WWhen a ram throws his head back, curls his upper lip, and takes a deep breath (in the livestock world, this is called the “Flehmen reaction”), it is often a sign of excitement. Sheep have a small sensory organ located above the roof of their mouth, and the flehmen response helps fill it with any sex pheromones wafting around.
Typically, rams are flehmen when they encounter ewes during the mating season, according to Michael Stücke, a farmer with 30 years of experience raising sheep in Westphalia. Germany. But on the Stücke farm the rams are flehmen “all the time.”
“They do it all the time because they find each other attractive,” Stueke said of his 35 male ewes. “They hug. They show signs of affection. They jump on each other. There's no denying that they're attracted to each other.”
Stücke is the proud shepherd of the world's first and probably only gay sheep flock. Although researchers found that about 8% of male ewes are “male-oriented”, most farmers frown upon homosexuality, expecting the rams to perform a breeding function. Sheep that refuse to reproduce are often slaughtered for their meat, and it was while discussing this harsh reality with Stücke's friend and business partner Nadja Leites that the idea was born Rainbow wool was born: “What can we do to avoid sending them all to slaughter?”
“My heart beats for the weak and the oppressed in general,” Stücke told the Guardian, with Leites translating. “Being gay myself, I know the prejudices and obstacles that come with being gay, especially in the agricultural business.”
Rainbow Wool's solution was to buy same-sex rams directly from breeders, outbid them at the slaughterhouse, and keep them for their wool. There are currently 35 people in the herd, and there is a waiting list at the farm. Individual sheep can be named and sponsored – these include Bentheimer's landscape, named Wally WonkaShropshire by name Prince WalliamAnd Jean Volle Gaultier – and the wool is processed in a factory in Spain. All profits are donated to LGBTQ+ charities in Germany. “A pair of sheep [have been] saved, but also a few more,” Leites said, noting that their donations have helped resettle people living in countries where being gay is illegal.
Correctly determining a sheep's sexual orientation can be difficult. “Everyone can just say, ‘Hey, I have a gay ram,’” Stueke said, “but we just watch their behavior.”
“Some rams will basically jump on anything, whether it's a doe or a buck,” he added. “It wouldn't qualify as a homosexual ram. It would qualify as dominant. But if a ram consistently refuses to mate with a female ewe, that's a sign that you know he prefers other rams.”
Stücke's herd broke out on fashion scene last month when they provided the raw material for a knitwear collection designed by Chrome Hearts collaborator Michael Schmidt and sponsored by gay dating app Grindr. Schmidt sent 36 looks down the New York runway, crocheted or knitted from the wool of Stücke's cheerful sheep. Each image represented a male archetype, from Adam without Eve to the pool boy, sailor, pizza delivery boy, plumber and leather daddy.
“I really wanted to lean toward the gays,” Schmidt told the magazine New York Times. “I see it as an art project. It's selling an idea, not a collection of clothes, and the idea it's selling is that homosexuality is not only part of human existence but part of the animal kingdom. It refutes the concept that being gay is a choice. It's part of nature.”
The naturalness of homosexuality demonstrated by the homosexuality of sheep has been the subject of media fascination for decades, thanks in large part to Charles Roselli, a professor of biochemistry at Oregon Health and Science University. Roselli research The way sex hormones influence brain development is the source of the fact that one in 12 rams is gay.
In 2007, his work became the victim of the New York Times called “A textbook example of the distortions and insults that can occur when science collides with the global news cycle” when TimePeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) and some gay rights activists have accused Roselli – inaccurately – of seeking to “cure” homosexuality in sheep and, ultimately, in humans. (Roselli did not respond to the Guardian's request for an interview.)
Rainbow Wool hasn't faced the same stinging criticism – scathing Telegraph title despite the supposed “woke test” of New York's fashion scene – but Stueke is moving the gaggle of gay men from field to field to ensure their safety after receiving online threats. “Nobody knows where they are stationed because there are a lot of haters there,” Leite said.
However, the project has faced criticism for whitewashing the realities of animal agriculture, which require “cruel, violent heteronormativity,” scholars Gabriel N. Rosenberg and Jan Dutkiewicz wrote in their paper. New Republic. “If anything, a fashion show made of cheerful wool should make us think not about the luck of the few rams saved, but about how animal agriculture systematically, regularly and often violently exploits the reproduction of all the animals it encounters.”
Rosenberg and Dutkiewicz point out a number of problems with assigning human identities such as “gay” to animals, including the fact that researchers classify sexuality only based on “top” behavior and are unable to document a ram's preference for “bottom.” “You can't ask rams about their personality, and we have no evidence that rams attach special meaning to sex the way humans often do,” they write. “By calling sheep gay, we risk either attributing human thoughts and feelings to sheep… or distorting what people understand as gay.”
The limits of how far any kind of biological essentialism can go in justifying human rights through an appeal to naturalism became immediately clear when I asked Stuck whether Rainbow Wool had any plans to provide refuge for lesbian sheep.
“I personally believe there are lesbian sheep and I would love to create a new flock of them, but it’s really hard to determine,” Stucke said. The key problem is that it is impossible to know the sexual preferences of female sheep. “In most cases you are being attacked without consent, especially if the female herd is kept for profit – for lambs or meat,” he said.
If a farmer starts taking into account the animal's consent, can he continue to be a farmer? What about the sheep that I prefer not to cut my hair? Or did you eat it? About 6.5 billion male chicks hatch every yearground aliveShortly after hatching, due to the crime of giving birth to a male, the female chicks remain alive – but only as long as they produce eggs.
Stücke recognizes the limitations of comparisons between farm animals and humans, but he nevertheless finds meaning and purpose in caring for his flock of gay sheep.
“I had times when I had a hard time accepting who I was and how I was wired, especially growing up in a very conservative family,” he said. “I needed to find myself, and I found myself, and now I’m open about it.
“If we can save an animal that lives differently, it sends a powerful message. It doesn't have to be a direct comparison to say that animals are the same as humans. It's metaphorical.”
