\u201cSecond Nature\u201d is a documentary Drew Denny made for her younger self.<\/p>\n
Denny, 42, lives in Los Angeles now but grew up in Texas.<\/p>\n
At times, life \u201cfor a queer girl was actually heartbreaking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Then as a young woman she was gifted a copy of Dr. Joan Roughgarden\u2019s \u201cEvolution\u2019s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n It was life-changing.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read Joan\u2019s book, for whatever reason, this is what made it click for me,\u201d Denny said. \u201cIt was the first time I felt in my body that I belong here, too. It took that knowledge that queerness had always existed and always will and is not an aberration.\u201d<\/p>\n So years later, as a budding filmmaker, Denny reached out to Roughgarden, 80, with a proposal.<\/p>\n \u201cShe said she was a documentary filmmaker and she would like to do a documentary based on \u2018Evolution\u2019s Rainbow,’\u201d Roughgarden said from her Santa Rosa home.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Sure,\u2019 but I confessed that she looked young, but they all look young,’\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cI thought it was going to be a student project. One thing led to another, and a couple of years later a film crew rolls into town.\u201d<\/p>\n Roughgarden\u2019s work was pivotal for Denny\u2019s personal evolution and it was crucial for her filmmaking, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe tells her story in the film and becomes the central figure who connects all the dots,\u201d Denny said.<\/p>\n Eleven years in the making, Denny and that film crew have completed and released \u201cSecond Nature: Gender and Sexuality in the Animal World,\u201d a documentary that features Roughgarden throughout and leans heavily on \u201cEvolution\u2019s Rainbow\u201d and her academic works.<\/p>\n In still another local connection, the film is co-produced, co-written and edited by Jennifer Steinman Sternin<\/a> of Santa Rosa.<\/p>\n The film, which features a host of celebrated scientists \u2013 biologists, anthropologists, primatologists \u2013 in addition to Roughgarden, dives into behavioral and biological diversity, including sexual conduct and characteristics, gender multiplicity, love, social hierarchies and gender presentation in a slew of animals. It also explores why and how that diversity has gone unreported or under-reported since cataloguing behaviors began.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of times sexual behaviors are recorded only when an adult male is mounting an adult female. Scientists might not code a male mounting a male as sexual so the data only represents the times a male mounts a female. That is sex and everything else is not,\u201d Dr. Marcela Benitez<\/a> says in the film. \u201cIt is called \u2018greeting rituals,\u2019 it\u2019s called \u2018domination behavior,\u2019 it\u2019s called \u2018social bonding behaviors.’\u201d<\/p>\n But not sex. So it was not recorded as such.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a brilliant piece of research and journalism, I guess you could say, on her part to put all of this together,\u201d Roughgarden said.<\/p>\n But it was Roughgarden\u2019s story which Denny describes as the \u201cmotor of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n And by Roughgarden\u2019s account, that story includes her first Pride March in San Francisco a quarter of a century ago.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was a child, to come out as trans, it was unheard of,\u201d she says in the film.<\/p>\n As a scientist, Roughgarden likes numbers. But hearing that 5% of the population is gay didn\u2019t ring true in her world.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t believe the numbers because 5% of the people I knew weren\u2019t gay,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was the first Pride Parade that I ever marched in \u2026 for the first time I saw so many people who were gay and that made the numbers plausible.\u201d<\/p>\n And her life\u2019s work as a scientist played a role in the evolution of her thinking. She describes understanding \u201cgayness\u201d as an adaptive, natural, positive trait across the natural world.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it were maladaptive, it would have been brought down to a lower factor,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know that there is some type of adaptivity involved.\u201d<\/p>\n So Roughgarden began to inquire and investigate. She thought she\u2019d write what she described as a \u201cpamphlet\u201d about her findings. But the evidence, the examples of gender fluidity, arrays of sexual conduct and behaviors in the natural world were overwhelming, she said.<\/p>\n Clown fish can change from male to female. The bluehead wrasse can change from female to male. Male seahorses give birth.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a lot of information that wasn\u2019t being summarized anywhere and wasn\u2019t being presented,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is a panoply of diversity of genders and sexuality that weren\u2019t making it into the curriculum, and this changed our concept of what is going on out there and what is natural.\u201d<\/p>\n So she wrote a book, and a young woman in Texas finally felt seen. And in reading, Denny said she was able to intellectually and emotionally counter \u201call the things you are told, that you don\u2019t belong on planet Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is nothing inferior about being female or being queer,\u201d Denny said.<\/p>\n It was for her younger self and all of those who were told they were unnatural or didn\u2019t belong that Denny decided to use Roughgarden\u2019s studies and her story as the foundation for her documentary.<\/p>\n Denny, sometimes with Roughgarden in tow, traveled the globe to see scientists at work and to see the natural world in all of its diverse glory. The film takes viewers to to Hawaii, Costa Rica and the Netherlands among other locales, to speak with scientists and to see them at work.<\/p>\n And the final product? It\u2019s getting the same kind of response that Denny said she felt when she read Roughgarden\u2019s book.<\/p>\n Lifesaving.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a serious mission behind it,\u201d she said last month in an interview with Democracy Now\u2019s Amy Goodman<\/a>. \u201cI know what it\u2019s like to be told that here is something wrong with you and you don\u2019t belong on planet Earth and that you might have to look for a way out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe want this to be a suicide prevention resource,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Agreed, said River Suh<\/a>, who teaches science at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco and is featured in the documentary.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are teaching more accurate information and we are saving kids lives,\u201d they said in the film.<\/p>\n In the film, a well-worn, dog-eared copy of Roughgarden\u2019s \u201cEvolution\u2019s Rainbow\u201d sits on Suh\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n Roughgarden, a professor emerita of biology at Stanford University<\/a>, has published nine books and published more than 190 papers, but it was \u201cEvolution\u2019s Rainbow\u201d that spoke to Denny.<\/p>\n Nearly a quarter-century since her book was published, Roughgarden said the need is still there to show and tell people about the variety within natural existence. And that need is even more acute in a political climate in which President Donald Trump signed an executive order<\/a> on his first day in office declaring the federal government would recognize just two biologically distinct sexes.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously the queer community is under siege right now,\u201d Roughgarden said. \u201cOnce you dehumanize people \u2026 they automatically don\u2019t have rights because they aren\u2019t human.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the people who need validation, to know that there is a place for them in this world, that is the audience that I know Drew Denny had in mind,\u201d Roughgarden said. \u201cFor people who are indifferent or who have no empathy for the people who are currently being persecuted, the movie is irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n But for those seeking proof that they belong and they are natural, the film might be life-affirming or even life-saving.<\/p>\n \u201cThe need that people have, especially if they are gay or lesbian or trans or anything like this, the need to feel that you are a part of nature, that you aren\u2019t a weird mutant or freak or something \u2013 the need is so strong,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cSecond Nature\u201d is being self-distributed by Denny and her team. It was premiered in New York City three weeks ago. Roughgarden walked the red carpet along with one of the film\u2019s executive directors and its narrator, Academy Award-nominee Elliot Page.<\/p>\n \u201cI got to meet a real-life movie star,\u201d Roughgarden said. \u201cHe\u2019s a very impressive guy and really out there. I was very proud of him.\u201d<\/p>\n