Awfully queer science

[IwantToRetire]

I was at a seminar hosted by the LGBTQ+ journal club of Oxford University’s biology department, who had invited guest speaker Ross Brooks (he/him) from Oxford Brookes University (no relation) on the other side of town.

Dr Brooks, a historian, was promoting his research into Darwin’s views on all things queer, to be revealed in a forthcoming book Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life. That the book is to be published by Yale University Press is itself evidence of Brooks’s claim that queerness (whatever this means) is now a part of science. That Brooks had been invited to talk at Oxford’s famous biology department, the birthplace of The Selfish Gene and plenty more besides, may be seen as further evidence.

But the fact that it is a part of science does not mean that it should be one.

Full article https://thecritic.co.uk/awfully-queer-science/

Still, it's a living.

oh have a day off...
the notion that observations on animal behaviour were informed by victorian morality is not a new concept. There are some hilarious developments of our understanding of mating in birds, specifically the promiscuity of female birds, that was beyond the imagination of darwin and his peers.
This sounds like an interesting lecture/book that interrogates how far that heteronormative and victorian framework might have informed early conversations

Jumping and bandwagon come to mind. Like the Grinch card in Sainsbury's, except this'll be more successful.
I'm sure there'll be some interesting facts and information, but his book wouldn't get as much publicity if he didn't use that wonderfully popular word

You can see the American influence on this ideology, they real hate Darwin in the USA, they can't fault his science so they attack him as a man, which will undermine his science instead.

I'm sure there were all sort of biases in observations (worse nowadays I find) and yet Darwin proposed a concept of evolution based on his observations that has stood up to all attacks that have been launched at it and it will survive this middling bandwagon jumping historian too.

Absolutely - it should always be understood that scientists can be biased, and it’s why we have scientific methods of experimentation and peer scrutiny, and science is constantly striving to clarify and make use of new robust evidence.

But what makes these perfectly mundane observations “queer” ?

Ah, I have just read the article. It’s not about new science, it’s work from a historian offering a “queer” interpretation and critique of Darwin’s notebooks from the 19th century.

Presumably because “queering” is good for research funding in the humanities.

It’s unrelated to advances in science and our understanding of human biology made since Darwin’s times.

And he's not much of a historian as far as I can see.

I mainly posted the link because I liked the tone, or maybe I mean style, of the article.

Sort of taking the piss, but being quite firm that queerness is not part of science.

J.B.S. Haldane said "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, but queerer than we can imagine." I'm sure it has some relevance to this thread.

But he has the safety of making a statement using the word queer, many years before it was "liberated" by self important students and professors.

I am happy to accept that quote within the context of queer in its original meaning rather than the queer construct as used now:

"queer theory" emerged as an academic field in the early 1990s, influenced by post-structuralist philosophers like Michel Foucault and developed by scholars such as Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The first queer theory conference was organized by Teresa de Lauretis in 1990.

Unlike earlier homophile or gay rights movements, which often focused on achieving equal rights within existing social structures (like marriage or military service), queer politics is defined by:

• Anti-Assimilation: A rejection of mainstream social norms and institutions, pushing for broader social transformation rather than assimilation into dominant culture.
• Challenging Binaries: A focus on dismantling traditional categories of gender and sexuality (e.g., man/woman, gay/straight), emphasizing their fluidity and social construction rather than biological essentialism.
• Intersectionality: A commitment to understanding how sexuality intersects with other forms of oppression, such as racism and classism, in an effort to form broader coalitions for social justice.

So, basically, dodgy AF, then.

Made me read wiki on JBSH. Not for the first time, I think, whadda guy! A better and brighter mind than the likes of Judith Butler.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane