Free We Are Our Brains by D. F. Swaab Page B

same-sex practices are displayed by other primates, too, like macaque monkeys, in addition to bull elephants (who mount each other), giraffes (“necking”), swans (greeting ceremonies), and whales (mutual caressing). He classifies such behavior as examples of bisexuality rather than homosexuality, since it only manifests itself in certain periods. However, a preference for same-sex copulation has been reported in a bird in the swamps of New Zealand, a female antelope in Uganda, and cows. Lesbian seagulls have been found in Southern California, jointly incubating a double clutch of eggs. These female gulls copulated with each other as apair. However, this proved to be not spontaneous behavior but a byproduct of environmental pollution with DDT, leading to sterility among male seagulls and an excess of females, who formed lesbian couples (see also endocrine disruptors, chapter 2 ). A few male seagulls must of course have escaped the DDT and had the time of their lives inseminating all of the females at least once, but apparently the ladies had no further need of them. In an albatross colony on a Hawaiian island with an excessive number of females, the females would pair up annually to preen each other, join in ritual mating dances, and guard each other. Together they would hatch out a single egg each year, taking turns to sit on the nest. No male came near them after insemination.
    According to Frans de Waal,
exclusive
focus on members of the same sex, as shown among humans, is rare if not absent in the animal kingdom. I don’t agree with him. In Montana, Anne Perkins discovered that 10 percent of the rams intended for breeding weren’t mounting ewes. They were referred to as “lazy.” But out in the meadow they were anything but lazy, as they enthusiastically mounted other males. Some rams even took turns mounting each other. Perkins discovered chemical differences in the hypothalami of these rams that indicated altered interaction between hormones and brain cells. Structural differences were also found in the hypothalami of these homosexual rams just like the ones that we and other researchers described in the case of humans. Of course homosexuality is a natural variation.
TRANSSEXUALITY
    Re: new phalloplasty technique proposal; seeking surgeon. P.S. I am interested in a neophallus uncircumcised in appearance. So I am looking overseas, since a natural uncircumcised penis is more common in Europe than in the U.S.
    From a letter to the author from an American female-to-male transsexual
    Transsexuals feel that they have been born into a body of the wrong gender and are desperate for a sex change or gender reassignment. This is a gradual process that starts with an individual adopting the social role of the opposite sex and taking hormones, then undergoing a series of extensive operations—which only 0.4 percent later regret. The first person in the Netherlands to respond to the plight of transsexuals was Otto de Vaal, an endocrinologist and pharmacologist who taught at the University of Amsterdam. He treated them for free starting in 1965, feeling that his university pay was sufficient. The gender team of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam (VUmc) subsequently took on a pioneering role, headed first by Louis Gooren and now by Peggy Cohen-Kettenis. That’s remarkable in itself because the Vrije Universiteit was established as a Calvinist university, and the Bible does say: “A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 22:5–6).
    Since 1975, 3,500 people have undergone gender reassignment at the VUmc. The first time I learned about transsexuality was as a medical student in the 1960s. Coen van Emde Boas, a professor of sexology, entered the lecture room of the obstetrics and gynecology department with a bearded man. It wasn’t exactly the place