The Problem of Lesbian Sheep

When sheep, in the mountains, are wanting to breed,
there's not very much that the sheep up there need.
For they've got quite a system when it's time to mate:
the rams nose around, and the ewes stand and wait.

Yes, the female sheep don't have to do anything,
when the rams (in the mountains) go crazy in spring,
but give off special smells from their feminine places
which those sex-hungry rams can detect - with their faces.

Yep those rams stick their noses in each ewe's behind
to detect if to mating she might be inclined,
and if so he mounts her - they both have their fun -
and that's how the process of mating is done.

And so, to sum up, there's a system in place
to ensure that the sheep can continue their race,
and it works like a charm. So, no cause to lose sleep.
... but consider the problem of lesbian sheep ...

Yes, a lesbian sheep hopes and prays she can find
a lesbian ewe who's of similar mind
but she doesn't know how! She was brought up to think
that to find a good mate, you just stand there and stink.

And alas, her true love, just a few yards away,
tries the very same thing in the very same way,
and though they both want to be loved and be held,
they just stand around, and wait to be smelled.

Oh the pain they must suffer! Their agonized cries!
The mere thought of their torment brings tears to my eyes!
And it's all so unneeded! Imagine their joy
if they just found a different technique to employ.

Even lesbian sheep must have some way to meet!
It presumably starts by one moving its feet,
drawing close to the other and sniffing its rear,
or presenting its own. On this point I'm not clear.

But they can't stand around like their hetero kin
simply waiting for somebody else to begin.
And so my advice to gay sheep as they graze:
to woo lesbian ewes, use less motionless ways. 

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Fort Collins, July-August, 2002
revised January 15, 2004

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Copyright ©2002,2004,2020 Howard A. Landman

Stylistically, in this poem I was trying to mimic the writing of Dr. Seuss and Robert W. Service, both of whom excelled at long humorous poetry.

I did not invent the term Lesbian Sheep. Cory Doctorow used it in 2001, and it was a meme floating around the lesbian community for several years before that. However, I do think that I crystallized the meme in this poem.

The poem became a political football in the Referendum C debate in Colorado in 2005 after it was attacked by right-wing pundit Ari Armstrong. Armstrong spent nearly half a page describing how salacious and perverse my poetry was; one wonders if he even read any of it.

In early 2007, actual scientific research on sexual preference in sheep made news when Martina Navratilova said that sheep have a right to be gay. See articles by Johann Hari and William Saletan, for example. The concerns in the poem were shown to be real, and I can legitimately claim to have anticipated the science by five years.

The poem was also cited in a 2016 technical paper about online dating algorithms. “… the JMAP protocol is fundamentally asymmetrical, posing greater risks for the initiator than for the recipient. Thus, there is not necessarily any good way to decide who should initiate a JMAP exchange, as both parties would prefer not to be the initiator. This has historically often been resolved by widespread standards designating all agents as either initiators or recipients. However, this approach breaks down when both parties are designated recipients; this is known as the Lesbian Sheep Problem. For further information, see [Landman 2004].” Does this count towards my H-index?

Made it this far? Your reward is that you can see me read the poem live here.