‘There are no straight lines in nature,’ or at least that’s how the saying goes. I sometimes ask myself if this is true. I see straight lines in the taught web of a spider, in the bluntness of hexagonal honeycombs. Whether these really are straight, I am unsure. What I am certain of, however, is that nature is full of twists and turns. It is boundless in possibility and unimpeded by societal structure. It has a freedom of oddity that human society does not. 

In a reality defined by this freedom, humans have put a mighty amount of effort into limiting both themselves and the natural world. You’d think that living in a world where over 1500 species of animals exhibit homosexuality, we’d be a little more comfortable about identity. It is almost comical, then, that humans really took issue with their fellow person identifying a certain type of way.

The Western worldview saw nature as unkept and unruly, so they sought to plan it out and cut it down. They saw queerness as unnatural and disorderly, so they made it taboo. The natural world and queerness – both forced into submission by a fabricated ‘ideal’ naturalness.

Yet this submission by no means has meant defeat for either queer people or the environment. If anything, a bond has formed; two allies, undefeated and persisting against the odds.

“Naturalness”

From a Western mindset, there are two poles: first, the great straight world. This is one of order and perfect capitalism. Here, nature is mapped out to achieve prime economic conditions. People are expected to live in idyllic suburbia, quiet and demure. The jobs are stockbrokers and business analysts, and everyone has degrees in PPE or STEM. Nature is tamed; cut lawns, trees stand to attention in orderly rows, and the rose bushes are prim and proper.

The other pole is the opposite of this – the wild and untamed. Unsurprisingly, this is where both queer people and the undomesticated natural world are placed. Here are the uncut meadows and the overgrown shrubs that have taken over houses. Living here are the animals that are a bit ugly by human standards, and the people who party a bit too late. The rose bush is thorny and dangerous, but smells just as sweet.

I’m sure you can guess which one has become the idea of ‘natural’. We are sold the world of heterosexuality to us since birth. As children, our fairy tales are about men and women falling in love, as are the cartoons, the adverts, the books and practically everything we see. Even the animals in children’s films are straight (need I mention two dogs from a certain animation company kissing by comically eating the same string of spaghetti?)

Consequently, a cultural feedback loop has formed, convincing people of a very false idea that the world of ‘straightness’ is one that the natural world adheres to. Nature is viewed as obedient to human ideals. By removing this veneer, the world is opened to us, honestly and freely.

Honesty

Within the natural world, there is no idea of queerness. Whilst our idea of queerness can be applied to animals, it is important to note that saying a certain animal is queer is slightly anthropocentric. Queerness is innately a human experience that has been born out of otherness, oppression, and found family.

That said, it is hard to ignore and take great pleasure in the fact that there are two gay penguins in Central Park Zoo. Or, alternatively, celebrate the clownfish that change gender, or that male seahorses get pregnant, or that some cardinal birds have been seen to be intersex. As a queer person, seeing the array of identities in the natural world is wildly affirming. We are told from day dot that your identity is either confusion or some religious condemnation. Using this rationale, is the seahorse also cursed? Is the earthworm, being neither male nor female, just confused? If so, I am surely in good company.

My point is that by selling the idea that nature follows the cis, heterosexual world of binaries, humans have completely distorted nature. The dangers of this are untold. By creating a false narrative, humans will never be able to fully help the untold number of wildlife that live on this planet. To paint the world as purely heteronormative, you shallow the waters of our understanding of nature. How can we really help something we don’t understand? To ignore queerness in nature is to ignore the reality of this world.

By removing a heteronormative bias, you understand the full wonder of the natural world. The veneer of heteronormativity is removed, leaving behind nothing but nature for all its gnarly, beautiful truth.

Freedom 

Honesty within nature is not the only virtue of queer ecologies, but freedom also.

One of my favourite Greek myths is the tragedy of Hyacinthus. Hyacinthus and Apollo, God of the Sun, enjoyed their time playing games and living blissfully by the riverside. One day, in a jealous rage, the Western Wind Zephyrus (also a lover of  Hyacinthus) struck the mortal down. Grieving his lover’s death, Apollo turned the man’s body into the hyacinth flower.

Ignoring the misfortune of the story, I am comforted now by hyacinths. The flower holds a love between two men, immortalised forever in its petals.   

This is one example of nature being used as an identity for queerness. Green carnations (famously used by Oscar Wilde) were used by gay men to identify each other; the Greek poet Sappho used violets as a symbol for her love of other women. Even when used as a negative connotation, Queer people have reappropriated nature-based terminology. Lavender is associated with queerness from the Lavender Scare, a moral panic in the 1950s about the association between homosexuality and communism.  Even today, queer people have found comfort in moths, mushrooms and ‘cottagecore’ aesthetics.

The consistent association between nature and queerness is the freedom found in both. The imposition of heteronormativity in everyday life is a crushing weight. In nature, however, the pressure is removed.

Out in the wild, there is a freedom that allows queer people to exist freely. The natural world is one untouched by any reservation of who, or what, someone should be – the complete indifference to identity by nature is what allows queer people to exist so openly in it. There is no judgment, only the solace of a reality untouched by human ideas of ‘naturalness’; there is liberty in the colour of hyacinths.

Queer Ecologies

There is a William Blake verse that goes, “as the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.” Blake may not have been referring to queerness at all here, but I can’t help but find some link between them. The caterpillar, focused solely on her goal of finding a leaf to rest on, thinks nothing of expectation. She simply exists as she is, free from a society that has so many limitations.

Embracing the joy of queerness opens the world to a more honest way of viewing the natural world. So too does it give humans the freedom to release themselves from the imposition of heteronormativity, finding them once again in an unburdened natural world. A queer ecology is one that allows us, as humans, to make our way back to some attachment to the earth; a queer ecology realises that, truthfully, there really are no straight lines in nature. 

Be Curious:

• ·  Find out more about how ignorance has made people overlook the behaviours of animals, such as the ‘gay’ penguins removed from a 1911 Antarctica report here!
• ·  Curious about different animal species that exhibit queerness? This Greenpeace article displays a colourful variety!
• ·  Queer Ecologies by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands explores a wider variety of queerness within nature as well as a plethora of other topics. Take a look here.

Image by Moa Király via Unsplash.