Showing respect
The writing questions that keep me awake at night
This spring, as I was finishing the first draft of my new book on ecology, environmental defence and queer/trans liberation, there were several questions disturbing my sleep. Not least among them… how do we stop the devastation and how do we grow our resilience? Rather than hide from these subjects, I decided to tackle them head-on as much as I could.
There are no easy answers and there is one question in particular that I’ve been chewing on for years:
As I tell all these stories about ecosystems and diversity, as I learn from starlings and lichens, where is the line between respect and objectification? Am I showing enough respect and how would I ever know?
As I’ve dived deeper into the subjects that really move me, I find myself telling more and more stories of non-human life. That work comes with risks.
Many of us look to patterns in wider nature to justify human-specific ways of living and that includes, for example, queerness. We might look at same-sex penguin partnerships and say, well then, human same-sex partnerships must also be fine and natural. If penguins can do it, so can we.
Firstly, it’s good to remember that there are no universal criteria for defining sex, so one of the assumptions for this argument - that there are clearly defined sexes - is pretty unstable.
And secondly, whatever penguins might get up to, we are allowed to exist in all our queer beauty. This is a central theme of the book but I want to shout it loud and clear: the ways we live, the ways we love, identify or organise for our survival don’t need any justification. Besides, what is considered natural or not is a very dangerous way to justify anything.
I grew up in a culture that objectifies, utilises and exploits other species at every opportunity and I think that might be as true for ‘gay penguins’ as anyone else.
Over the years, I’ve also learned to be wary of the use of non-human life as metaphor - as if queer animals, mycelial networks, or flocks of starlings don’t exist for their own reasons but are just a handy parable on how humans might organise ourselves. I find that without a close connection to the organisms in question, this creation of metaphors, which is really a form of story-telling, can easily slide into objectification.
It’s tempting and I’m very much part of it.
Murmurations
I’ve written for example about the flocking behaviour (murmurations) of common starlings, Sturnus vulgaris. My first novel from 2017 was called Margins and Murmurations and it’s fair to say that I had already been obsessed with them for a long time.
Starling flocks involve complex behaviour that emerges from relatively simple rules. It has taken decades of research for researchers to get a grasp on those rules, but they seem to include ‘be attracted to other starlings at dusk…’ ‘…but don’t crash into them’ ‘respond to your closest six or seven neighbours’ and ‘if a predator comes, surround yourself with other starlings’. [1, 2]
Out of these relatively simple rules emerge the pulsing, dancing flocks that, among other effects, have the power to cause distracted and disconnected humans to pause their busy lives, to look up from their phones and even, maybe, to gasp in awe. Brighton, where I once lived, used to be host to spectacular murmurations of thousands of starlings over the beach every evening. Watching the birds - but also watching the people watch the birds - changed something in me.
I still see a few starlings today, albeit in much smaller groups, exploring the platforms of some Berlin train stations for crumbs or nesting in the rafters above, mimicking the sounds of public transport. There are only a few left: like many songbirds, their populations have been devastated across Europe.
Starlings and their murmurations are surely among the great wonders in this life and they are a recurring theme in my writing and dreaming. As a community organiser and a human being, I find it inspiring to learn from such manifestations of collective communication and coordination. And quite simply I find them beautiful and joyous to be around.
Which brings me to the question of respect.
Respect and humility should be a foundation when it comes to learning from others. I have known common starlings my whole life and spent uncountable hours in their presence, which makes this reminder feel even more pressing for me.
I also want to remember that what / who I’m referring to here as ‘common starlings’ are a whole species. In my observation, they very much have individual personalities, preferences and memories and no more exist in the abstract than if I talked about my human friends as just “humans, Homo sapiens.”
One thing I am truly certain of: they don’t exist just to teach me something.
And yet, while I try to be cognisant of projecting onto starlings or penguins, woodland fungi or willow trees, I’m not sure it’s completely avoidable. Perhaps this is just the way that sensual bodies interact with each other.
I can aim to be more aware of my personal projections and the cultural narratives I am conditioned by, to have more mindful interactions with actual organisms embedded in their ecosystems and relationships. And still there might be limits to how much we can ever really understand each other.
As risky as it can be, I believe that projecting our values onto (individuals of) other species can sometimes bring us into a closer relationship with them. It will certainly be closer than if we ignore them or think of them only as ‘resources’ to be exploited.
And of course none of this is new. We have always tried to understand the others in our ecosystems. We’ve always sought out ways in which our lives and our communities manifest as part of something larger. Exploring the unfathomable diversity of the world, and learning more about our place in it, can empower us to continue our struggles for liberation - for our species and for all others. For me at least, that feels like a worthy enough reason to keep trying.