Episode 111: Nathan Lents on the queerness of animals

~ Kathleen Collins

This is a great conversation between my brilliant John Jay colleagues Dr. Nathan Lents, Professor of Biology, and Dr. Olivera Jokić, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies and Director of the Gender Studies Program. The occasion is the publication of Nathan’s most recent book, The Sexual Evolution: How 500 million years of sex, gender and mating shape modern relationships. The book is about sexual behavior throughout the animal kingdom, what animals have to tell us about sex and gender, and in every sense of the word, the queerness of animals.

The conversation ventures into matters such as the limitations and even dangers of the preference for the human binary and those pesky Victorian buckets of maleness and femaleness; what does it mean to call something natural or unnatural; challenging the notion of the “survival of the fittest”; the benefits of neurodiversity; social control and its relation to categories; and spies and the role of taboos around sex. This conversation itself, a cross between a humanist and a scientist, exemplifies the benefits of variation. As Nathan says, “Diversity is often the point.”

You can hear more about Dr. Jokić’s recent work on Episode 106 in conversation with Dr. Dijana Jelača.

A chock-full bibliography featuring related and discussed works, provided by Dr. Jokić:

Listen to Episode 111 now! (Apple Podcasts)

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