I've always loved Jurassic Park—I obviously love it for the dinosaurs, but there's another reason that's tucked away in my heart. I saw this same thing in Disney's Mulan, in She's the Man, and a mere handful of other stories. So, while we're exploring the useful AI-allegory inherent to Jurassic Park, there's one other over-arching CYBORG_ theme I think needs to be addressed.
We have made it to the park now, having seen a glimpse of a velociraptor and a full view of the peaceful majesty of several species of herbivores roaming freely in a clearing by a lake. Following our protagonists, it's now time to understand the science behind the park. An animated character, Mr. D.N.A., bounces around on a projector screen, explaining how the dinosaur D.N.A. was recovered from mosquitoes that had been trapped in sap and fossilized, preserving the blood inside.
"Since [the dinosaur D.N.A.] is so old, it's full of holes. Now that's where our geneticists take over...We use the complete D.N.A. of a frog to fill in the holes and complete the code. And now we can make a baby dinosaur," Mr. D.N.A. explains.
This seems like a bit of a long-winded scene, as though a middle school science video was inserted into my horror movie, except that this is critical information. (I'm actually quite impressed at how much each bit of narration or dialogue is used throughout the film—every word has a purpose—but that's just a tangential note on the excellent writing...)
The scientists, themselves, quickly grow tired of the animated lesson and break the ride so that they can go talk to the real geneticists and researchers. They infiltrate the bay where the labcoats are walking around with their clipboards and other scientific instruments. A robot arm tends to a nest; gently turning over eggs on this table filled with grass. One of the eggs begins to wobble.
"Oh, perfect timing...I'd hoped they'd hatch before I had to go to the boat," a scientist named Henry observes.
"...why didn't you tell me? I insist on being here when they're born," Dr. Hammond, the rich founder of Jurassic Park, hurries to the nest-table. Slowly a baby dinosaur head punctures the egg shell and Hammond removes the broken pieces from the newborn. "They imprint on the first creature they come in contact with...Helps them to trust me. I've been present for the birth of every little creature on this island."
"Well, surely not the ones that have bred in the wild," Dr. Malcom refutes.
"Actually, they can't breed in the wild," Henry corrects. "Population control is one of our security precautions. There's no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park."
At Malcolm's persistent questioning, Henry explains that all of the dinosaurs are female, and therefore cannot breed in the wild.
"But, um, again, how do you know they're all female? What, does somebody go out in the park and pull up the dinosaurs' skirts?" Malcolm asks, suggesting a job that would be irresistible to someone like J.K. Rowling. Henry gets more specific about how they engineer the dinosaurs to be female because they control the chromosomes—denying each creature the extra hormone at the right stage of development that would cause it to become male. At that, Malcolm can no longer contain his concern.
"John, the kind of control you're attempting...it's not possible. If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free—it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously..."
It isn't until much later in the film that we discover that Malcolm was right: life finds a way.
The Downfall
Normally, this is where we would take a look at how the dinosaurs represent artificial intelligence, but I want to draw a line even more clearly to a systems and humanity issue this time. If anything feels true to life from this fantastic science experiment, it's the assumption of control and suppression of diversity. This is and has been a part of the human social technology for millennia at this point.
Certainly in patriarchal and colonialized societies, queer populations have been targeted for control and erasure. Religions have tried, like the Jurassic Park scientists, to control this with harmful ideas like "pray the gay away," or a frenzied insistence that there is only a single, immutable gender binary, perfectly correlated with a sex binary. Woah, woah, but religion isn't science, so it's totally different, right? We've looked at gender before in terms of social technology, and I would argue that if D.N.A. is the organic system affecting biological sex, similarly the social environment / social system is what affects the concept of gender. So as geneticists can manipulate variables to generate conditions to control the initial sex of a creature, the people or institutions (like religion) constructing or reinforcing the social structures around a person can manipulate conditions to attempt to control the gender of a human.
We are a social species. Gender and sex are not the same thing. Both of these aspects are influenced, and both can be fluid or changeable. Maybe the scientists denying the circumstances needed to produce a baby male dinosaur are exerting control at the beginning, just as a religious or faith tradition might initially influence a person away from expressing their gender the way they would have if left alone, but both of these controls are impermanent.
Towards the end of Jurassic Park, Dr. Grant finds a nest of eggs "in the wild," as he and the two kids are trying to get out of the enclosure they've been trapped in.
"You know what this is?" He asks. "It's a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs...are breeding."
"But grandpa said all the dinosaurs were girls," Tim, one of the children, says, taking a shell to inspect.
"Amphibian D.N.A." Grant replies.
"What's that?" Lexie, the other child, asks.
"Well, on the tour, the film said they used frog D.N.A. to fill in the gene sequence gaps. They mutated the dinosaur genetic code and blended it with that of frogs. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single-sex environment. Malcolm was right...Life found a way."
There is real-life scientific evidence of naturally occurring sex-change in animals, amphibians, and plants (and especially in fish, based on my very top-level Google Scholar search), so this isn't actually a stretch at all in the science of Jurassic Park. While animals and resurrected raptors may demonstrate sex-change to create reproductive value in the ecological system, humans don't necessarily have the same powers by default. We use technology to support our gender alignment, among a host of other things (glasses to support vision, pulleys to support/amplify our strength, clothes for protection and social identity, and on and on). My point here is that 1. the argument that trans people aren't valid because it's "unnatural" simply doesn't hold up to any scrutiny and 2. just because we can't spontaneously change our biological sex like certain fish can doesn't mean that we shouldn't support trans people who socially or medically transition.
Some animals have the ability to change in order to meet their needs. The power of humanity is to create technology to make the changes we need. Sometimes that's changing the technology of clothing to express our gender, sometimes that's changing the environment to be less hostile to the marginalized. Either way, individuals always have and always will make changes, regardless of institutions' attempts to exert control and dominance over them.
Trans people have been under a lot of political turmoil and threats, persecution and endangerment, all because a few people decided to target this vulnerable (and tiny) population to increase their own power and create a distraction for the public to focus on instead of focusing on the authoritarian regimes corroding freedom right now. It's fun to think about Jurassic Park as a trans story where life finds a way to flourish despite arrogant attempts at control, but the real-life implications of our current circumstances are not fun at all. In fact, cisgender women (people who were assigned female at birth and also identify as women), and children (people who can often appear androgynous) are being dragged into the danger because insecure people are frothing at the mouth accusing anyone with a strong jawline, a little bit of height, or cool hairstyles of being transgender. If you just happen to have darker skin , that also correlates to the likelihood you'll be accused of being trans even when you're not—increasing the threat of violence more than what women of color already experience.
Sometimes when we fight so desperately to control other people, all we do is end up hurting ourselves and everyone else. This is one of those moments.
You don't have to be trans to understand that trans people are just people trying to live their lives. I like to think of it this way: if you've ever been misgendered before, you may have felt bad—either embarrassed or awkward or hurt. It's not fun or comfortable to be called something that is wrong. That's what trans people experience, too, but it's all the time, including just seeing a reflection in a mirror. Humans have a social layer built on top of the biological layer, so sometimes it's enough to get rid of or diminish the discomfort and pain of being out of alignment with who you are by simply addressing the social layer: changing your name, your pronouns, and even dressing in a way that expresses your gender. Modern medicine is able to address the deeper layer now, by providing gender-affirming care, allowing humans access to the powers of nature that other species have always had.
There is room for all of us and more. We don't have to understand the trans experience, but I hope that we can tap into empathy more often. Instead of reaching for more power and control over someone else, maybe we can reach for compassion first, and upon realizing that we have more in common, we can abandon or update ideas that were incorrect in the first place.
Always remember humanity. Let life find its way.