Nature Is Literally So Gay
We’re coming out…. side?
Our episode this week reconsiders nature in a time of the pon-de-replay. When we have to be socially distant, can the outside, trees and grass and shit, offer a bit of a SaFe PlACe, a touch of solace?
For our lil’ newsletter this week, I wanted to (read: Fran told me to) write a little bit about just how fucking queer/trans/gay/etc nature itself actually is. Nature knows no binary!!!
Clownfish, like this beauty below, live in a lil’ pack in the Indian Ocean and the female in the pack is always the biggest and most dominant fish. We love to see it. When she dies, the most dominant male fishy among the pack will literally switch up his sex and become… the female leader of the pack. For any molecular biologists out there, a recent-ish study looked at the transcriptome (all the expression of all the genes) of the fish as it switches sex, and honies, it goes through changes!
For those who are more into… watching nature documentaries than reading molecular biology papers (lol), Blue Planet 2 from the BBC literally filmed the sex change of another species of fish, a kobudai (which totally looks like some dude Teebs would plow as long as he was 6’5).
As we spent spring literally attacked by tree pollen from male trees, it got me thinking about sex/gender and plants as well! As a side note: the fact that urban planners prefer planting male trees (because literal sexism) has been making all our allergies worse over the last few decades.
Burn it down (except in California, where, like, fires are currently a very bad idea)!
Trees, it turns out, can be male or female or both (bless them, honestly same). A researcher at Rutgers noticed that a species of tree she studies – the Striped Maple – seemed to change sex from year to year. She went on to show that not only was that the case (1% of the trees changed sex every fucking year!), but that the trees that played the female role in any given year had a higher chance of… literal death. Nature, wow, brutal.
Honestly, look at this fucking tree STUNT! I cannot get enough.
So those folks out there who argue (lol) that sex (not just gender) is a “natural” “binary” can shove it up their Striped Maple tbh. Scholar of science studies Anne Fausto-Sterling coined the term Sex/Gender to describe how the two notions themselves are always co-constructed. There is essentially no place where one is separate from the other, not in “biology” and not in “nature” and certainly not in an organism as complex as homo fucking sapiens.
Happy pride and thx for reading
XXooXXoo Joe O the Science Hoe
*extra* delectable content
1. Nature Poem BY Tommy Pico
Last night I had a dream that I was a ghost who gave blowjobs and that
is pretty much the experience of dating in the city
Honestly, Teebs has never told a lie.
2. Isabella Rossilini explains duck sex! Need I say more?
2. This Is Your Brain on Nature. Honestly, the eggs in these old ads always looked pretty delicious to me. Fuck off with the anti-drug propaganda and also going into nature is… good for you?
Oh, and sorry, the link is the article Fran referenced in the episode about how nature literally makes your brain better. Long read, but you deserve it.
3. Joe’s pina colada recipe. It’s sunshine in a glass, yall. The best smoothie on the planet!
4. Doja Cat’s apology, which is honestly iconic. Oh no, do we agree with Deborah Messing?
5. White Magic by Elissa Washuta on the need of Whiteness to dominate the earth:
Boundaries were set between water and land because impermanence and change made for poor real estate. Nature wasn’t good enough for settlers; it demanded transformation.
6. Tree sexism makes you sneeze!!!!
7. The biggest park in NYC is in the Bronx, and it’s magical, and next door to the “Riviera of the Bronx” (which, speaking of, check out the book below) and City Island.
Also,
Remember that it was daddy’s day LAST WEEK. Our extra bite this week is about zaddies too. A recently discovered skull has led scientists to hypothesize a new species of early human, Homo longi.
The rendering has made us… a little hot and bothered. I want Homo longi to pound me into my molecular essence and then keep going until all the covalent bonds holding even my molecules together are fully broken and my carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen sublimates directly into the atmosphere of our rapidly-warming planet. I mean, come on.
I'll never look at Isabella Rossellini the same way again. Thanks a lot ;)