Like Rabbits

Further to my leporine observations of yesterday, it occurs to me that you often hear the expression "at it like rabbits" to describe people's sexual behaviour. This implies that they're having sex all the time, suggesting a wanton profligacy, with no regard for the consequences or for social norms and mores.

In my opinion, this stereotype could well be offensive to rabbits. In particular to celibate, impotent, and neutered rabbits. Worse, it might cause even hitherto sexually active male rabbits to start suffering from performance anxiety as they try to live up to the impossibly high expectations implied by the aforementioned expression, leading, ultimately, to a complete inability to achieve an erection. As a result, in order to assuage their frustration, the female rabbits will have no other option but to dig burrows all day and mug people for their carrots as they emerge from Sainsburys.

Of course, some would argue that "at it like rabbits", far from being a stereotype, is, in fact, a true depiction of their behaviour. To justify this, they point to what happens in a rabbit hutch. There, if a newly introduced male and female are placed together next to food, the first thing they'll do is shag rather than eat. But is this surprising? If, for example, Claudia Schiffer were to suddenly come up to me and say, "Do you want to tear off my diaphanous night dress, cup my pert breasts in your hand, and kiss me, hard and passionately on the lips, or would you rather have this carrot?", I'm certain I'd go for the former. As, I'm sure would most normal people.

Then there are those who criticise rabbits for their apparent lack of discrimination, in that they appear to shag anything that's vaguely of the opposite sex, regardless. The thing is, though, rabbit burrows have no artificial lighting, so you wouldn't know what you were shagging, anyway. Especially if she suddenly breaks through from an adjoining burrow in the middle of the night and expresses an immediate desire for sex. Homosexual coal miners must get this sort of thing all the time when their shafts suddenly cross, mid-seam, so they'd sympathize. Yes, he might in reality look like Johnny Vegas or Arthur Mullard, but in their mind's eye, in the dark, he's always Antonio Banderas.

Thinking about it, no-one ever says of people that "they're at it like homosexual rabbits" which suggests that the gay rabbit community are a lot more conservative than their heterosexual peers. It's just as well really. If it were especially common for thousands of gay rabbits to emerge from the ground and bugger anything that moved, Playboy would probably have to drastically rethink their logo. Or else they'd have to start promoting a dramatically different lifestyle.