Friday, May 16, 2014

The Oppressive Patriarchy Of Ospreys

I'm out on the East Coast this week just in time for the San Diego fires to threaten all and sundry back home while I can't do anything to help the family. Good times, good times. Ah well, at least I can still do what makes the biggest difference: blog.

Yesterday, I had a chance to get some osprey time as I hung out with a famous birder who's actually got a published book on the subject. It's a real book on paper and everything and not just a self-published Kindle thingy, too. So cool. Anyway, there we were, watching an osprey nest when the whole scene came into focus as clear as the Bush Administration's use of explosive charges to bring down the Twin Towers and fill the pockets of the Koch Brothers with profits squeezed from the 99%.

The oppressive heteronormative patriarchy of ospreys was all around me. Dig the scenes I caught on camera.

Here, the female osprey is deprived of any career opportunities and is forced to sit on the nest. The look of despair and depression is painted all over her face.
Nearby, the male osprey watches her to make sure she isn't reading any subversive books or talking to other female ospreys about their common bond of oppressed osprey sisterhood. He's probably also drunk.
The whole thing just sickened me. All of them were playing out their roles in the reactionary, fascist society that is the world of the osprey. If you listened closely, you could hear the muffled cries of alternative-lifestyle ospreys being relegated to second class status and jammed into a big closet full of psychologically scarred lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered ospreys. Well, I could hear it anyway. My colleagues all told me that was the sound of the semis on the highway nearby, but I knew better. I wanted to smash something for all differently-gendered ospreys everywhere.

Something has got to change out there in the marshlands of New Jersey. I mean, this is the 21st Century! We're so beyond this. The first thing we need is birth control for ospreys so the females aren't controlled by their reproductive systems any more. Once they've achieved their goals as career ospreys, we can work on the LGBT issues.

First things first, though. What we need is a Sandra Fluke of the osprey world.

5 comments:

Moxie D. Hoxie said...

Very funny post. And some great social commentary.

Keeping the Maximum Leader and family, friends, neighbors, and all out there in my prayers! Rain!

tim eisele said...

I've wondered off and on about what effect it would have on our society if humans were like birds: every time the female ovulated, she would lay an egg, regardless of whether it was ever fertilized[1]. Then the whole question of birth control just boils down to whether they get incubated or not. You can't tell if a freshly-laid egg is fertilized just by looking at it, so nobody would be able to tell a virtuous, chaste bird disposing of the normal crop of infertile eggs from one that was getting rid of fertile (but unincubated) ones.

[1] This is certainly the case for ducks, chickens, and guinea fowl, because I've seen it: they will lay eggs when they are old enough to do so and the conditions are right, regardless of whether there's a male around. And I understand that other birds are the same: when the season comes around, the eggs come out even if the female never has sex at all.

IlĂ­on said...

"Ah well, at least I can still do what makes the biggest difference: blog."

You're so behind the times! Simply everyone knows that to *really* make a difference, you need to post a selfie of you holding a piece of cardboard on which is written some witty hashtag -- #BringBackOurRainfall of somesuch.

K T Cat said...

How about #FreeTheTransgenderedOspreys?

B-Daddy said...

Very funny. Linked. BTW, the fatuousness of Ms. Obama's hashtag selfie is delightfully deconstructed on Dalrock's blog.