Oh Kew, not you too.......

[menopausalmare]

🙄

Yes, that's right.

I guess he's consistently for importing things, then? Plants, recipes, etc? I can appreciate that, I am all for borrowing from other cultures - that's what culture is, in a way.

But the idea that interest in indigenous plants, ecosystems, and arts traditions is racist is a bit much.

10p - 2p - 3d in old money - I REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULD GET I FOR HALF AN OLD BURNT MATCHSTICK, I'M OLD I AM!
Seriously though, queering nature, pansies, what a bloody stretch. Nonsense.

I do like that there has been a bit of competition over who paid the least to get into Kew.

I'm just scratching my head a bit about the queering of nature. I mean it is hardly new information that a lot of flora does it own thing when it comes to pollination, but trying to apply human thought processes to plants is a very strange take.

www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-on/queer-nature

Sackler this, Sackler that were all over the place: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_the_Sackler_family#United_Kingdom

Transplanting plants is what we humans do. If we sent all the plants back, we'd only grow cereals in Turkey, apples in the Balkans (I think) and all the solanacae in Latin America. Except aubergines. India. Which was growing a South American species of datura 2000 years ago.
James Wong went down in my estimation by importing a US pronunciation for St John's Wort, which should be wurt, not wart. He interviewed a botanist in a field who pronounced in British English, and he mirrored her, but back in his kitchen, back to warting.

Why do I see:

"Queer nature"

But hear the late great M Burns:

"Queers gender"

(Featuring head bob and )

?

How can nature be queered? Self-pollinaters are trans? Budders and runners are bi?

What a load of rubbish. Plants are surely the ultimate in biological reality.

What are the "traditional expectations" that they think people have about plants and nature? They refer to this without any explanation, as if it were self evident.

This project seems mostly to be about art that features nature, produced by LGB and TQ+ artists, which is of course an absolutely reasonable thing to do. But nature is not "queerable", it is what it is, and anything "queer" is an overlay on top, a perception or an artistic interpretation.

@Talltall, I have two problems with the title of this.

1. Older LGB people have very bad associations with the word queer, as it was used to insult them and there was even a word 'queerbashing' for the homophobes who beat up gay men and lesbians.
2. Queer theory is a very dubious academic theory about dismantling safeguarding measures and all sorts of barriers which try to keep children, women and other vulnerable people safe from male violence and predatory sexual behaviour.

My other objection is that nobody ever defines 'queer'. It doesn't seem to mean same-sex attracted. It looks like it's a word people self-identify into to say they are not just boring and ordinary, like the rest of us. They identify as being different and special as a result of feeling they don't follow gender norms. Well, guess what, a lot of us women also don't follow gender norms, but we know that isn't actually all that unusual, and it doesn't stop us knowing what sex we are and getting on with life.

Queering nature?

Queer is a social construct entirely invented by humans.

Imposing human ideology of dubious origin on the plant world. I think this has to be one of the weirdest gender cult events to date. Agree with PPs this is likely down to a donation and/or a forthcoming Stonewall champion application. What's next? Queering of cars? Amoeba? Soup?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g , exactly! When I was at school calling someone a bender or queer was a really nasty slur. Queer by definition means odd. A group of people who want acceptance in society marketing themselves as queer is a bit of an oxymoron and pushing these ideas into many areas of life including plants is weirder still. I don't get what they're trying to achieve here🤷

I remember when it was a Penny and had been for many years

What's wrong with Alice Roberts? My dad and step mum love her cause my step brother knows her (or his ex went to school with her, something random) Surely with her education and interests she can't believe TWAW.

Is it clown fish o'clock?

Sadly she does. Here's a sample:

How I feel in myself has no bearing on what someone feels. If someone who looks like a man and has XY chromosomes tells me he feels female - I cannot tell her she is ‘wrong’. Would you?

https://twitter.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1141261931556286464

Lots more on this thread (and others).

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3616759-Alice-Roberts-what-the-hell?page=1

This seems to be kind of a theme with the people who like this stuff. Like the thread about the NT, where there seems to be a kind of total assumption that anyone who disagrees with that kind of DEI influenced approach to museums or history is really ignorant about historical research, or is "uncomfortable" hearing things that they apparently don't regard as "normal".

They seem to think everyone else is not only deeply conventional but can't conceive of anything else. With their traditional views about plants!

Hahaha. Is this like the gay nit comb?

Have they got some lesbian daffodils next to some non-binary crocuses?

A lot of the staff wear rainbow lanyards, so assume that they have had Pride events before.

The "headlines" are bad enough but look at the "performers"/performances. Grim.

Notice how the evening show featuring drag artists etc details every performer with pronouns, yet elsewhere on the website Kew don't do it.

I've seen this with other organisations/publications, only the "queer" pages put pronouns against people, elsewhere on those websites they don't bother.

Say what now?

I recently went in using my brother's membership card. The rainbow lanyard person checking tickets asked me if I was sure this was my card as it said 'Mr' and I was a woman. These people clearly don't practice what they preach if they are happy to openly question my gender identity pronouns😂

Yeah, I was wondering if it was like the National Trust where staff were "strongly" encouraged to wear them, rather than it being a signifier of one's sexual orientation.

Me too! Everyone complained when it suddenly went up to 10 p 😂