Happy pride month! 
In this post we’ll be delving into the idea of a queer ecology and how nature continues to surprise and defy our ideas of binary classification. The ecosystems around us are constantly growing and our understanding of them is constantly changing, so let’s take a look at nature through a different perspective.
What is queer ecology?
Queer ecology is a combination of queer theory and environmental studies that aims to disarm the ways in which heteronormative narratives obscure the inherent queerness of nature. This begins with the theories of biological sex: the idea that male and female are the only sexes that exist in nature. This evolved into the cultural idea of binary genders and denotations of societal and labor roles associated with each gender. This heteronormative coding is then applied to the flora and fauna around us by scientists as they are often viewed as more primitive and survival/reproductively-driven. However, queer ecology asks scientists and all people to break down these cultural assumptions of gender and sex because they are full of heterosexist assumptions that are simply not true. For instance, in the case of humans (as evidenced by a Science American article from 2023), men have historically been assigned to the role of hunters and women as childminders, but there is anthropological evidence of women hunting. This queers the patriarchal anthropological view on humans by revealing the labor has not historically been distributed in a binary. Similarly, there are several animal species that operate in a matriarchy like orcas or with both sexes leading their pack like lions. In addition to queering cultural ideas of gender, the binary ideas of sex are also often incorrect. Humans can have more combinations of chromosomes than just XX and XY and can also present sex characteristics that are a blend of traditionally male and female. The same is true of many plants and animals. Queer ecology attempts to remove these binary classifications from the study of nature.
Examples:
- The famous two male penguins of the Central Park Zoo, Roy and Silo, and storybook “And Tango Makes Three”
- Several species of fish like clownfish change sex as a result of environmental changes
- Several species of flower are hermaphroditic like roses and have both pistil and stamen
- And many many more!
Who popularized the study of queer ecology?
Catriona Sandilands is queer and environmental scholar of York University who is credited with coining the term queer ecology. Her most iconic work “Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire” published in 2010 brought the idea of queer ecology to the forefront, but questioning the the binaries of gender and sex dates back to than 100s of years prior to that. There are early 1900s accounts of homosexual activity from Havelock Ellis to Oscar Wilde and famous accounts of the all the way back to ancient Greece, but Michel Foucault laid the groundwork for this in the “The History of Sexuality” in 1978. Since then, the term and further studies have popped up in queer, environmental, geographical, and gender studies and has further popularized it.
Why is queering important?
It is important that this study grows in popularity to have a more holistic understanding of nature that is not clouded by sexist, homophobic, and transphobic ideals. In an environmentally scholarly way, this garners a better understanding of ecosystem interactions and the possibilities of numerous combinations of sex, gender, and species organization. This removes human cultural bias from the environment and will hopefully do the same for our fellow humans. The notable STEM scholars (as many fields are) are dominated by old cis heterosexual white men and it is important to open up to the ideas of people who do not fit this archetype and what they view as “natural”. This is all in hopes of creating a world that is more accepting than what has been historically classified as “natural”.