by The natural world is full of gender diversity: female hyenas use pseudo penises for sex and urination, many species of fish and plants change their sex over their lifetime, and female lions are known to grow manes and male ones grow to develop.
Those are among many examples in new episodes of CBCs The Nature of Things titled Fluid: Life Beyond the Binary — a documentary hosted by Canadian comedian Mae Martin that puts the gender spectrum that humans present in the context of the rest of the living things around us, and discovers that it’s just as well for the course.
“Nature teaches us that there is a lot of variation out there and that generalization is pretty much impossible,” says Joan Roughgarden, an evolutionary biologist interviewed in the episode, who wrote a book titled Game Rainbow Evolution.
Female hyenas have a false penis and are best described as intersex, according to the scientists interviewed in Fluid: Life Beyond the Binary. (Kensington Communications)
Roughgarden says that scientists have long avoided investigating gender variation, leading some to mistakenly believe that it did not always exist among many types of organisms, including humans.
But when she saw the diversity among her own peers at events that celebrate gay pride it was clear to her that “there is nothing to do with the people. There is something to do with the science.”
‘Nature teaches us that there is a lot of variation out there and that it is impossible to make a lot of generalisations,’ says evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden. (Lulu Wei/Kensington Communications)
The show, which airs Thursdays on CBC and CBC Gem at 9 pm ET, includes many examples of gender and sexual diversity in the wild, such as:
-
Ruffs: a type of sandpiper found in Norwegian fjords. The male birds have many different appearances, including some that look the same to the females.
-
Bonobos: “I would say bonobos are bisexual in that they have sex in every combination,” said primatologist Frans de Waal, who was filmed for the show before his death on March 14 at the age of 75. “It’s also quite common to find females which have masculine characteristics.” He described one woman named Donna who he noticed, who grew more masculine in appearance as she aged, and who was “remarkably well received” by men. “She was an individual who crossed the binary … Perhaps she corresponds to what we would call a human transhuman.”
-
Clownfish – a tropical species made famous by the family animated film Game Finding Nemo. Neuroscientist Justin Rhodes explains that “if the female is removed or displaced, the male will change sex and become a female. He explains that many species of fish can change their biological sex – about 500, according to some another part of the episode – but most often change from female to male, often within a week. The case of clownfish is unique in that the physical changes can take years, making the t-fish in an “intermediate state” biologically as it begins to adopt the behavior of women. “The gonads must not define the sex of these animals … it is happening in the brain.”
‘These are not outliers’
“It touches my heart because I see aspects of myself reflected in nature,” says host Martin, who is non-binary, noting that science has come to accept widespread natural gender diversity.
“These are not outliers. This is the mainstream view.”
The plant world is also full of gender fluidity, says horticulturist Jon Peter, of the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) in Burlington, Ont.
Peter appears in the episode discussing red ginger, a tropical plant that is male in the morning, produces pollen, and changes to female in the afternoon, moving into a position where its egg can be fertilized.
There are also many local examples, Peter noted in an interview with CBC Hamilton this week:
-
Maples, or sheep maples, start out as male when young but can produce both male and female flowers as they age and then female flowers as they mature and get closer to the canopy of the forest. “When they are young and young, they want to lay down and establish their roots. It does not make sense for them to produce fruit.”
-
Sitka, which can have “female cones higher up in the canopy, and there will be male cones” at the lower branches on the same tree.
-
Jack-in-the-Pulpit, a forest plant that begins as an “asexual juvenile,” becomes a male, and turns female later in life.
Although not native to Ontario, ginkgo is widely cultivated here, including at the RBG. Peter says that although there are separate male and female trees, a branch or a whole tree can change to female if there are no other females around for pollination.
Primates often exhibit gender-fluid behavior, according to the documentary. (Kensington Communications)
“A lot of this is really new to science, there’s not much out there about these processes,” he said, suggesting they may have evolved as a way to pass genetics on to the next generation. .
“As that plant matures and its life cycle comes to an end, it thinks ‘I have to produce seed now.’
‘Gender is a much wider spectrum than both boxes’
The episode’s editor, Peter Topalovic, says he always learns something doing his job, whether he’s editing a baking show or Canada’s Got Talent, but he says the episode taught him more than which was expected.
Topalovic, who grew up in Hamilton and attended Bishop Ryan Catholic Middle School, says the show affirms the normalcy of all forms of gender and sexuality expression.
“When you look at the unbiased scientific results, as we do in this documentary, you see that fluid is not unusual at all,” he told CBC Hamilton in an interview.
“There’s a much wider spectrum of gender than the two boxes we put people into. There’s masculine, feminine and so much in between.”
Film editor Peter Topalovic, who grew up in Hamilton, says discussing gender on The Nature of Things will bring awareness to a wider audience. (Submitted by Peter Topalovic)
He is happy that the range is wide The Nature of Things it will bring gender issues to some people who haven’t thought much about it before.
“I know my older, Croatian parents will be tuning in to learn about content they wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to,” he said.
“With this documentary, I hope that more trans people feel seen and more cis people feel sorry for them.”
