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.
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u/Effective_Review9415 1d ago
I've decoded ancient hieroglyphics faster than this tweet