{"id":1441777,"date":"2023-12-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1441777"},"modified":"2023-12-02T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T17:00:00","slug":"trannysaurus-rex-the-activist-academics-queering-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/trannysaurus-rex-the-activist-academics-queering-dinosaurs\/1441777\/","title":{"rendered":"Trannysaurus Rex: The Activist Academics ‘Queering’ Dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trannysaurus Rex: The Activist Academics ‘Queering’ Dinosaurs<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Steven Tucker via DailySceptic.org,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Recently, I wrote about North Hertfordshire Museum\u2019s pathetic\u00a0attempts<\/a>\u00a0to imply the ancient (male, moustachioed) Roman Emperor Elagabalus was actually a transgender woman. If you thought this was ridiculous, there is a museum in the United States which possesses a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton which\u00a0came out<\/a>\u00a0as nonbinary back in 2017, proudly announcing it was now a user of they\/them pronouns on Twitter:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Chicago Field Museum, where the T. rex lives and tweets, justified this lunacy on the spurious grounds that it is\u00a0quite difficult<\/a>\u00a0to determine the sex of old dinosaur specimens (it\u2019s\u00a0not even certain<\/a>\u00a0if such creatures had true external genitalia at all). Therefore, as curators did not know for sure whether the specimen was a boy-lizard or a girl-lizard, they made the insane leap in logic that it was actually a trans one.<\/p>\n

Do please further note from the above tweet that, although museum staff profess not to know whether their T. rex is male or female, they have somehow managed to accurately determine its star sign.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A Boy Named SUE?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Tyrannosaurus Sexless in question goes by two names, depending upon which museum toilets it feels like using to drop a coprolite into on any given day. Behind closed doors, dem bones go by the label Specimen FMNH PR2081, like one of Elon Musk\u2019s children. In public, the skeleton prefers the more flamboyant moniker of SUE (capitalisation is compulsory, for some obscure reason), reflecting how it was first discovered in South Dakota in August 1990 by amateur palaeontologist Sue Hendrikson, and therefore spoken of as if it was female, using traditional she\/her pronouns.<\/p>\n

So, how did SUE transition from she\/her to they\/them? The suggestively named U.S. queer website \u2018Them\u2019\u00a0tells the story<\/a>\u00a0in adulatory detail, acclaiming SUE as \u201ca Nonbinary [sic<\/em>] icon\u201d. In our infantile, dumbed-down age, even inanimate museum exhibits now have to \u2018engage\u2019 with the general public, so SUE was given her own Twitter account, operated by an in-house electronic ventriloquist. One female fan jokily tweeted that the dinosaur was her \u201cgirlfriend\u201d, leading SUE\u2019s operator to reply: \u201cUm, science is still out on that \u2018girl\u2019 title\u2026 but I\u2019m still your friend.\u201d Another follower then asked SUE what its pronouns were, leading the fossil to reply that, naturally, it used impeccably right-on gender-neutral ones.<\/p>\n

A few months later, SUE was being moved to another exhibition space, which online activists realised meant it would need all its labels rewritten. Queer lobbyists contacted the museum demanding the T. rex now adopt gender-neutral pronouns permanently on the grounds that \u201cMisgendering SUE didn\u2019t just misrepresent the dinosaur, it risked invalidating the credibility SUE\u2019s pronouns had given to nonbinary individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

One such nonbinary individual e-mailed (or e-femailed, we shouldn\u2019t just automatically presume) the museum to wail needily that its signs publicly referring to a dinosaur as they\/them in print \u201cgives me another piece of data that I can hold up to\u201d all those cruel sceptics who stubbornly refuse to accept men can miraculously become women. What, precisely, is this individual\u2019s definition of the word \u201cdata\u201d here?<\/p>\n

Exhibit Gay<\/strong><\/h2>\n

External activists were pushing at an open door, as internal activists on the museum\u2019s own staff quickly became \u201cexcited\u201d, asking management to let them begin showily stating their own pronouns in their official documents too, just like SUE. From hereon in, SUE would become \u201can ambassador for science\u201d, widening participation in the sphere for all, not just privileged \u2018cishetero\u2019 scum. For Kate Golembiewski, the museum\u2019s chief PR\u00a0f\u00fchrer<\/em>, \u201cScience is for everyone. If [using gender-neutral pronouns] makes one person more comfortable in our museum\u2026 then it\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what about all those people whom it makes feel\u00a0uncomfortable<\/em>? According to Katie Slivovsky, founder of CAMP (Chicago Alliance for Museums with Pride), who held a workshop at the museum informing recalcitrant staff members why it was now suddenly compulsory to refer to a dead dinosaur as if it was a drag queen:<\/p>\n

At the Children\u2019s Museum [where Katie also works] we handle a complaint about our rainbow sign or all-gender bathroom sign the same way we handle somebody who doesn\u2019t like that they can\u2019t bring a balloon into the museum\u2026 There\u2019s no need for debate or agreement or disagreement by any staff. [Gender-neutral pronouns are] just museum policy. We want everyone to feel welcome here.<\/p>\n

Yes. If by \u201ceveryone\u201d, you actually mean \u201conly a small proportion of politically motivated malcontents and mentally ill people\u201d. All those much larger number of normal individuals who don\u2019t agree that a T. rex can be trans can just leave immediately and dig up their own fossils to stare at. That\u2019s \u2018inclusivity\u2019 for you \u2013 an inverted synonym for the systematic exclusion of the sane majority.<\/p>\n

Camp Cretaceous<\/strong><\/h2>\n

SUE\u2019s case is no aberrant one-off, there now being an entire movement afoot to \u2018queer\u2019 palaeontology. There is even some research out there suggesting the dinosaurs originally became extinct not due to giant meteorite impact or their gradual evolution into bird-life, but from an early variant of the AIDS virus.<\/p>\n

Disappointingly, if you look at the\u00a0original scientific papers<\/a>, this is not really what actual researchers into prehistoric retroviruses are claiming, as such deadly bugs only appear to infect mammals. Yet this hasn\u2019t stopped other commentators, like\u00a0HIVPlusMag<\/em>\u00a0(there\u2019s a publication I hope never to subscribe to), from\u00a0suggesting<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cit\u2019s more fun to imagine that it [AIDS] caused the demise of the dinosaurs\u201d because, somehow, this idea will \u201clead to innovative new research\u201d which will help cure it amongst homosexual humans.<\/p>\n

Just as self-obsessed is U.S. social media activist \u2018Fossil Daddy<\/a>\u2019 (not his real name), who\u00a0argues<\/a>\u00a0palaeontology can be legitimately transformed into an entire new pseudo-discipline named \u201cgay-leontology\u201d, a pun which only works if you say the real word using its American pronunciation (i.e.,\u00a0pay<\/em>-leontology).<\/p>\n

Fossil Daddy poses topless whilst talking evolution online, pushing a \u201cunique blend of science and queerness\u201d via his \u201ccheeky and informative videos\u201d. These propagate the message that the field as a whole is \u201cdominated by old white men\u201d, who are probably also raging homophobes. By being outrageously gay in the close proximity of trilobites online, Fossil Daddy hopes to declare to these stale, pale, cishetero paleo-patriarchs that \u201cWe exist. We\u2019re going to take over the space someday,\u201d which sounds uncomfortably settler-colonialist to me. Even worse, \u201cWe\u2019re going to turn palaeontology into gay-leontology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meaning what, exactly? Meaning \u201cbeing visibly queer, refusing to stay quiet and insisting on taking up space\u201d. In other words, acting like a complete narcissist. Fossil Daddy \u201ctraces his love of fossils\u201d back to Nintendo\u2019s original 1998 Game Boy\u00a0Pok\u00e9mon Red\/Blue<\/em>\u00a0games, which featured a rare fossilised Pok\u00e9mon named\u00a0Omanyte<\/a>, based on genuine non-eight-bit fossils called\u00a0ammonites<\/a>. As Pok\u00e9-players have to capture said critters in special spheres named\u00a0Pok\u00e9Balls<\/a>, today Fossil Daddy pays tribute to his childhood obsession by selling fans some rather alarming-sounding products named \u2018Daddy\u2019s Balls<\/a>\u2019, which\u00a0apparently<\/a>\u00a0\u201ccontain artifacts from his fossil hunts\u201d, which has to be the strangest euphemism I have ever heard.<\/p>\n

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary \u2013 To All Known Historical Fact<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Not only are contemporary bone-diggers evolving rapidly into full-blown gay-leontologists \u2013 so are long-dead historical ones. Enter\u00a0Mary Anning<\/a>\u00a0(1799-1847), early female fossil-hunter and discoverer of the 200 million-year-old fish-like marine reptile\u00a0Ichthyosaurus<\/a>, whose very name means \u2018fish-lizard\u2019, a highly nonbinary concept in itself. Much more significant than her boring old discoveries, however, is the newly unearthed \u2018fact\u2019 she was a lesbian \u2013 hooray!<\/p>\n

Mary never married. Obviously, this meant she must actually have been in a secret girl-on-girl relationship with her good friend and fellow fossil-fondler Charlotte Murchison. That, at least, was the theory of the 2020 film\u00a0Ammonite<\/em><\/a>, starring Kate Winslet as Mary and with a probable script by Fossil Daddy. You can tell this because at one point, after mating with Charlotte in a sheltered cave somewhere on the Jurassic Coast, Mary surprisingly discovers a fossilised Bulbasaur femur.<\/p>\n

Even more anachronistic, however, is the film\u2019s depiction of her alleged sapphic leanings \u2013 a\u00a0total invention<\/a>\u00a0which annoyed modern-day descendants of Mary\u2019s wider family, such as her distant niece Barbara Anning, who\u00a0complained<\/a>\u00a0as follows:<\/p>\n

I do not believe that there is any evidence to back up portraying her as a gay woman. Do the filmmakers have to resort to using unconfirmed aspects to somebody\u2019s sexuality to make an already remarkable story sensational? This adds nothing to her story.<\/p>\n

Ammonite<\/em>\u2019s \u201cworking class and queer\u201d director Francis Lee (who self-identifies as a former Manchester City footballer) disagreed,\u00a0asking<\/a>\u00a0why:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Or, to put it another way, \u201cWhy can\u2019t I just make it all up?\u201d I look forward to seeing Mr. Lee\u2019s follow-up sexually revisionist masterpiece, a remake of\u00a0Wilde<\/em>\u00a0in which Oscar turns out to be as straight as a spirit-level.<\/p>\n

Queens of the Stone Age<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In a curious\u00a0assessment<\/a>\u00a0of the case for Exeter University\u2019s\u00a0OutAndAboutExeter<\/a>\u00a0project, aimed at pointlessly \u2018queering the curriculum\u2019 with your tax money, recent English Literature graduate\u00a0Emma Wallace<\/a>\u00a0drew an exceedingly laboured parallel between Lee\u2019s ahistorical fabulism and the very process of palaeontology itself:<\/p>\n

Why is it, Lee asks, that we view absence of evidence for\u00a0any\u00a0sexuality as confirmation of Mary Anning\u2019s heterosexuality? \u2026 The fossils that Mary discovered over the course of her life lay physically and metaphorically beneath the surface; they needed to be literally dug up and examined in order to be understood. In light of how queer lives are often buried or erased over the course of history\u2026 we must think beyond conventional ideas about the past and open our minds to what lies hidden beneath the surface. To queer the past is not to compromise its veracity, but to recognise that the past is a shifting, dynamic variable which can continue to yield revelations and thereby influence the present.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, argues Emma, in very pink prose indeed:<\/p>\n

Within the film itself\u2026 the process of physically digging up silt and dirt for these fossilised remains ultimately parallels Mary and Charlotte\u2019s attempts to interrogate their own sexual desire; the unearthing of the literal ammonite precipitating the more metaphoric discovery of their love for one another. Geology and palaeontology, in other words, becomes a metaphor for their queerness\u2026 Queer love, the film proposes, is as ancient and worthy of excavation \u2013 or engagement and memorialisation \u2013 as the fossils that Mary discovers.<\/p>\n

Well, why don\u2019t we just dig Mary herself up, shove her bones into a display cabinet in the Natural Made-Up-History Museum, and give the corpse its own twee little Twitter account, complete with all the correct approved neo-pronouns?<\/p>\n

Professor Challengers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There is a strange, forgotten historical parallel for spying blatant ahistorical falsehoods in fossils. The\u00a0L\u00fcgensteine<\/em>, or \u2018Lying Stones<\/a>\u2019, of Professor Johann Beringer (1667-1740) were a series of fossils far too good to be true found around the German university-town of W\u00fcrzburg in 1725 \u2013 the reason being they were all fakes. Beringer was not a believer in early proto-evolutionary ideas, dismissing the notion fossils were the preserved remains of extinct prehistoric organisms. Consequently, the cruel hoaxers carved some of their creations with the name of God signed proudly in Hebrew, as though they were the Deity\u2019s\u00a0early practice creatures<\/a>\u00a0from the first days of Creation.<\/p>\n

Publishing a book proudly announcing his findings, Beringer\u2019s reputation was soon shattered once it became clear the religiously convenient fossils were all invented. This fact should have been abundantly apparent \u2013 some depicted \u2018fossilised\u2019 comets, bees pollinating flowers or spiders sitting plumply on their webs, whilst others contained tell-tale chisel-marks.<\/p>\n

However, Professor Beringer allowed his own pre-existing belief-systems (in this case religious, not woke ones) to colour his vision. His comically deluded\u00a0explanation<\/a>\u00a0was simply that the give-away marks were the result not of\u00a0human<\/em>\u00a0chisels, but of\u00a0God\u2019s<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The figures\u2026 are so exactly fitted to the dimensions of the stones, that one would swear that they are the work of a very meticulous sculptor\u2026 [and they] seem to bear unmistakable indications of the [Divine] sculptor\u2019s knife.<\/p>\n

Some of the fake fossils were of fauna that had supposedly been frozen forever in time during the act of carnal union \u2013 particularly common were carvings of toads playing leapfrog onto one another\u2019s backs (go\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and gawp open-mouthed like Kermit at figure seven). I bet if certain modern-day queer Professor Beringers amongst the gay-leontology crowd were shown such appealingly sexualised images of carved dinosaurs who died whilst supposedly hard at it with members of the same sex they\u2019d fall for it every bit as much as their unwitting 18th-century ancestor once did.<\/p>\n

Whilst specific moral fads and fashions may shift<\/strong> dramatically down the centuries, the sad underlying fact of mankind\u2019s capacity for willing self-deception never does evolve very much<\/strong>, it would seem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSat, 12\/02\/2023 – 07:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/trannysaurus-rex-activist-academics-queering-dinosaurs<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trannysaurus Rex: The Activist Academics ‘Queering’ Dinosaurs Authored by Steven Tucker via DailySceptic.org, Recently, I wrote about North Hertfordshire Museum\u2019s pathetic\u00a0attempts\u00a0to imply the ancient (male,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1441777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-634t","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}