Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life: Ross Brooks on the History of Sex and Science

What did Darwin and Linnaeus really think about sex? It's time to find out!

In print, their descriptions of animal courtship painted a comfortingly traditional picture: males were belligerent show-offs, females were choosy and skittish, and the two came together in unions curiously akin to human marriage. But in truth, the forefathers of evolutionary science were acutely aware that this was not the whole story. The reality was far more messy and ambiguous.

In this iconoclastic history, Ross Brooks shows how queerness was at the heart of evolutionists’ thinking about the natural world.

From hermaphroditic slugs and sex-changing birds to male pigeon lactation, pregnant male seahorses, and bisexual pigs, Darwin and his fellow naturalists were privately in awe of nature’s sexual diversity. These encounters fundamentally shaped their understanding of plants, animals, and humans, even if they were never fully acknowledged in their published writings.

Join us for a summer evening with Brooks, as he radically exposes us to the hidden queerness of Georgian and Victorian science—and shows how nature has always been more sexually diverse than we’ve been told!

Our Speaker:

Ross Brooks (he/him) is an independent historian of science and a foundational thinker in queer history and the history of sexology. He regularly speaks on the queer history of science at events across the UK, and he features in the pioneering documentary Queer Planet.

Our Chair:

Kevin Guyan is a researcher whose work explores the intersection of data and identity, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ people in the UK. He is the author of Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) and Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).