Fungi as queer teachers
What is Queer Mycology?
Queer Mycology is the coalescence of queer studies/theory and mycology (the study of fungi) by exploring the connections between fungal biology/ecology and queerness.
And please, before you jump to any conclusions, read the seminal paper which brought the concept of Queer Mycology to the public: Kaishian, Patricia & Djoulakian, Hasmik. (2020). The Science Underground: Mycology as a Queer Discipline.
Fungi challenge the human-constructed notions and “rules” surrounding biological sex, interspecies communication, gender binaries, and even further obscure the long-argued concept of a ‘species’. They have baffled scientific and cultural reductionism for centuries. They have, and continue to call into question traditional approaches of biological classification, ushering us to expand beyond and take a sideways glance at scientific ideologies of static biological “truths”.
Why is it that queerphobia and mycophobia seem to share so many commonalities? Maybe it’s fear of the unknown, of mystery, of cryptic beings we can’t fully understand or classify and thus can’t control. Fungi teach us that diversity is essential, differences are beautiful, decomposition is critical and fluidity is vital for radical adaptation and survival. Embracing queerness and queer perspective is of the essence if we are to collectively dream and stitch our hyphal threads together to weave a new world.
In a time where many continue to perpetuate mycophobia and where many mycologists still classify the ancestral lineages of fungi as “fungi imperfecti” or “lesser fungi” just because they don’t have easily classifiable or observable modes of sexual reproduction, how do we lean in, listen to and learn from fungi instead of fearing their world-shattering and earth-generating ways of being? How do we make the field of mycology, which (at least in the academic sense) has historically been a relatively inaccessible, western, european male dominated field, (as with many of the euro-derived sciences) a safe space for ALL people to engage and participate in the celebration of the fungal kindom?
This pride flag is a composition of all my photos, please credit appropriately
Fungi don’t behave by a doctrine and fungi don’t read books. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if they are completely unconcerned and rather uninterested in any notion of human-generated schemes of catigorization.
Sometimes I imagine that they audibly chuckle at our discussions reguarding the ways we think organisms should be. The way we attempt to fit biological complexity into neat boxes and tidy graphs. That they both laugh and grieve for the way we like to coddle our fear of being completely encompassed by the unknown by thinking we can predict, plan, procure, and therefore have control over the more than human.
Fungi rebel against the very notion of normativity, continuously breaking down barriers of binaries, enzamatically digesting “isms” and paradox-ifying our patterns.
Their very life-way is an antidote to binary systems, having no distinguishable “sexes” or “genders” but rather compatibility is the driving force behind their procreation. They thrive on the edges of inter-species intimacy, wrapping their bodies around cells of distinctly divergent lineages (plants) and even penetrating them as an act of consensual mutuality. This inter-species courtship has been in tact for over 500 million years and is theorized to be one of the fundamental reasons of how life moved from the ocean onto land (1) and even help create the conditions conducive to life as we know it (2).
Filamenous fungi extend their bodies through space and time, coating the branching hyphae in exudates making a biofilm for bacterial populations to travel across, serving as “bacterial highways” (3). What the true function of this may be is multifaceted and still shrouded in mystery. Researchers at the University of Tsukuba say that they get thiamine from the bacteria in return for providing these highways (4). Regardless the exchange, fungi are creating the conditions conducive for other species to literally travel amongst and within their very form, opening themselves (whether intentionally or non intentionally) to embrace other. Sound familiar? Just look at your skin. We are the inter-species holobionts of our ancestors dreams.
If I’ve learned anything from fungi, it’s that I really just don’t know. As soon as I think I know, as soon as I begin to put something into a category of fixity and stasis, they auto-digest it and show me something that puts me on my ass once again in humble acknowledgement to their propensity to confuse and mystify.
Fungi are such a direct doorway to mystery, to liminality, to queerness in every sense of the word. in every literal sense~ taste, touch, smell, feel, hear.
Pictured here is a Russula showing off a unique morphology. The lamellae have begun to grow sideways, forming a perpendicular fruit body growing off of a larger fruit body. This is known as a “rosecomb” mutation and is thought to be an epigenetically inherited mutation that some specific of fungi generate in response to petroleum contamination.
Why do they do this? Why do fungi do anything they do? Ultimately, we are JUST beginning to find out, but we don’t need to know why someone is the way they are to love them.