Bell Curves

Have you ever heard of a bell curve? It's a kind of shape that some graphs end up with, when we're looking at certain kinds of data, and a lot of that data is piled up in the center somewhere.

Basically, the shape of the bell curve is low, and then grows until the apex in the middle, and then drops low again at the end. True to its name, it has a curved shape that looks kinda like the sihouette of a bell.

If you're a failing college student you probably are very familiar with this concept. There's a kind of grading known as bell curve grading where if you place every student's grade on an exam on a graph, you'd expect it to follow a bell curve pattern. Some students might get 100% on it, but that's expected to be rare. There are some students who are going to fail, but that's also expected to be low. The vast majority of students are expected to land somewhere in the middle. Using a bell curve then, you can see not just the scores that those students got, but also judge how challenging the exam was, and also the proficiency of the teacher. If the apex of your bell curve is sitting around 50%, chances are the professor sucks or the test was unreasonably hard. If the apex is at 99% chances are the test was too easy.

The bell curve is something we see in more than just education though. It's in itself a really interesting concept, and I think it's something that we can apply to sociology as well. Especially in the realm of understanding public opinion on challenging concepts. Take any social issue in the world that's on a macro scale. Within that issue there's probably going to be a range of perspectives on said issue, but if you break it down to specific survey-able questions, and you track enough data points, you're going to get a bell curve effect for a lot of these survey results. There are going to be some people who fully reject any given social idea, there are going to be some people that honestly probably take it too far, and then the majority of people are going to fall somewhere around the middle. 

Let's use trans rights in the US as a quick example of this.

There are some people who think trans people shouldn't exist, and that there should be a total ban on trans ideology. Depending on where you live or what news media you consume, it might feel like these 100% anti-trans people make up a very large portion of the population, but, when we're taking about people who are completely gunning to erase trans people from existence? That really isn't the extreme opinion that most normal people actually feel. These bigots are a small minority that represent one end of our bell curve. For this example we'll say that these people are on the right of the curve.

There are also people who make being trans their whole personality, sell DIY HRT, and will label every single character and person they like an egg. Depending on where you live or what social media tags you're subscribed to, this might also feel like a very large portion of the population, but, going 100% all-in on trans as your favorite and only thing is also not how the majority of people think about trans rights. This is a minority on the other side of the bell curve, the left side in our example.

The vast majority of people land somewhere in the middle. Now, where they are in the middle is still important. Most people will have some things pulling them to the left, and some things pulling them to the right. To some people, they might support trans rights for legal adults but not necessarily support children transitioning. We might place them still on the right side, but much closer to the center. There might be a trans person who thinks that gender fluidity is made up. They might still be towards the left on our curve. Essentially, if you could get the opinions of enough people, you could use this bell curve to get a general stance on where society stands with a little bit more nuance than just "Support" or "Against" as it comes to trans issues, but without needing to go into enough detail that it become micro focused, or impossible to quantify at scale. The center of your bell curve can be seen as the most common opinion as far as how people feel about any issue. And, when you're trying to change the way society views topics, the goal is always going to be to effect the average.

This can, of course, apply to zoosexuality as well. If we were to survey enough people about their opinion on zoosexual rights and plot the results out on a bell curve, there would be a spread of opinions from "All zoophiles should be executed" to "Zoophilia should be publicly perfectly accepted and have the same protections as other identities and zoos' animal partners should have rights as people." With again, the majority of opinions falling in the middle. That said, right now zoosexuality is a taboo topic, and so surveying people about it might not exactly get results as favorable as we here at Zooey Dot Pub would hope to see. Most people probably don't really think about it much at all, and feel like it's something they're not supposed to express a really super-duper positive opinion of, and so they pencil in answers that are kind of unapproving, but like, probably not to the point of calling for genocide. The apex of our bell curve would likely be somewhere around the opinion of "We think these people should get treatment." But there are, of course, still a million opinions that exist on either side as well. Even to the left of the average, there's still a lot of ideas, from "Fantasy is fine but we don't support contact" to "Romance is fine but no physicality" to "Sex is fine so long as the human is the bottom." There's a near infinite number of stances that you can find if you talk to enough people. 

This is a pretty abstract concept, but I want to get into the specifics of why I think it's important for zoos to understand this concept. I wish I didn't have to bring this up, but a couple months back Trump was elected as the next president of the United States. While it might be uncomfortable to think about, it actually makes a lot more sense when you think of it on the bell curve. It's easy to make politics one issue, but for the vast majority of people it's not that simple. They might support certain things but not others. We can see examples in groups like "Gays for Trump" that some people are willing to sacrifice in some places in order to vote for things that they feel are more important. If we were to plot the people in that group, they would be on the right of the bell curve, but probably fairly close to the center. In the same way lifetime republicans that voted democrat this election are close to the center on the other side. When you see Trump supporters in the media, there's an image you have in your brain of someone wearing a MAGA hat and waving a huge flag and never shutting up about the topic. But that's the people that are on the farthest extreme of the curve getting the attention because they're the most interesting. The election was really decided by the hundreds of millions of people in the middle. The apex of the curve happened to shift just a little touch to one side, and that was enough to change the results. There are a lot of forces at play that move people or lock them in place here: loyalty, propaganda, xenophobia, promises of prosperity, narrative. But, by the sum of all the issues, we saw that the average American this last election was more on the right than left. Not every American, and even those on the right may have had plenty of "left" opinions that they hold too, but it was enough to win the vote. Your aunt Kathy might still not have any problem with trans rights, but was really worried about immigration. Your friend Tim might still believe in social services, but also is scared of inflation and wants to cut government spending. The average shifted.

Which brings me to my point here. The middle is really really important in any issue. You're probably never going to change the opinions of the people on either extreme, but you can slowly tug that center around little by little. And little changes can end up having massive results. 

So, let's bring it back to zoosexuality. My point in all of this is that expecting one day we make the world's most pursuasive argument and suddenly everyone loves zoos is unrealistic. Based on our bell curve, and the powerful other forces that keep people locked in or moving in other directions, seeing 100% zoo support overnight would be an incredibly huge jump in one direction. Instead, what we can do is focus on communicating with the people who are closer to the average. Say that someone believes that animals can't consent because they're too stupid to be able to. If we can talk with that that person and share what we know with them for them to learn too, that animals actually can express consent and are more than smart enough to have things they enjoy and don't enjoy as individuals, that might not immediately turn them into a zoo ally, but it shows there might be a reason for them to back away just a little bit from the anti-zoo stance. Say someone's a furry who thinks anthros are hot, but that liking feral art is problematic. Probably no way that we're convincing them zoophiles are cool right off the bat, but showing them cool people who casually loredrop that they're into feral and then continue to be cool af and fun and engaging and furry and yes still into feral btw, that could still be a step in the right direction. 

Changing society isn't something that happens over night. Our journey is one of millions of tiny steps made by people all over the bell curve. And it's our job to help people take those little steps. And one by one, the average changes. The bell curve moves. And when the bell curve moves, the severity of opinions moves with it. Right now "Animals don't enjoy sex" is an opinion that a lot of people would agree with. But if we can shift the average, maybe that changes. Maybe encouraging a more open dialogue about raunchy nature documentaries leads to the majority saying "No obviously they do enjoy sex, depending on the species but yeah some of them it's undeniable that they're into it," even if that doesn't mean they support humans having sex with animals. And maybe after that, the opinion changes to "Animals can enjoy sex with humans, but it's still wrong." That's another step. And over time, each of those little steps turn into something much bigger.

When we use the bell curve to understand sociological issues we can paint a picture of where it's most productive to focus our attention. We can find the places where people can actually be talked to intellectually and reasonably, rather than talking to them being like debating with a brick wall. And little by little, we can improve society as a whole. Until eventually standing against zoophiles is seen as the radical opinion on its own. I want to live in a world where you can say "I'm a zoosexual and I love dogs" and that's an opinion that's right in the middle of the curve.