This is the fifth post in the Succession III: Queering the Environment series, edited by Jessica DeWitt, Estraven Lupino-Smith, and Addie Hopes. For this series, contributors were invited to explore ideas of queer rebellion as interruption and resistance.

I study sex. Gay sex in particular- well, not really. You see, I study same-sex sex in animals and as such there are two wolves inside of me (are they gay? Who knows). One wolf tells me that of course these animals are gay! (Have you seen flamingos? Have you heard about the stuff that dolphins get up to?) The other wolf is wearing a lab coat with a pocket protector, and she tells me that “gay” is an anthropocentric term, much like “woman”. We call some humans “women” in the same way that we call humans “gay”- gayness is a social construct that is specific to time and place. This push and pull that takes place both inside of me and in my interactions with my science is not new. The second wolf is a bit of a wet blanket but ultimately correct. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn some lessons from the first wolf (for example, this wolf is also the wolf who makes my fashion choices). We can also gain from expanding this beyond a purely linguistic issue into a discussion of how we approach scientific theory and investigation. In this case, the battle is much more balanced.

The Queer Botanists and Mycologists

Alongside creating the current taxonomy system used to classify life, Carl Linnaeus worked closely with plants. He forced plants into a sexual binary, even going so far as to include the suffixes “-andria” and “-gynia” from the Greek aner and gyne for husband and wife respectively. However, implying that plants reproduced sexually during the time period in which Linnaeus lived was still relatively risky as it was counter to the Church’s beliefs at the time.

In the time following Linnaeus, botany and mycology became established as fields that were accepting of women and gay men, such as Beatrix Potter, Hugo De Vries, and Rupert Barneby. These scientists, and many more alongside them, were able to investigate the genetics and reproduction of fungi and plants with a lens that was informed by their experiences outside the norm. We now know that fungi can have thousands of sexes within a species, that plants can have “male” and “female” parts in many different configurations, and that the genetics of plant reproduction is as confusing as a gender-queer person like me can only dream of. Imagine having five sets of chromosomes instead of two! It took people with a marginalised experience in society to step aside from the unwitting anthropocentrism of science and finally start to understand the complex world of reproductive biology.

What About Animals?

British naturalist and surgeon Dr. George Murray Levick published two reports on the behaviour of the Adèlie penguin from observations that he made while serving on the British Antarctic Expedition in the early 1900s. Over a century after his work was published, his personal records were found to include encrypted descriptions of several sexual behaviours that were not included in these publications. These behaviours included, amongst other things, males mounting males and males forming long term partnerships with other males. From letters Murray Levick exchanged with the keeper of natural history at the Natural History Museum in London it is clear that these observations were knowingly kept from the public, likely due to Murray Levick’s opinion that the behaviours were “depraved”.

Homosexual behaviour, or same-sex sexual behaviour (SSB), is openly discussed in scientific arenas now but has suffered from the historical homophobia of those studying them. Ranging from sex to parenting to pair-bonding, these behaviors have been called “aberrant”, “misdirected”, and that some even imply a “lowering of moral standard(s)” (that paper was about butterflies!). While this type of descriptive term has fallen out of use, homosexual behaviour in animals is still viewed as a “paradox” or an “enigma” that needs to be explained, rather than a phenomenon that is known to occur in over 1500 species. The discussion around homosexual sex in animals has focused on the fact that sexual behaviour between two members of the same sex is a “dead end” because it does not immediately result in offspring. The argument that homosexual behaviour is a waste of resources falls apart when we do not view other nonreproductive sexual behaviours, such as cunnilingus or fellatio, in that light. The separation of different-sex nonreproductive sexual behaviours and same-sex sexual behaviours in this way is not based in science, but rather the human cultural concept of “gay”. The sex of the individual on the receiving end of oral sex does not impact the reproductive output of the individual giving it, until viewed in a broader framework.

Queer ecologists across the world are arguing for a broadened framework for studying sex. The historical blinders that scientists wear has led to a large number of sexual behaviours being dismissed. The fact that “female choice” was once a controversial concept in the study of sex proves this point. Historically, it was thought that males fight for access to females, with the females in question lacking any agency in the act of reproduction. By being aware of and accounting for societal biases, the diversity of nature is much more accessible and understandable. We can learn why female Japanese macaques form consortships with other females over males and we can also learn why sometimes male crickets like to shove their butts together really hard (this is a sexual behaviour that I have observed in my own research- we call it booty bumping). These behaviours are an inherent part of the behavioural repertoire of reproduction, and without studying them we are doing the scientific equivalent of looking at a picture of a bent elbow and thinking it’s a butt.

There Are No Paradoxes in Nature

The idea that something found in the natural world could be “paradoxical” is wrong. Nothing that exists can contradict itself while still existing. The real paradox is in the theory, which is an important context. We cannot blame our lack of understanding on the thing that we do not understand. This is what queer ecology emphasises – everything exists within its own context and must be understood within that context. Fortunately for us, human cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality rarely influence the lives of plants and animals. Queer people, alongside other minoritised peoples, have experienced the boundaries of these human cultural standards and as such understand on a deeper level how they can impact science. I know that my own desire to be seen as myself has influenced my urge to see everything I study in its own context, and I genuinely believe this has improved my science by showing me areas where sexism or heteronormativity are subtly present in scientific theory and method. For example, I have been able to emphasise the active nature of both individuals in a sexual encounter in my behavioural studies, rather than just assuming that an individual that gets mounted has no ability to reject the mounter.

The way I get around this, and the way that I encourage others to think about the natural world, is by recognising the individual as an individual and not as a measure of what I’m looking for. Variation exists everywhere and the variation is what makes the world beautiful.

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Feature Image Description: Two horses stand facing each other, one on the left is black, the one on the right is light brown with a sandy mane. They are seen standing firmly on a dry grass field, their muscular bodies blending into the brown landscape under a clear sky. Photo credit: Unsplash from FreeRange Stock. Equalicense.