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

[menopausalmare]

🙄

That already exists in the Marianne North Gallery at Kew...

They are already there. They had a ‘drag queen’ in the magazine writing about how excellent it was to weed your allotment while dressed as Marilyn, or something. And they are in the forefront of the weeds not roses movement.

Every time they write me a begging letter ( I used to be a big donor ) I take some pleasure in telling them to appeal to the Queer Community.

Aren't a number of orchids trans-insects, dolling themselves up to look and smell like bees?

This was raised on the Facebook page before all comments got sanitised. Kew said it was the most widely accepted umbrella term I think. Many people disagreed. All comments were then removed.

That already exists in the Marianne North Gallery at Kew...

I didn't see that! Maybe it is worth paying the exorbitant admission charge to have a look.

It is about women generally or just one though (who paid or the building in fact)?

It's not just colonialism though, plants have followed the movement of people around the globe for thousands of years.

It's very interesting, very significant, but the only reason to call it colonialism is to attach it to a politicized buzzword and make it look like it was some sort of unique, exploitative European thing.

Nor is it a revelation to most that (gasp!) not all the plants they see in gardens, are native species, and many have their origins elsewhere. It could be worth adding the place of origin to some plant labels (although for others it might be tricky,) but to characterize that as "decolonization" is to politicize that information is a ridiculous way. Good seed houses have included that kind of information in catalogue descriptions for ages, colonialism notwithstanding.

Someone said similar about a set of children's toys which were expanded to represent different races, hair types and the like. The exact words were "tedious virtue signalling." It never fails to astonish me why people cannot accept that some things are not for them and therefore will not appeal to them, indeed even leave them slightly baffled if not irked.

When something deviates from the widely accepted 'standard model' it's often looked upon with great suspicion and ridiculed for the crime of being 'overbearing signalling'.

Let people enjoy things that you don't understand, nor care for. For once in a century or 3 it's no longer about you.

I'm sure you could say anything was widely accepted if you silenced all the people who don't accept it.

It is purely about Marianne North, where the walls are entirely filled with her artwork, and obviously notes about all the work that she did.

OK, firstly, Kew Gardens, and plants in general, should be for everyone. Plants are completely apolitical. This completely made up group of people do not need to see themselves represented in plants because no one else is represented in plants. They're just plants.

Secondly, you can't "queer" plants because plants are just plants. In order to find some sort of tenuous link between queer theory and plants they've had to link the word queer with a picture of pansies, both of which have historically been used as homophobic slurs.

So inclusive. So progressive.

I think the whole culture of making everything mirror this agenda is wrong - there is a big difference between being discriminatory and encouraging or embracing an ideology. Most people are heterosexual, most people are live and let live - most people do not want to go to Kew or anywhere else and be subjected to an ideology - they go to look at the plants. There seems to me to be an over emphasis to the point that someone arriving from another planet would think that this most people were not heterosexual.

Apart from anything else, queer people in the sense that the word is used today are heterosexual.

Everything to the right of the LBG broadly means heterosexual.

If you were actually sexually attracted to members of the same sex you'd just call yourself L, G or B.

Do you not see the irony in saying

“Let people enjoy things that you don't understand, nor care for. For once in a century or 3 it's no longer about you.”. ?
when you are arguing in favour of the “queering” of the gardens.

Fans of Kew don’t want it messed around with to fit in with fashionable theories. They are gardeners and those who appreciate gardens, not political theorists. How about letting them enjoy the things they care about?

it’s starting to feel like the Red Guard has arrived to destroy the Olds.

This!

Accepting and supporting people with diverse sexualities and identities in society does not mean we have to make everything all about those people's sexualities and identities.

And if acceptance is the actual goal here, shoehorning sexual and identity politics into absolutely everything whether it is remotely relevant or not is likely to have the opposite effect. People are starting to get pissed off with it all now.

The way to demonstrate that gay people and trans people are just normal people is for them to act, and the rest of us to treat them, like normal people.

(For what it's worth, I am not assuming that the person or people behind this particular "queer nature" initiative are either gay or trans.)

They’ll probably just be men in suits Margot, box ticking the DEI box, content delivered by a freelance believer.

Yes, me too. Can’t watch or listen to either of them and definitely can’t take them seriously as scientists.

‘Queering’ things isn’t about representation for lesbian, gay and bi people (so it’s nothing like making sure racial minority kids can see real-life role models, fictional characters and play with toys who look like they do) it’s about normalising fringe sexual interests, moving the taboo from the margins to the mainstream. Queer Theory constantly moves the goal posts and chips away at societal and individual boundaries.

Homosexual people were historically marginalised (and still are in some parts of the world) but by all the usual metrics (education, work, property ownership, family & partnerships) homosexual people in the U.K. are no longer marginalised*, being LGor B is mainstream, which is why proponents of Queer Theory have moved on from ‘Recognise same sex partnerships in law’ to ‘There is no such thing as biological sex so who even cares about same-sex marriage? That’s for Tory Boomers!’

Queer Theory is why we’ve gone from telling little kids ‘some families have two mummies’ (entirely reasonable and age appropriate) to giving kids picture books featuring bondage grandads and having adult males dressed in women’s clothes teach toddlers to twerk in libraries.

Most LGB people think Bondage Grandad is as inappropriate for little kids as most straights do (and not all Bondage Grandads are Gay anyway, the ‘Spicy Straights’ are just as keen on using Queer Theory to normalise their kinks as the Blue Hairs are)

If Kew want to run some late night events for Bondage Grandads (straight, gay or bi) and their Allies, that’s fine, just keep it to it’s own ticketed event and stop trying to Queer the perfectly sensible boundaries society needs to keep children and vulnerable adults safe.

(*Obvs there are still day to day challenges for gay people including religious objections and prejudiced individuals but LGB people are recognised in criminal and civil law as equal to heterosexual people, as they should be)

O bloody hell. Most of the plants in Kew were brought here by plant collectors gathering new exotic species. If the planting is de-colonised there'll be no Kew left. Stick some luxury Riverside apartments on it instead, it's not as if the south bank hasn't got enough of those already, sitting empty from Waterloo to Battersea.

I think they are allowed to keep the plants, so long as they include a mea culpa around how evil and colonial it was to be interested and collect them in the first place.

@Thelnebriati

two points

1. it’s called x now.
2. it is full of egotistical idiots and utter crazies so anyone who uses it as a reference is sort of defining themselves.

@DojaPhat Someone said similar about a set of children's toys which were expanded to represent different races, hair types and the like. The exact words were "tedious virtue signalling." It never fails to astonish me why people cannot accept that some things are not for them and therefore will not appeal to them, indeed even leave them slightly baffled if not irked.

Really? Where? That's a bit dim.

I'm a bit bemused by you drawing parallels between toys which reflect different ethnicities and anthropomorphising plants. Can you explain the link?

I believe that the "decolonisation" came off of the back of the George Floyd/BLM protests. So we know that they're trying to put it in the context of slavery and empire, not natural migration of human beings over millennia.

@Clymene Your bemusement is to be expected. It doesn't appear to me that Kew are anthropomorphising plants, nor trying to queer plants as a pp had mentioned. It seems from a cursory look one of many of such events held by Kew. They also have an event in relation to plants from the Quaran and various other events appear to be aimed at kids and elderly people. This queer event is no different from those. It appears a designer who used inspiration from their botanic pursuits will explain how various plants and whatever else inspired their designs which in turn was used as inspo for a catwalk collection.

There was a thread similarly r.e. the Globe and a queer performance, and again the multitude of threads about the latest woke company to boycott. It would indeed be bemusing were it not that these groups of people by and large cannot operate in the world independently of people who would rather they adhered to the status quo, or just altogether live in box in outer space if they can't find it in themselves to adhere to the status quo.

Though not something I directly related to I once listened to a woman talking about the ways in which her fascination and interest in plants saved her mental health. She used various plant types to illustrate different stages of her depression for the theme. Nobody said she was saying cactuses are manic depressives. Though it's not something I can relate to having nothing of a green finger I often think about her talk.

This thread is basically WF on acid.

Thanks for a really long explanation that didn't actually answer my question @DojaPhat. So not remotely connected to some random person objecting to children's toys that reflect different ethnicities then?

Good to know 👍

Also what does queer have to do with white feminism?