Paper short abstract:

Recent biology literature that challenges the field's longstanding investment in cisheteronormativity, and queer/trans ecology theory and method, are brought together to fashion anti-disciplinary practices for scientific researching and teaching on nonhuman animals toward more liberatory ends.

Paper long abstract:

A growing body of scholarship in the natural sciences is (re)analyzing prominent data sets, deconstructing common research methods, and closely-reading canonical publications to reveal how underlying cisheteronormativity shapes foundational theories and methods in basic biological research on nonhuman animals. In animal behavior, Monk et al (2019) find that the study of sexual behavior in animals has been limited by unchecked assumptions about costs and benefits in the study of “aberrant homosexual behavior.” In evolutionary biology, Tombak et al (2023) reveal how crude definitions of “sexual dimorphism” and taxonomically-biased data has bolstered the false binaristic narrative that male mammals are generally larger than females.

This paper engages with and extends this literature in two ways: First, I position a synthesis of recent critical biology publications in direct conversation with the vocabularies and frameworks from queer/trans ecology scholarship in order to chart paths for future anti-disciplinary research. Then, I discuss pedagogical approaches demanded by such pathways through analyzing a classroom-based case study: Co-teaching, with a biologist colleague, a module on sexual selection theory using queer trans STS frameworks in an evolutionary theory course. I outline tools for building a queer approach to teaching basic biology that centers an understanding of our other-than-human relations as always embodied, affective, and emplaced (Hazard 2022; Liboiron 2021). Ultimately, I aim to generate ideas for solidarity practices between critical biology/ists and queer and trans scholarship/scholars that might transform the scientific study of nonhuman animals toward more liberatory ends.