophy of the Harmony.
I could have chosen something closer to our own dating / sexual customs, and it would have been equally in tune with what was shown on TV. I could have even made something like Admiral Biscuit's Equestria, where everypony becomes sexually-active at around 8 (in other words, very early stirrings of adolescence) and there are virtually no sexual inhibitions save for a vague sort of preference for privacy and a general feeling that one should at least like one's partner, and this would still have fit the Show, though a bit less comfortably because it would have implied they're cutting a lot out. (He also has stronger heats than mine, though not uncontrollable ones, and a skewed sex ratio).
I do specifically state, though, that I'm using Translation Conventions. Just like in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, where the Spiders were less human-like than the Qeng Ho imagined, the Ponies are "really" less human-like than I'm showing, because I can't totally put myself inside their alien minds. Though the Ponies are a lot closer to Humans than were the Spiders.
The important constraints, though, is that whatever system(s) the Ponies have in their culture(s) must provide for the support and rearing of the next generation. Any system that fails to do that is a one-generation curiosity, rather than a major culture or even subculture. This is true for Humans, Ponies or (for that matter) Vingean Spiders.
In the society where you have a Stallion Dearth and weak cycles, mares have to compete for mates far more strenuously than Human women do for men in our own culture, or for that matter in a Scenario # 1 situation. Hence, any pure lesbian would face the imputation of being a failure because it would tend to be assumed that she failed in the competition. That used to be true in our own culture as well, before it was understood that one can be preferentially lesbian. I've read many books from around 1950-75 in which this exact assumption was made.
Interestingly, in that society a purely heterosexual mare might be assumed to be obnoxiously competitive, because she would be less physically-affectionate to her co-wives than would the bisexual mares. There would be cultural-selective advantage in being weakly bisexual (but mostly heterosexual) because it gives you the best mix of mating chances with the stallion and affectionate bonding with your co-wives!
Probably, the wives would spend a lot of bonding time cuddling, caressing and grooming each other, with it only occasionally escalating into actual sex, because mostly they wouldn't be all that attracted to each other save as family-by-marriage (rather than mates). And some of the wives would be more into the actual sex part of it than others, but it would be considered bad form not to be at least affectionate to one's co-wives.
3839048
Yes, definitely. I get it in the neck from both straight and gay people.
3838976
Yes, but human polygyny doesn't come from a skewed sex ratio. It comes from an unsually steep hierarchy (by Western standards) in which at high levels of status one is essentially a feudal despot and can take as many wives as one can support. (This is literal patriarchy, as shown in the Bible and Koran). The patriarch has far more authority over his clan or tribe than does a President or Prime Minister of his country in any Western system.
In that case the patriarch acquires his wives usually by bargaining with other patriarchs, or with his followers. (Women captured in war are usually slaves or at most concubines, which gives them lesser status). The wives have no choice about the matter. They didn't court him. Nor did they grow up expecting to necessarily be one of many wives; they might have married a more normal-status male who had no or few other wives.
The wives don't have to get along together to make the marriage work (though they do if they want the marriage to work well). They are even competitors, since the eldest son of the First Wife normally inherits the bulk of the fortune, but other sons and thus wives have a chance should misfortune befall First Wife or heir apparent. It can get incredibly nasty (look at Turkish Imperial history for an example of just how nasty).
The wives can't leave. They are traitors if they try, subject to summary execution or whatever other punishment the patriarch decrees. It's close to slavery.
In contrast in Scenario # 3 the mares courted the stallion, possibly as a pre-existing mare herd. They have less leverage than the stallion, but he's not their legal master and he can't force any of them to stay. Thus, they'd all better like one another if they expect the polygynous marriage to work.
It's the difference between an authoritarian or totalitarian culture, and a classical-liberal one.
3839052
But if Equestria is a society that is more accepting of gender variants then I doubt a lesbian would be assumed to have failed the competition. Both the lesbian and society know she's not looking for a male mate so why would it matter?
Also I'd assume that Equestrian society would be quite open to adoption. So yeah, genes might not pass on, but that's a simple matter of biology rather than social attitudes. Obviously heterosexuals and bisexuals are going to be the ones who pass on genes, but it's pretty obvious that those some of those genes also contain the data for making someone homosexual or bisexual.
3839060
I didn't say they couldn't all like each other, just that "liking each other" doesn't necessarily entail sleeping with each other or taking a romantic interest in one another.
3839071
Oh yes, you're certainly right there. I'm just saying that at least mild lesbian affect could help them bond, and this could result in an evolutionary advantage for slight lesbian tendencies. Obviously, in that scenario, mostly lesbian tendencies would be bad because it would result in one being unlikely to ever have children, since the competition is tougher.
Also obviously, I'm speaking biologically rather than culturally.
3839065
Homosexuality can even succeed in biological terms, because the homosexual can promote the success of his or her siblings and their children and grandchildren. Based on your profession, I'm fairly sure you've read Dawkins on this, most famously in The Selfish Gene ... ?
3839046
See, my default in fics tends to be an Equestria where different sexualities are accepted to the point of being trivial-- kind of the opposite of those "the personal is political" issues you were talking about. In fact, in my default Equestria dating between tribes would cause more hesitation, in the sense of wondering if that's really the type of relationship you want, than asking out another mare. If the mare is straight, she'll say no, if she's interested in mares, and that mare particularly, she'll agree. Attraction to gender is no different than attraction to mane style or personality.
(Not that dating between tribes is even frowned upon in my modern Equestria, just that there are cultural considerations and expectations that would have to be navigated. An individual earth pony might seem "pegasus" enough for a pegasus to not hesitate, or rarely the pegasus might be attracted to very "culturally earth pony" ponies, but if both ponies were invested in their cultures it would be a much more fraught reason for rejection than gender.)
3839048
3839053
Admittedly, in a monogamous culture it's hard to pin down bisexuality, which makes it easy for them to paint it that way. I'm married to a guy, so I default to straight to most people unless I go out of my way to mention it. This means that even a lot of people who accept that they're bisexual end up invisible and lumped in as straight or gay, eventually.
3839079
I have read Dawkins, but I have more than a few problems with some of his theories, (not to mention his increasingly abhorrent behaviour on Twitter, but that's beside the point). A lot of evolutionary biology when it comes to human behaviour is problematic because it relies on "just so" stories. It also relies on theories about our ancestors and I'm pretty sure a lot of human sexual behaviour has changed since then. I'm not saying it's all bunk, just that it's difficult to know where opinion ends and facts begin.
3839082
Yes, this is what I mean by bisexual erasure. If you're with a same sex partner you're assumed to be homosexual. If your partner is opposite sex you're assumed to be straight.
Personally I correct people every time they assume this, but I understand why some people don't.
3839082
That's more true in my Equestria than it is in the real modern world, too. That even comes up in one of my stories -- in A Robust Solution Rarity frankly tells Fluttershy that she thinks she's so beautiful and good that "if I wasn't as straight as one of my rulers I'd be in love with you." My Fluttershy, of course, is bisexual -- though her attraction toward Rarity isn't particularly sexual, at that point in her life the only Pony she's particularly attracted to in sexual terms is Rainbow Dash, and she's not even sure if it would work out (in the long run, it doesn't).
Yes, a monogamous bisexual is going to behave mostly according to the sexuality that matches the beloved. So for instance, you would be in love with your husband, and the fact that you might be attracted to some other woman or women would be mostly invisible to outsiders. Only if you cheated on your husband (and with a woman) would your bisexuality be apparent.
This has direct relevance to my Equestria in that I have Twilight and Luna be in love and eventually marry. Both of them are actually more heterosexual than homosexual, but they really love each other. (And it helps that Luna's a shapeshifter, and that Twilight eventually acquires the ability). Outsiders observing them would assume they were basically lesbian (if they didn't know Luna's romantic history).
3839088
It can be hard to test, that's true. Still, kin-selective altruism, coupled with the advantages of reinforcing same-sex affective bonds, seems the likeliest reason why homosexuality is at all common, given the very obvious biological-evolutionary disadvantages of being gay. When there's a selective factor that major against something, yet it persists, there's usually either a countervailing advantage, or great difficulty in selecting against it for some reason (for instance, if humans couldn't be gay, we might have trouble being straight as well).
Personally, I found the parody about the radical feminist and the Islamist damned funny (or horrifying), especially since one of the obvious ways in which feminism is self-destructing is its failure to stand up to actual patriarchy, in its Islamist form. I too, when I first saw the video, didn't know that it was based on two actual individuals. The red-haired woman in real life has an incrediby grating voice and manner, and the imam in question comes off as a depraved idiot, when you see their straight videos.
3839096
I don't know of any feminist that doesn't hate Daesh. I think the parody was a big fat strawman. Most arguments against feminism usually are.
But the video isn't an isolated incident. Dawkins is always putting his foot in his mouth and I just wish he'd stop. It's embarrassing.
Addendum: Though I can agree with you that the Imam is wrong and the woman in question could have presented her argument better to the MRAs. Though I doubt they would have listened...
She certainly didn't deserve to be harrassed and doxxed though.
3839100
Um, theoretically, sure, but in practice European feminists have been afraid to stand up to Muslims because being Third World (and very theoretically nonwhite) trumps being female on the Progressive Stack. And specifically in the Cologne attacks, feminists were unwilling to even admit that the attackers were Muslim immigrants. The Mayor of Cologne even proposed a code of conduct for women so that they didn't invite such attacks by doing things like going out in public alone, and argued that the women should have just held the attackers "at arm's length." (The funny part of this is that a few months before, she'd been stabbed -- apparently her plan doesn't work in reality and she should have known this when she said it as she was stabbed before making this absurd statement, which is rare stupidity).
Well I've actually seen vido of the woman in question, the one on whom the redhead in the parody was based. She's almost as much of a nut in real life.
3839107
Not all Muslims are extremists though. I met a taxi driver recently who is scared of both muslim extremists and (some) white people because they both want him dead. One woman wouldn't get into his taxi because she claimed "he might have a bomb in there." I can't even imagine what it's like to have to deal with that.
All the feminists I know are opposed to the extreme ones. Fuck, they want to KILL us, why wouldn't we be opposed to it?
I guess one of my biggest problems with the internet is that if one person won't do X, it means ten won't, then one hundred won't, until it becomes "feminism is about hating men and not standing up to extremist religion and accusing all men of rape" and then people believe it to be utterly true.
This is kind of getting off topic though.
3838943 Skewed gender ratios do happen, though. Usually, the mechanism is one of:
(1) Equal numbers of males and females are born, but most males get banished or killed somehow. (lots of herd creatures)
(2) The creatures are able to change gender as needed. (lots of amphibians)
(3) Most females are sterile except for the queen. (lots of insects)
From this we can conclude that the excess females we see in the show are all sterile female changeling drones. And/or that most male adult ponies don't live in small towns like Ponyville and are instead out making their fortune.
3839118
The thing is that, in Germany, neither Angela Merkel nor the Mayor of Cologne are extremists. They're as mainstream as it's possible to be.
And the mainstream feminist (lack of) response to Islamist patriarchy atonished and horrified me when I first noticed it, because it means that mainstream feminism can't deal with genuine, murderous patriarchy when it appears. First they conceptually abandoned Muslim women to abuse by Muslim men, which only makes sense if one assumes that Muslim men rightfully own Muslim women. Then they abandoned Western women to abuse by Muslim men, which only makes sense if one assumes that Muslim men can take Western women and own them whenever they feel like it.
At that point, one is being less "feminist" than was the medieval Catholic church, which took a dim view of random men grabbing random women just because they felt like it, and which supported patriarchy only when it involved someone like a family member of the woman in question. Medieval Catholicism understood that women were human beings with souls (by which they meant what you or I would mean humanity, personal identity, etc.).
A feminism which complains about small-percentage pay gaps between men and women, or (worse) at which jokes scientific geniuses choose to laugh, but cannot bestir itself to complain about open sexual assaults on women, has rather obviously ceased to be relevant to the real lives of men and women. Some other movement might start, probably calling itself something other than "feminism" (because the name has been so badly besmirched by its current holders), but the strain of feminism which started around 1970, Third Wave Feminism, is pretty much all over save for the academic-parasitism.
3839123
Yes. But Equestria doesn't fit any of those examples. It's far too nice a culture for "1", there's no sign of easy sex-changing nor obvious reason why one wouldn't want to be a stallion (especially with market mechanisms pushing toward parity), and "3" only applies to the Changelings.
3839131
I live here and I know what it's actually like.
We'll have to agree to disagree, because I'm bowing out of the conversation.
3839136 Wasn't (1) your suggested explanation for why we don't see them?
It doesn't require anyone to be *mean*. It doesn't even require the extra stallions to be dead or banished against their will. They could all be running around in Big Brother herds driving monster trucks or something. (that was the G1 explanation) (in FIM it would probably have something to do with trains)
And actually... wandering ponies:
Trixie (female) (OR IS SHE?)
Cheese Sandwich (male)
Flim and Flam (both male)
Puppet... guy (male)
3839096
I think it's the latter, because I think that a lot of people forget that genetics are most often complex interactions. In as much as it is genetic (it's against the party line, but I'm not sold that it is entirely) having the "homosexual" combination in the mix probably also allows for other variations that help us. Basically, having a combination where AAAAAAA = gay is going to pass on as long as those A genes are all important or useful when combined with B or C genes in different combinations, which is more common. A person who can't hit AAAAAAA also can't hit some of those other combinations. And since diversity is a useful trait in a lot of ways, from physical fortitude to intellectual contributions to society, that adaptability will win out even if it sometimes hits a wall.
3839123
Interesting note from a beekeeper: In bee society, the drones (male bees) don't do anything for the hive, they spend all of their time at a gathering spot nearby called a drone bar, waiting for a queen to fly by and mate. They just go hang out at the drone bar and try to pick up chicks.
Then in the fall, when they're sealing up the hive, the female bees won't let them back in the hive and they all starve or freeze to death.
I've always thought there's a lot we can learn from bees.
I went to Google to find out whether this is true. It turns out that nobody cares. There are many, many studies of the age difference between husbands and wives in polygynous cultures, but no studies that I found in my brief search of how many wives men had. Even people who had gathered the data didn't present it; they only used it to stratify subjects for a study of age differences.
Conclusion: Western cultures aren't nearly as shocked by polygamy as they are by age differences between husbands and wives.
You could figure out the average number of maximum wives per husband by adding up the total years lived married for men and women. Men marry older and women marry younger, which lets the men have more wives late in life at the cost of not having any wives early in live. (The "average" number of wives per man is going to work out to be 1 regardless of the distribution.) I didn't, but it doesn't appear that the "vast" majority of marriages are monogamous. Most likely the majority, though.
Are you sure about that? The stallion is mating his daughters? Seems to me he'd be too old.
But this does suggest some new ships.
3839163
I hear we're going to see that aspect of pony mating behavior sometime in season 7.
3839053 My impression, from the outside, is that intolerance of bisexuals, transvestites, and transexuals is harsher within the LGBT community than in the general population under age 50 of any major American coastal city. Gays and lesbians historically based their claims to rights on the idea that gender is determined at birth and not a choice. Bisexuals and trans often say gender should be a choice. Lesbians & gays sometimes see this as a threat to their narrative.
There's also some resentment of T's by feminists and lesbians, as being men who dress up as women and then claim the privileges of women. Some irony there.
Take a look at the comments on this article about banning gay reps from the UK NUS LGBT society and see how rapidly it descends into Ls, Gs, Bs, and Ts slinging surprisingly vicious and narrow-minded insults at each other. Mostly the Ts are the targets.
3839320
You are correct. I was called a "tedious little straight girl" by a very transphobic and biphobic gay man. However, as intolerant as the LG faction can be, they are probably less dangerous. For instance, a transgender person is far more likely to have the shit beaten out of them by a straight person than a gay person.
3839320
Ah, TERFS. As a feminist they do not speak for me, and I find their bigotry ironic as well.
You're overthinking this. What the fandom in part or in whole says about the sexuality of cartoon characters ...is absolutely without relevance.
And comparing cartoon pony behavior with that of real-life equines is only good for laughs.
MLP:FIM is based on the same human cultural standards as any other show for young children. Not quite "Ozzie and Harriet," but pretty close.
3839374
I concur.
This is the problem. It is based on "fan preference" at best. Which is utterly meaningless. There's no sound argument to be made here because there is no canon data on the matter whatsoever.
3839297
Ack! I meant foals!!! Thank you for spotting that!
(Shocked Pinkie is truly shocked at the concept!)
3839374
... he says about a cartoon reboot designed specifically to provide an alternative view of gender.
3839374
3839928
I disagree. While sex is not depicted directly, we do get to see courting and married couples, giving us some information about what must logically exist in Equestria. For instance, we know that there are marriages because we have directly seen some married couples, and we know that marriage ideally includes sexual fidelity because of Carrot's reaction to the odd Kinds of his offspring Pumpkin and Pound. We know that even out of marriage it's not an Eternal Free Love culture, because of the two love triangles shown in "Simple Ways." And we know that courtships are romantic and sentimental based on "Hearts and Hooves Day."
3839163
It's certainly possible that it's a spandrel of the way that our genetic programming for sexual attraction is organized. It may well be that the easiest way to make sexual attraction work is "Be attracted to members of your species" and then we have to use specific genes to limit the search profile to "members of the opposite sex of or above reproductive age."
It's also possible that it ALSO serves other evolutionary ends. Commonly, factors which are not selected against may be selected for due to multiple reasons. For instance, if some of our empathy is tied to sexual attraction (certainly possible) at least a limited ability to be attracted to members of the same sex may greaty facilitate cooperation in general, which is an attribute that would be strongly selected for.
There might be a "dose" effect where if you get too much of the genes you wind up gay; a little less, bisexual; a little less, normal; and a lot less an utter sociopath. There may be an epigenetic factor where functions get turned on or off based on environment, with a big factor probably being availability of members of the opposite sex ("if you're in prison, be gay; if you're in a harem surrouned by potential lovers of the opposite sex, be straight")
It could be very complex; it's almost certainly more complex than just a "gay gene" that's on or off.
3839337
What's a TERF?
3840200
To date, I can think of only a few identifiable relationships:
The Cakes
The Donkeys
Shining & Cadence
Rarity's parents
AJ's deceased parents
Diamond Tiara's parents
Beyond that, if we assume ponies come into existence as a result of heterosexual relationships (and we have no reason to believe they don't) then we also have the parents of literally everyone in Equestria to add to that list.
There are, by contrast, precisely zero homosexual relationships depicted in canon. The two "questionable" ones, namely Vinyl/Octavia and Lyra/Bonbon are only observed to be "best friends" or roommates.
Beyond that, what arguments can you put forth that there's even a suggestion toward homosexuality in canon?
Yes, that's all quite obvious. No arguments there. Which was my point: There really isn't an argument to be made here. My only argument is that homosexuality is not represented in canon whatsoever, and therefore, is not assumed for lack of evidence that it is even a thing in Equestria. As much as fans may fantasize about it, any hypothetical homosexual relationship is just pure speculation.
3840289
If Lyra and Bon-Bon were any more "bestest friends," I think they'd be arranging their wedding. Actually, their affect all through "Slice of Life" implies they're fairly close to it.
Less certain about Vinyl and Octavia, though if they aren't gay I bet they're Heterosexual Life Partners.
3840316
Meh. Really close best friends do look like that and it doesn't necessarily imply being a romantic couple. Not buying it. People can read into it all they want, but there is such a thing as "very tight platonic friendship". Especially between girls. I know pairs of ladies like this in real life, and they're all happily married to guys, but really close to each other. I think when people try to sexualize everything, they end up making too many assumptions about people.