Aug 266 min read

Nature: It's a Queer thing...

Updated: Sep 20

When I hear people contemplate or argue the validity of queer identity in the context of being “natural”; a part of me always chuckles internally. I can’t count the number of ways in which nature and the natural world, outside the usual human social frameworks, actually reflects and affirms the validity of queerness. From animals engaging in same sex behavior and coupling; to bisexual flowers (also known as perfect flowers); to animals able to change gender and gender traits at will; nature is rife with queer representation.

When I step into nature; there is an immediate sense of ease and affirmation that can be hard to come by when surrounded by fellow humans. People are such messy complicated beings with our big brains and overly complex thoughts; but in the natural world, plants and animals and the rhythms of nature itself are ever evolving, fluid, and unrestrained by respectability politics and social restriction.

Nature is inherently queer; it is also violent and beautiful and miraculous and wildly complex.

I spent a lifetime trying to find the human language and framework to express my gender non-conformity and sexuality; however I always ended up just feeling “weird”. Growing up in a very small town in the 90s and 2000s; our general understanding, knowledge, and acceptance of varied experiences of gender and sexuality were incredibly limited. So, while I have always known that I was different, it would take nearly forty years to even begin to be able to express that difference in a way that felt understandable. It took deep immersion into queer community, lots of reading, countless hours of listening and learning to even begin to scratch the surface of what a queer identity meant for me.

However, if you trace the lines of expression back through my personal history; you can vividly see eras of exploration and curiosity. I have stark memories of being utterly and devastatingly confused as to why, as I got older, I couldn’t continue to walk around shirtless like my brother and his friends. I often had a handful of guy friends growing up who felt easy and comfortable to be around; something laughingly joked off as just being a bit of a “tomboy”, but deep down felt more like a community of which I had this occasional but ongoing understanding of and connection to. I shared their fascination and attraction to women’s bodies; I was at home in their clothing and ways of being; and I felt a rush of truth being “one of the guys”.

And yet, within that same history are times of deeply feminized experience; the absolute ecstasy of watching my belly grow life during my pregnancies; the joy at hearing my own children call me mother; and the playful beauty of makeup and skirts that occasionally felt like they fit who I was in that moment; the tenderness of female sisterhood. And in between those experiences of more stereotypical gender experience were these vast open spaces of feeling like neither, or some quirky amalgamation of both.

Gender and gender expression throughout my life has been simply an expression of a wordless formless cosmos of experience that ebbs and flows through me with no particular beginning and no designated endpoint.

While navigating this experience among society and human community has always felt fraught with confusion; when I step out into the natural world, all of that dissolves and I am free to simply be a human constellation, without expectation, without bounds, and without fear.

I recently came upon the concept of Queer Ecology; a scientific theory bringing together ecology and queer theory to step outside the binary and dualistic thinking we have come to expect when we study nature, humans, and ecosystems; and embrace a more fluid understanding that allows for paradox and multitudes. Queer ecology asks us to remove the binding and limited frameworks of human society and instead view nature in all its vastness. Since discovering this concept; I have been ravenously consuming blogs, scientific articles, podcasts, and books surrounding the ways in which nature is queer and how we have to shift some of our understanding in order to fully appreciate her complexities.

When I first learned about bisexual flowers (also referred to as perfect flowers, which some studies suggest account for 90% of all flowering plants); I fell in love with trying to understand this little corner of botany. Perfect flowers are flowers that have both male and female sex organs, stamens and pistils, within a single flower. They embody the fluidity of both. Within my own hyper local ecosystem; there are even flowers like the Matilija Poppy, that defy all gender limitations and can reproduce both asexually (through cloning) and/or bisexually.

From a non-scientific perspective; the society that I had grown up in; always gave flowers a feminine façade. Flowers were the beautiful girly part of the plant; given to the women we loved; and added to artwork and poetry to imbue a sense of softness and womanhood. And yet, in the reality of the world, flowers were an incredible array of genders with an even more varied means of reproduction. As a lifelong lover of flowers (and well, plants in general); this framework brought new meaning to my daily interactions with them. I suddenly looked at my towering Matilija Poppy with a new awareness and connection. We were both many things at once; and yet, only one of us was boxed in by that fluidity; the other utilized it as an evolutionary advantage.

Flowers aren’t the only thing in nature that embraces queerness.

When our family first decided to rescue a small backyard flock of chickens; I began to research everything I could about taking care of them. Living in a suburban neighborhood where roosters are for the most part not allowed; and hens must remain clean and relatively quiet; I did a deep dive into online communities to ensure I was raising a flock that would be “neighborhood friendly”. It was within some of these online communities that I first discovered that in a roosterless flock; it is not uncommon for the most dominant hen to begin to develop rooster-like qualities; growing larger combs, wattles, and tail feathers; developing of spurs; and assuming rooster behaviors such as mounting, crowing, and fighting/protecting. While these hens are still technically female; there is a noticeable transition to more male dominant qualities and behaviors. Even within our own flock, we took notice of a particular hen that began this transition when the eldest most dominant hen passed away, and she stepped into the role of top chicken. While we were (thankfully) spared the sudden occurrence of crowing; it was still intriguing to watch her tail feathers grow out and her behavior shift to assume the role of protector and caretaker.

Even beyond the tiny ecosystem of my backyard; queerness in nature abounds. Same-sex behavior has been found in somewhere around 1,500 species, ranging in everything from lions, to penguins, to lizards, kestrels, sheep, primates and more! Sexual transition has been observed in clownfish and most of us are familiar with the unique male pregnancies of seahorses. Asexual reproduction has been observed and documented, in the wild, in cottonmouth and the copperhead snakes as well as in multiple species in captivity. The fungi Schizophyllum has more than 23,000 sexual identities, likely winning it the award for most genderqueer! Even the world’s oldest tortoise Jonathan, has had a longstanding gay relationship with his companion Fred.

Gender non-conforming flowers, transgender chickens, and gay penguins….nature is filled to the brim with natural queerness. And yet, when humans explore these nuanced and complex ways of being, it’s deemed unnatural and unacceptable. We are uncomfortable with the idea of people existing outside the bounds of the binary. We shudder at the thought of people utilizing science and technology to transcend our evolutionary limits, to more fully embody this queerness.

The human world around me demands that I define myself; that I create an identity and a framework that is limited, binary, and static. I am expected to fall into formation and exist as only one thing. But, when I stand among the flowers and the birds; with my feet planted solidly in the soil; I can be everything and nothing. The labels no longer matter. I can exist as fully as I am, in all of my genderqueer and sexually fluid radiance!