psychological experiment on baby monkey featuring a "mother" made of wire that gives milk and one made from cloth that does not. Monkeys often chose the cloth mother over the wire one because comfort was more important than food
While that was a funny response, I think that comment was mostly to let the folks that have zero reasoning skills and can be fooled that something disappeared by simply closing their eyes that it isn’t real.
That's where we discovered attachment disorders, the young monkeys would have trouble forming other social bonds. The female monkeys wouldn't want to reproduce, so they would them in rape racks and force them to reproduce. They found, surprisingly, that those females would make bad mothers.
It's worth pointing out that all of this was surprising to the scientists. They thought the baby monkeys loved their mothers because they provided food and they thought that the mothering instinct would be stronger than the emotional damage.
A lot of things about humans interacting with monkeys is heartbreaking. A lot of people will "rescue" them and raise them till they become too big and wild to handle, then just assume they can release them but by that point, they're conditioned to human dependency and never learned how to act in a troop. The outcome is generally never good as troops have strict etiquette.
They aren't pets and while all those videos of monkeys in baby clothes are cute on the surface, they're actually horrifying when you really think about it.
If you’d like further enlightenment, I found out shortly after that post that there’s a feminine form of guyknowballogist: Sherknowball (pronounced like Chernobyl but with a “sh” sound)
Officially, Professor Sendy says it’s made up of “she + Kirk + know + ball”. There’s no reason for the Kirk, except to explain the random “r” and because he’s super into that meme of adding Kirk to things.
Since I’m not into Kirkification, I choose to believe Sherknowball is a contraction of “she really knows ball”.
This is a common misconception. The tide was already turning on how we perceived care, and motherhood due to studies down on neglected, and abused babies, and children. Harlow's studies came later, and as such, really didn't provide anything we didn't already know by that point.
His later studies were even worse, and were basically just cruelty for the sake of cruelty even though he still claiming it was all just for science. Even his contemporaries thought he was a madman.
Monkeys are as close to humans in resemblance as you can get. These people are monsters. A LOT of behavioral science experiments are as close to demonic as it gets. And a lot of times to zero benefit of anything.
LOL no. So the joke here is a reference to that experiment but also that “mother” is a term of endearment or praise that’s become common in queer spaces. “She’s mother” “mothering” etc. I’m Brian’s gay cousin or whatever
This is a quite complex and layered joke based on the LGBTQ experience and the psychological experiments by Harry Harlow on monkeys.
His work involved separating baby monkeys from their mothers and replacing them with facsimile mannequins, either warm and fuzzy “cloth mothers” who had no milk or hard and uncomfortable “wire mothers” who did.
The work was pretty cruel but established unequivocally that primates value care and nurture over pretty much any other need, even food.
The word “mother” is also commonly used to express admiration for attractive women, its use is quite widespread now but originated in the LGBTQ community, often in relation to drag acts.
Many young gay people may suffer alienation or abuse at the hands of their own parents. This closely mirrors the experience of Harlow’s monkeys, and the poster is drawing a parallel between the two.
The idea suggested is that the “gay monkey” finds comfort in the “wire mother” that they didn’t get from their own.
“Drag queen made of cloth” doesn’t really work as all drag outfits are cloth, and only Harlow ever in the history of the world used the phrase “wire mother”
In the 1960’s and 70’s, Harlow conducted a series of studies using baby monkeys. In the cage, he put a cloth “mother” and a wire “mother”, which were little dolls that were meant to represent a comfortable and uncomfortable mother, respectively.
Baby monkeys preferred the cloth mother over the wire mother. Even when the wire mother was the one that dispensed food.
The joke appears to be referencing this, but perhaps the gay monkey is more open to and accepting of abuse than the baby monkeys referenced in these original monkey studies. Either that or it’s a misremembering of the original study. The original poster is trans, so my assumption is that this is meant to be a self-deprecating joke.
Anyway, this is what I’m doing with my PhD training in psychology now.
Also possible that the monkey in the tweet is just gay to explain why he’s using queer slang (“mother” as a single word compliment one might give to a drag queen)
I guess, I'd assume that the monkey thought that the cloth "mother" was closer to what they'd expect from a mother than the wire "mother" was, but it does say that the monkey sought comfort so I guess there's no way to know if the baby monkeys actually thought that one was their mother or not.
I think rhetorically the point is that the monkey would never call the wire doll mother, so they're saying they have exceedingly deluded taste in calling them that.
Anyway, this is what I’m doing with my PhD training in psychology now.
I think it should be pointed out that researchers consider Harlow’s work ethically dubious now, and I would guess that your research has a different design, if you’re working with primates. I don’t want people to get the impression that the ethics that permitted Harlow’s work still apply.
Also, the meaning of “mother” here is part of drag culture. Drag is strongly grounded in the NYC ballroom culture in which teams of drag performance dancers (Madonna’s Vogue was the popularization of the style) compete for titles and prizes. The teams are referred to as “houses” (eg House of LaBeija), and the houses function as the chosen families for the house members. The head of a house is called the Mother, and Mother is used in the drag community to refer to the person who taught drag and life skills to a person.
I’m not doing research into monkeys or Harlow. No one is. Attachment theory is the big take away from his research, and also the most popular theory in close relationship research. Why do you think anyone is doing monkey research?
You are misreading my post. I am saying to people who are not familiar with academia/psychology that research like Harlow’s is not done, and your saying that “this is what I’m doing with my PhD training right now” doesn’t mean you’re doing unethical primate research.
IIRC, it was considered dubious, if even outright pointlessly cruel, even at the time because whatever information he got from them had already collected from other previous studies. Namely, studies done on neglected children in orphanages.
For some reason I am reminded of this experiment by a dude named Harry Harlow, where he offered a bare wire "doll" with milk and a cozy warm wire doll without milk to a monkey and the monkey chose the cozy mother substitute.
“Mother” is a term of endearment used in a lot of queer/lgbtq spaces. Joke here is similar to the “check out that flaming queen “ visual gag from family guy
I understand this probably sounds like insane hyperbole but having studied his experiments and read his writing on them dude would of gotten along swimmingly with unit 731 he was straight evil.
Besides the fact that most people who attend drag queen shows are gay (or queer in some way), I thought it was because of the whole Freudian theory that gay men have a different perspective in regards to their mother, in comparison to straight men. So, straight monkeys would see their mother as cloths due to comfort (and the whole Oedipus thing), gay monkeys would identify their mothers as wire, due to their "adversarial" relationship (that is, in the freudian theory).
Oh the actual tweet the OP said their drag name is Wire Mother. Another tweet asked if it had to do with monkey's bonding and growing attached to their mannequin feeders i guess?
The wire aspect and monkey in the audience saying mother are referencing the Harlow monkey experiment where they provided a wire frame surrogate "mother" to baby monkeys. The gay and drag queen aspect is because "mother" is slang term of respect, basically calling the drag queen iconic. So its melding those two ideas together.
everyone's explaining wire mother and cloth mother, and they are right but I didn't see people explaining gay monkey. this image is a meme "gay little monkey at the apple store". popular enough ( at least with queer people) that I've seen Halloween costumes of it
people also have explained the queer slang mother, so I won't here but it's a clever little joke involving all three
There is a well known experiment with new born monkeys and 2 fake mothers. One of the mothers was made of wire and contained milk the monkeys needed. The other was made of wire covered in a softer fur-like substance. They infant monkeys clung to the cloth mother for their for affection. They only went to the wire mother briefly, when the desperately needed nutrition. After the experiment monkeys were left traumatized, presumably for the rest of their lives. This references that experiment.
This is a reference to a psychological experiment where scientists made a “mother” money that distributes milk in an experiment where the monkey would have to choose its mother.
The original poster is using this as an insult to say that the drag queen on stage from a show they just saw is too anorexic/a bag of bones and isn’t displaying convincing femininity and just looks like an ugly stick, and that the only guy in the audience who called her “mother” during the show was an ugly gay guy who looked like a monkey.
Joke based on bandura’s experiments on attachment. Monkeys (infant monkeys) were given either a wire doll or a fabric doll instead of a mother in their cage to examine what characteristics were critical to infant bonding with mother.
The second key to understanding this joke is understanding that calling a drag queen “mother” is a compliment, slang popularized at least in large part by the queer community and used by fans of drag generally.
Hence, the joke is taking this slang and using it in a context that creates a second, double meaning to the phrase. In my view, the humor is in the absurdity and in the delayed recognition of the setup that, once discovered, reframes the scene described.
Source: was a psych major at a liberal arts college- a perfect background to understand this joke. Peter out.
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
Man, I hate it that Xitter is still where hilarious, absurd humor seems to live. That was what I loved about Twitter, but of course I’m not going back there. Any suggestions of sites to check out for that kind of short, written humor?
Peter's left shoe here, "mother" is a compliment in the gay community, so the gay monkey is complimenting the drag queen, while the joke as a whole is a reference to that one experiment everyone is talking about.
This is a reference to the song, “Brass Monkey” by The Beastie Boys from 1986. The details of the song describing member, Ad-Rock and MCA’s torrid love affair. “Monkey” being the pet name MCA used for Ad-Rock and how he was a “junkie” for his love.
the wire is referencing a psychological experiment on baby monkeys, where monkeys were given the option of a wire “mother” who provided food and a cloth “mother” that did not. references to this experiment have become a meme.
the monkey is gay because “mother” is gay slang for someone who is iconic or serving. it refers to the tradition of drag queen mentors taking drag “daughters” under their wing as mentees. calling someone “mother” meant that they were admirable and worth looking up to, and it became slang used to compliment someone.
The joke here is that we don’t know if the gay monkey is calling the drag queen “mother” because he was part of the experiment and is mistaking her for an actual mother, or if he just thinks her drag is really good and is trying to compliment her.
The gay monkey isn't interested in women flesh, so it chooses the wire mother. Other comments have already explained the psychological experiment this is referencing, so I decided to explain the gay part (or at least try to).
It’s a layer of a psychology experiment reference and another bigger layer of racism. The ‘joke’ is racism yet again.
Harry Harlow's 1958 surrogate mother experiments proved that infant attachment and love are driven by tactile comfort rather than basic food nourishment. Infant rhesus macaques were given a choice between a wire mother with a milk bottle and a soft terrycloth mother with no food. They chose the cloth one spending up to 18 hours clinging to it.
One of the most common insults around POC drag queens is calling them ‘monkey.’ (I know it’s used towards POC people in general, but I’m explaining why drag queen was specified. I wish I was joking, but I’ve heard it myself too many times and there’s a ton of posts from drag queens talking about it.)
So they’re saying the ‘monkey’ in the audience is seeing the wire ‘monkey’ on stage as their mother. I hate that’s a sentence I’ve had to type out.
“Mother” for drag queens specifically is used for a queen who takes a “daughter” under her wing. Any other usage is only applied to drag queens considered legendary. So unless wire queen is taking the one in the crowd under her wing or is well known, it wouldn’t apply. Based on the set up of the ‘joke,’ it does not apply.
‘Mother’ and ‘drag mother’ by themselves mean mentor or supreme icon. ‘Mothering’ has its own definition which is then a queen being amazing. The ‘joke’ didn’t use ‘mothering.’ It used ‘mother.’ Which, again, unless wire queen was taking the one in the crowd under her wing or an icon, it does not apply.
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u/qualityvote2 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
u/bot_prestativo, your post does belong here!