Blog / 2024 / Merry Feministmas!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

In 2012, I released this book about the true diversity natural behaviors when it comes to gender and sex. It’s a feminist science picture book that’s full of examples of nonhuman animals that don’t fit with our traditional ideas of gender and sex—I’m talking about conservative notions like “boys = strong” and “girls = passive.”

As I make this video, I’m in the process of putting together a new edition of the book. The content of new edition will be mostly the same—the changes will mainly be in the layout. Well, that and I’m writing a new preface that addresses messed up state of things in America.

But I’ll also be remaking of a couple of the images, including this one. I already redid the reindeer composition when I made the coloring book version of Crime Against Nature in 2015. And I used that redo to make the new painting!

The reindeer represents one of my very favorite discoveries as I researched the book. In 2011 I started doing a ton of reading about different charismatic animals. When I say “charismatic” I mean animals that you already know—or, more accurately, that you think you know! I’m talking giraffes, penguins, foxes, honey bees! The idea was to fill a book with animals whose lives are a lot more interesting than what you’d been led to believe. I wanted to surprise people with the true diversity of this planet, and that meant not picking obscure animals you’d never heard of before—even though they can be very interesting too, of course.

That’s how I started looking into reindeer. They play such a big part in the Christmas iconography. I thought that if I could find out something interesting about their gender or sex they’d be a good addition to this book. I didn’t know what I was looking for with the reindeer, and I knew it was very possible that my research would come to nothing, but science delivered.

Because it turns out that, despite what the stories and songs have sold us, Rudolph and all the other reindeer are female. In most species of deer, only the male grows antlers, but among reindeer both sexes have these bony structures on their heads. Starting in spring, all reindeer grow the new year’s set of antlers, but males lose theirs by the end of November. Meanwhile, females retain their antlers throughout the winter, meaning that Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, Blixem, and Rudolph are all girls.

The new version of the book will be out next year—the launch is set for the 20^th of January 2025, the day the sex-offender-in-chief and his oligarchs officially take over. If you like the old reindeer painting, the version of the book with that image is still on sale at the moment through my site.

From Rudolph and me: Merry Feministmas!