Apparently, Yale is a prestigious American university which people pay good money to go to. To prove it, it has its own world-leading University Press, which publishes incredibly academic-sounding books like the new release pictured below, which ‘proves’ Charles Darwin was “privately in awe of Nature’s sexual diversity”, but could never openly admit the fact because rampant Victorian-era transphobia meant he’d get his head kicked in by Soapy Sam Wilberforce if he ever did.
Did life on Earth really have “Queer Origins”, though? Are amino acids, amoebas and infusoria really members of Stonewall and GLAAD? Isn’t it a commonplace of Mother-Father Nature’s ways that homosexuals cannot generally reproduce? I don’t know if the author realises this fact, but Elton John’s ‘son’ didn’t just drop out of his bum one day. But then, maybe the author doesn’t realise this fact, as he/him is Ross Brooks, an “independent historian of science and foundational thinker in queer history and the history of sexology” – hence his expert knowledge about “hermaphroditic slugs”, “male pigeon lactation” and “bisexual pigs”, who are surely both Pinky and Perky simultaneously. His website features truly laughable stuff like this:
I realise this is April 1st, but Brooks’s prior academic publishing history genuinely does include, inter genitalia, the following papers:
- Darwin’s Closet: The Queer Sides of The Descent of Man [Into Abject Stupidity?]
- Queer Birds: Avian Sex-Reversal and the Origins of Modern Sexology
- Queer Birds II: Sexual Transitions in Edwardian Britain
- ‘How Devastating is Truth!’
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Tomatoes are hermaphrodites.
When I first learned that in biology at school, aged about 11, I was in a terrible state in case I was one too!
🤣🤣🤣excellent, hmm, I wonder if the tinned variety can sue for imprisonment?,
Fruit is a botanical term for the edible part of a plant that develops from the flower of the plant and has seeds or remnants of seeds.
Vegetable is a culinary term for the edible part of a plant that is not a fruit.
It is also a term for a worryingly large part of the population.
Anyone who thinks that the wonderful variety in nature is something new must be in a vegetative state.
Anything that has gender must have syntax.
This is such a truckload of bullshit. Vegetable is not a social construct. It’s a term used to refer to plants which are usually not eaten as-is in Europe cuisine(s) in the same way the term table is used to refer to a certain kind of furniture and people could as well claim that table is a social construct (instead of a thing) and that tables are really gender-fluid because some tables could be regarded or used as stools and vice versa.
Further, what this guy believes about tomatoes (or tables) is totally irrelevant for his sex because he’s neither a tomato nor a table.
My Dad used to pay the local farmer 10 bob for a cart-load. Lovely veg, particularly new potatoes.
Much ado about nothing.
Two tomatoes and a cucumber – all fruits botanically treated as vegetables in the kitchen.
That’s an important point: Fruit refers to a certain kind of plant, vegetable to a customary use for certain kinds of plants. Tomatoes can be used as vegetables, eg, by cooking or roasting them or turning them into soup. Or they can just be eaten as-is, like apples or pears.
No plant is a vegetable.
Anyone suggesting that a new species of Solanum has such a thing as ‘gender’ (as the New York Post seems to do) is mad. Unfortunately the conflation of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ seems to still be rife, including among those whose aim seems to be to (over)emphasise the queerness of the natural world. Plasticity of ‘sexual expression’ is not unknown among plants – yew and holly trees are generally male or female, but male trees can occasionally produce fruiting branches and even the Chelsea Physic Garden refers to this on their website as the tree ‘changing gender’, which is obviously not what is happening.
Totally believable in this fu@ked up world!
April fools day just doesn’t have the same bite anymore, any shyte like this is possible all year round!
Q: What’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom?
A: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad.
Carrot cake?
Tomatoes go well with grapes in a salad.
Thanks for a splendid article on a very interesting and important topic.
Please say this is a joke! Even if it’s a lie, I can’t stand inhabiting the same world as these idiots
These are bullshit artists or people getting their lines from bullshit artists.
Let’s hope it’s true because then fruit & veg have Rights and that’s really going to screw things up for Vegans – plant murderers! And eating baby carrots alive. Gasp!
Vegetables must be Humanly slaughtered, stunned first not just plunged conscious into boiling water or hot oils. And skinning them alive must be banned.
I don’t mind living in the same world as them. Takes all sorts. I do mind living in a world where you’re not allowed to laugh your head off at them!
This has to be an April fool. Say it is so
But this sort if nonsense if promulgated all year round.
It’s an awful lot of effort for an April Fool’s joke in an online forum with a couple of dozen commentators… 🤷🏼
Maybe but in times like these it’s very plausible 🤦🏼♂️😵💫