The Sacred Beasts (16 page)

“So it really is some kind of brainwashing?”

“Most likely yes, carried out knowingly or obliviously by all of
our institutions—from the family to the public schools to marriage, industry
and the professions, to the ballot box. You name it. But more than anything
else, I think it is the influence of the church. If any one institution is the
root cause, it is thousands of years of religious history and oppression all
over the planet. Obviously, the brainwashing did not work in your case, and it
often does not. I was not afraid for you in that sense. I wanted you to know
all of this because, at least in the States, the brainwashed and delusional
follow you around and try to convince you of their moral superiority, and then
destroy your civil rights. You feel as though you’re in one of those films
where a crowd of zombies is after you. They make a lot of zombie films in the
States.”

Sylvie throws back her head, laughing. “Oh yes,” she finally says,
“I do recognize that. It happened to me when I was very young in Argentina. It
did give me the creeps.” Then she is silent, thinking. “Is there any other way
to interpret that research? Maybe sexuality is more complex, something that
isn’t limited to genitals for women. Why can’t it be simple excitement,
involving the brain and the entire body? And, what would you say to a woman who
thinks her love is spiritual or a woman who insists that her lover must
actually be present for her to respond?”

“Those are good questions! Many valid arguments can be made that
sexual arousal is more complex, and involves more contexts and bodily systems,
than what the researchers measured. Brain scans would begin to refine the
results. But, whatever your theory or whatever precedes the arousal, the end
result must involve the genitals or it’s really some other kind of arousal.
Too, any theory must actually explain the data: why were straight-labeled women
less turned on by heterosexual visuals and more turned on by gay visuals than
they said they were? Why did men respond in the opposite way? The results are
very specific, you see, and they clearly show a disconnect for women unless
they conceive of themselves as bisexual or lesbian.

“Even the researchers were not able to explain the data, in my
opinion. Their speculation was that evolution may have favored a constant
diffuse sexuality in women since they are always vulnerable to heterosexual
rape and might suffer greater injury if their bodies were not partially
responsive. Intriguingly enough, behavior like this has been observed in
bonobos. But for women, why would this threat result in bisexuality rather than
heterosexuality? The reverse should be true. Again, the specific results are
impossible to explain if most women are not falsifying or blocking their own
self-awareness.”

“What does bonobo sex look like?”

“It’s missionary position for both straight and gay sex, unlike
the other chimps whose sex is ventral-dorsal or dog-style. Bonobos have plenty
of sex—many times a day, whenever a dispute might arise, like when food is
being divided among group members. They have a very short orgasm—just a few
seconds—and they may have sex in groups, even involving children. When two
adults are mating, a child might get into the act by rubbing itself on the
female’s thigh, for example.”

“Not much like our sex, then . . . oh no, I just thought of
something that explodes your theory! Children get involved! Do you see what
that means? If bonobo sex is a biological basis for our sex, then it must also
provide the same basis for pedophilia. Surely you don’t agree with that?”

“No, I don’t. There is nothing like human pedophilia among
bonobos. Sexual participation is voluntary for children; it is never traumatic
or coerced by an adult. Human pedophilia is a coerced, traumatically learned
behavior with no instinctual basis. The best and most recent scientific work on
pedophilia shows that it is the result of traumatic, irreversible learning in
childhood. All pedophiles were themselves sexually abused as children. Men
become sexual predators as a result, raping children throughout most of their
life span, and these children, if male, become predators. Women who were
sexually abused as children show a more complex response: they are likely to
marry a pedophile, and they rarely become sexual predators.

“The scientists who studied pedophilia have also demonstrated that
sexual abuse causes huge amounts of stress hormones to be released in the body,
damaging the brain and resulting in some memory dysfunction, though fortunately
overall intelligence is not affected. It is virtually identical to post
traumatic stress syndrome, the recurrent hallucinations of soldiers who have
seen constant violence in warfare. Sexual abuse from pedophiles is therefore
among the most horrifying acts ever carried out by human beings, causing great
physical and psychological damage, fully equal to the constant presence of
death and the sight of people blown to pieces in warfare.

“Male pedophiles who rape male children are therefore not gay. Gay
and bisexual behavior is genetic whereas pedophilia is the result of traumatic
learning. Though pedophiles are not fully responsible for their behavior,
having suffered the same abuse they will later inflict, it is necessary that we
incarcerate or otherwise restrain them. They cause great trauma and damage to
the vulnerable and can even be responsible for virtual epidemics of pedophilia
in certain countries or regions. Homosexuals and bisexuals as such can never be
considered criminal; they are part of normal human sexual variation, and they
cannot injure their partners any more than heterosexuals can. Science is clear
and definitive on the difference between pedophilia and homosexuality, and
science should always be the umpire on matters of sexuality, especially those
involving the legal system. In the States, these issues are explosive, and
political conservatives define both pedophilia and homosexuality as criminal,
perverse, and deserving of punishment by the justice system.”

“Another question for the professor: I have an odd feeling that
your arguments imply we cannot solve crises like global warming without sexual
liberation. Are you really saying that?”

“I am saying that certain instinctual behaviors occur together in
a cluster for both humans and bonobos. Sexual liberation has a way of defusing
violence and resolving conflict, enhancing natural union or collective will in
the process. But, we don’t follow all of our instincts, obviously; we have
science and human rationality to help us make the sharp distinctions necessary
to solve complex problems. Our greatest challenge is that we are not using
science and reason to solve universal problems like global warming; they have been
overwhelmed by religious dogma united with political conservatism.”

“Last questions: are your arguments truly scientific? Has all of
this been ‘proven’? For that matter, do you really place so much faith in
science?”

“The answer is no to all, oddly enough. Science is like the old
adage about women’s work that is never done. It will always be updated, refined
and revised. I’m just giving you the best of what we know to date. Too, science
can be manipulated politically like any other part of our culture. Still, it’s
the least biased and most insightful information we now have in approaching
political problems. The sexuality research and the work on bonobo and chimp
behavior are both rock-solid science. I am speculating as to the relationship
it may have to political conservatism and liberalism, though primatologists
speculate in this way freely and talk about parallel developments in the human
and chimp worlds often. Too, I am over-generalizing in many of my ideas.
Undoubtedly, there are parts of Africa and the Islamic countries, for example,
that should be seen more favorably than I have depicted them. I have many
theoretical details still to work out.”

Sylvie smiles and kisses me. “If you have the proper recreation .
. .” I can only reciprocate. How irresistibly lovely is our conflict
resolution. It is pure poetic justice for the challenges of my work to be
relieved just as the bonobos would do it. What need have we for divine justice?

It is still early when we finish our breakfast and begin to work.
Sylvie is taking the jeep again today, so I have no idea where she will be. I
am spending the day comparing my data from all but one of my cameras, the
latter still somewhere on the banks of Lake Dulce. As the afternoon wears on, I
see proof after proof of what I came to learn: Doñana is dying. It is only
spring, but many parts of the preserve are as parched as they will be in late
summer, when the marshes and even the lakes dry up, and the most brutal
struggle for survival occurs. Other areas have only held onto life through
flooding caused by unusually tempestuous weather, the first stage of global
warming. All of the animals we find here have been given a death
sentence—unless humans can summon the political will to stop polluting and
pillaging the earth.

I feel terribly disturbed and almost despairing throughout the
afternoon, when suddenly I come upon you, a dancing magician impeccable in
black and white: the avocet. You are the creature whose combination of
precision and elegance is greatest of all. Physicists believe that these
qualities are intrinsic to the universe, and if so, you are Doñana’s
cosmologist. Your color is simplest and most classical: dazzling white with a
very sharp and angular black hat and cape of feathers. Your exceptionally long,
slender black beak tips upward at its end like a Chinese roof. Your legs are so
long and slender that you can only walk in a sinuously swaying pattern that is
nature’s ballet. You are a living thing that is the most ideal embodiment of
Oriental art. I might have begun to cry if I hadn’t found you, but you have
given me hope perfectly allied with desire: If I can share the earth with one
such as you, I will fight for your life with all the energy I have left. The
afternoon passes, and I feel peace with echoes of a quiet storm.

Sylvie returns early, and we spend an hour bathing and then just
lying together, touching. I sense we have both seen something terrible today;
and so, like wind chimes in the air, we are again stirred by the same wordless
phenomenon, as though sharing the same thoughts. Finally, I look at what she
has drawn today. Clearly, she has been in parts of Doñana that are dying in
summer’s torrid phase, though it is still spring, formerly the time of greatest
growth and abundance. Throughout her drawings, I see stronger life ravening the
weaker and death at its most frantic pace.

One drawing shows several birds of prey that have gathered
together on the ground. A black and a griffin vulture as well as a magpie are
eating the same carrion, something that should never happen in the spring. The
composition is dramatic and ominous, like a meeting of MacBeth’s three witches
as rendered by nature. The black vulture is the eldest sister; largest, its
wings are so upraised and rounded that they form a deadly black cape that can
effortlessly surround its prey. About its neck is a violent ruffling of
feathers that suggests the high collar of royalty. I have often seen its
powerful head, similar to that of the Imperial Eagle, at the tops of totems
designed by Northwest Indian tribes. This fierce head severely contrasts black
and white color in a design of demonic beauty: thick black lines surround its
huge red eyes like an Egyptian god, and a black stripe curves down its
predatory beak. All else is electric white.

Smaller and less dramatic, the griffin vulture is the younger
sister. Its color is limited to shades of gray, and its small beady eyes sit in
a head of no beauty at all. Its compressed wings also form a powerful cape that
can close over its prey. Both vultures display the fierce ruffling of feathers
that characterize almost all birds of prey: Never sleek or elegant like other
birds, the very texture and force of deathly struggle seems to cover the entire
surface of their bodies, as though they were baptized in fiery chaos.

In sharp contrast, the magpie is much smaller, the size of a
nestling. One would never guess that it, too, is a bird of prey. Its
brilliantly black and white symmetrical color combination and sleek form do not
show the chaotic ugliness of the vultures. Yet as the bird lands, you can see
the characteristic compressing of wings and tail into a cape and, like a
vulture, the whole body can fall vertically, covering its prey while the beak
pierces flesh. This dramatic caped ensemble signifies the destruction of life’s
beautiful unities into dead, blind elements. Carrion is the result, shapeless
black pieces of flesh strewn haphazardly over the ground.

In another composition, two poisonous vipers hang down from the
branches of a cork oak tree. They do this to cool themselves in the torrid heat
of late summer, another ominous sign in the spring. Their bodies display a
simple color harmony of black symmetrical patterns on brown, scaly skin,
similar to designs on American Indian beadwork. There is an eerie, primeval
horror to this scene that disturbs me. The ground below the tree shows nothing
but undulating layers of sand left by the wind and the approach of the snakes.
The tree should be an aviary or a source of protection for mammals in the
spring, and plant life should be abundant. Yet the parching heat of a summer
interrupting the spring has so destroyed this environment that only death
thrives here. Hence poisonous snakes hang indolently from the boughs, pregnant
with death’s abundance. It is a fitting ideogram for the numbers I have seen
today.

We have been silent so long that words seem strange to me, yet I
must try to explain the horrible thing that has silenced us. “Life is being
destroyed in many parts of Doñana now,” I say. “The spring life cycle has been
truncated by chaotic weather, and the summer drought has come early. You will
literally be unable to draw anything but death in many parts of the preserve.
We’re lucky to have seen as much wildlife as we have. I can get the last of my
equipment tomorrow on Lake Dulce. A spring flood has left plenty of water
there, so the wildlife will still be thriving. Why don’t we go on to Madrid and
Barcelona after that?”