Homophobia is so far unknown in the non-human animal world, and transphobia seems rare in pre-agricultural and tribal cultures. A more rigid, intolerant attitude seems to be characteristic of civilisations. Why? We’re told that civilisation was a great advance, shielding us from the chaotic uncertainties of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’. And civilised religions, and traditionalist narratives, tell that we must resist and repress sexual deviance because it’s unnatural, and endangers our future — when more ‘primitive’ cultures often take deviance in their stride. None of this adds up. Maybe there’s a displaced sense of the underlying fragility of civilisation (due to agricultural issues, and economic inequalities), and a paranoia about the nature we’ve shielded ourselves from, which leads to this equation of deviance with chaos, and a scapegoating of this deviance to avoid addressing deeper structural problems (again, kicking down).