In this iconoclastic history, Ross Brooks shows how queerness was at the heart of evolutionists’ thinking about the natural world. From hermaphroditic slugs and sex-changing birds to male pigeon lactation, pregnant male seahorses, and bisexual pigs, Darwin and his fellow naturalists were privately in awe of nature’s sexual diversity. These encounters fundamentally shaped their understanding of plants, animals, and humans, even if they were never fully acknowledged in their published writings.
Brooks radically exposes us to the hidden queerness of Georgian and Victorian science—and shows how nature has always been more sexually diverse than we’ve been told.