queer ecology
Nematodes are microscopic round worms that play a key role in every level of our interconnected food web. These tiny spineless worms create the backbone of the soil ecosystem, allowing wildflowers to bloom and towering trees to bud in the spring. These important, abundant, and highly diverse creatures are found beneath the soil—hidden and often overlooked. I came to the Utah desert to do my PhD on nematodes in icy Antarctica, where I have ended up feeling much like those small worms, which is why I think that nematodes can teach us lessons beyond the lab.
I’m a lesbian, ex-Catholic, female scientist. Some of my identities are visible, some are not. I have the privilege of being able to hide my queerness, but hiding parts of myself is painful. And just as the flowers couldn’t bloom without the nematodes, I can’t be fully myself without acknowledging all parts of my humanity. I’ve walked through BYU’s campus, marveling at the stunning natural beauty more times than I can count, in despair over the exceptionally narrow way that I must exist while on campus. When I signed my graduate school contract, I lost the freedom to proudly and loudly be my integrated and fully open self. Instead, I operate on a carefully constructed, delicately balanced network of half-truths so it looks like I’m conforming. It is exhausting. But experiencing the natural beauty of Utah brings me solace. Nature reminds me I’m not doing anything wrong by just being my fully integrated self, regardless of what the university’s honor code says.
Similar to the pressures of the honor code at BYU, my Catholic family taught me that queerness is “unnatural,” that God intended only a man and woman to be intimate. In Catholicism, this idea is called natural theology. The LDS church doesn’t use this name, but it does have similar teachings; I’ve been told this idea shows up in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” I was frustrated to see this theology being perpetuated in BYU biology classes, as well. One of my evolution professors focused entirely on the evolution of reproduction between a man and a woman, ignoring queer relationships or trans identities. What this professor missed is the many examples of nature defying human expectations. For example, some female nematodes reproduce without needing sexual reproduction or sperm, via a process called parthenogenesis. Nematodes offer just one small insight into how “queering” ecology can transform our perspective and open our eyes to what is possible. When the pressures of BYU feel overwhelming, I try to let the nematodes remind me that there is no such thing as an unnatural way to be. Queer ecology offers an alternative.
The field of thought called queer ecology was first introduced by Cate Sandilands in 1994 and questions the underlying assumptions of what is “natural.” Practicing queer ecology involves “queering” your idea of nature: rejecting the separatism of humans from nature, and humans from each other. This field draws on the numerous ways that nature is queer, and how the existence of queerness in nature is evidence that queer humans are just as natural as the roughly 1500 species that have been documented exhibiting same-sex behavior. Queer ecology isn’t trying to attribute human characteristics to animals, but draws parallels between the diverse ways both animals and humans behave in the world.
When I first read about queer ecology, I felt like a lot clicked into place. Studying nematodes has demonstrated to me that the diversity of the natural world is so vast, grander than I had been conditioned to believe by religion. Every time I look in the microscope, I see something that I’ve never seen before. How amazing is that? All life forms are so beautiful and diverse! If there can be millions of unique species of nematodes living underfoot, then it only makes sense that there can be millions of types of humans. Millions of ways of loving our fellow humans. Millions of ways of being a human in the world.
Questions of ecology center around how the different members of an ecosystem are interconnected. The functions of the whole ecosystem wouldn’t be possible without the individual members. You can’t have a healthy plant growing without microbes transforming nitrogen in the soil, and you can’t have a healthy soil microbial community without nematodes feeding on them. I like thinking of my own interconnected identities as an ecological web. I can’t be an effective scientist without also being creative, queer, and feminine.
I hope that the inherent queerness of nature inspires us all to relax our preconceived ideas of what is natural, or possible, or normal, and to lean into what makes us feel human. Eat a ripe peach slowly in the summer, dip your toes into an ice-cold mountain stream, and hug your loved ones close—whatever that love looks like.