Mastodawn

anomalocaris Jul 30, 2023

Here's a botanical gripe that drives me up the wall every so often: using gendered terms for plants. We talk about male and female parts and while reproduction-wise it's understandable how it got to be that way, it's actually massively unhelpful because people can't stop themselves from having all these connotations of gender roles, just like they do for people, but for plants. Which isn't just my conjecture - historically, women were prohibited from being botanists because of these gendered ideas, because of female eggs being impregnated by pollen from male parts, flowers with anthers and styles being described as a bed with so many men and so many women... it was all considered far too hot and steamy for the suggestible female mind.

Which is why for centuries, European women were generally only able to enter the field of botany by becoming illustrators. Most great botanical illustrators from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were women.

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Just one example: the mindblowing volume that botanist Anne Wollstonecraft wrote in the 1820s in Cuba, only permissable because she did so under the guise of being an illustrator - beside making exquisite illustrations and detailed descriptions, she interviewed the indigenous people of Cuba and wrote about the ways in which they saw and used plants. Something a gentleman explorer would never ever do! The book was never published, only a single (!) hand-written (!!!) volume exists. It makes one weep at what could have been, had women been permitted to participate in this sexy, horny field of botany. How much richer we could all have been, how much more complete our understanding of the world. All because we had to frontload the whole thing with our own prejudices and sexist nonsense.

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anomalocaris Jul 30, 2023

Returning to my original point, which I lost sight of almost immediately: I wish we would stop referring to plants by the gendered terms we invented to refer to ourselves. Plants don't have genders, and thinking they do has caused a surprising amount of misery.

A happier postscript: to this day, there's a strong tradition of female botanical illustrators in Europe and the UK; I know plenty personally, all the masters are women. As has always been the case, people are resilient in the face of oppression, and so things improve and times change - though the past echoes on forever.

By the way, the mindblowing volume, "Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba", which was discovered only a few years ago, can be viewed here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924100271489

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Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba, v.3+.

HathiTrust

Ricós has moved Jul 30, 2023

@anomalocaris Thank you, I didn't know anything about this

Margaret, Lady Terpsichore Jul 30, 2023

@anomalocaris thank you for this!

rsp Jul 30, 2023

@LadyTerpsichore @anomalocaris The part about female botanists is spot on. The part about gender in plants, I think, is a bit more complicated. Many plants have individuals that produce sperm and individuals that produce ova. Those plants have what I'd call sexes (male and female). Botanists traditionally use the term gender instead of sex for some reason. But most plants are more complicated than male and female. And even in the simple cases, it's only the gametophytes that produce the gametes.

rsp Jul 30, 2023

@LadyTerpsichore @anomalocaris For example, a fern like you'd buy in a pot is a sporophyte (it doesn't make gametes) and is thus neither male nor female nor anything in between. But the spores grow up into gametophytes which do meiosis and make gametes (sperm that swim and ova that are fertilized). A fern gametophyte is a tiny, fragile little thing--but is a plant nonetheless--and they come in male or hermaphrodite.

anomalocaris Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau Does that little gametophyte have a gender, though? And 'hermaphrodite' refers to Hermes and Aphrodite - what does that have to do with a plant? That's what I'm driving at. We're using confusing terms that could be replaced by better ones, both more informative and carrying with them less of a cultural and social burden.

rsp Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris Given that the meaning of the term gender has changed, sex [may?] be the more accurate biological term. Yes, the little gametophyte is either male or a combination of male and female. I don't see what's wrong with using a term derived from a fascinating Greek myth. The only other choice is to use a random letter generator to coin a new term. How about Abbatitate = an individual that produces both sperm and ova?

I guess I'm just not seeing where the confusion and burden is.

anomalocaris Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau I entirely agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with these words, the problem for me comes from the connotations they have for many people - sex and gender are very much mixed up in our language. Male and female plants, while referring to genetic states, inevitably conjure up ideas of gender for people. I teach and I talk a lot about plants, and I know people will describe dioecious or grafted plants as transgender, even if only jokingly.

I'm talking about plants because that's what I know - but maybe it would be better to drill down into the language to disambiguate the ideas of sex and gender entirely. Have 'sex' refer to a genetic or physiological state, and 'gender' exclusively to the human condition, so we wouldn't have to change a bunch of terminology, just two definitions. But somehow, that seems no more surmountable a task, and even the physiological descriptor would be full of exceptions and peculiarities when applied to the entire living world.

rsp Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris Studying the etymology of the word gender reveals its meaning has been in flux for quite some time. This is true of many words and is just the nature of language. Its fascinating that botanists seem to have used gender when other biologists have used sex. The word sex to refer to male and female has been more stable. So I still dont see any issues with continuing with that term.

rsp Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris When we coin new terms, everyone then must learn meaning of both terms in order to understand the historical literature. So the problem doesnt just go away....it compounds.

rsp Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris Nature is so diverse that there will always be "exceptions and peculiarities when applied to the entire living world". No terminological scheme can ever be created to encapsulate it all.

anomalocaris Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau Goodness knows we keep trying... as the old adage goes:

Margaret, Lady Terpsichore Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau @anomalocaris As plant people, we are already used to having to remember both new and old plant names (nobody’s favorite part of the job, but people sure love to argue about it hahaha) so while I’m sure the memorization wouldn’t be a problem, getting us to agree on new terms would be a nightmare

rsp Jul 31, 2023

@LadyTerpsichore @anomalocaris When theres good justification we have to tolerate terminology changes. I'm just not seeing the need for a change. Other than to get botanists to stop using the word gender....which wasn't really ever correct to begin with.

Margaret, Lady Terpsichore Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau @anomalocaris fwiw I don’t see gender in any of my (recent) botany or horticulture textbooks, so that’s 👍

rsp Jul 31, 2023

@LadyTerpsichore @anomalocaris But.... "while continued use of gender in the context of plant sexuality may seem insensitive to the substantial changes in that word's vernacular meaning in some societies, its use to denote the context-dependent and quantitative...sex roles played by plants would...be coherent with some features of these societal trends; we might thus exploit this resonance in opening the botanical world to our students, rather than seeking to avoid it."

https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16195

anomalocaris Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau That is a great article, and one I hadn't seen so thank you very much for linking it. I suppose it's the other way around of looking at it, using this legacy use of language to make things more interesting and appealing, to make new connections to turn the old ones on their head, to some extent.

"Importantly, the functional gender of a plant depends not just on the sex-allocation strategy it adopts but also on that of other individuals in the population. In this sense, a plant's functional gender is a constructed variable in ways that resonate with the notion of constructed gender in human societies."

I rather like that line of thinking - it does require some extra instruction to get across, but it would certainly be a very engaging lecture to give or book to write.

rsp Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris I found the article very illuminating on many points--being more of a zoologist than a botanist many of these concepts are only vaguely familiar. Thanks for leading me to discover it!

Margaret, Lady Terpsichore Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau @anomalocaris I’m not a botanist, but I am a horticulturalist and really only talk about male and female plants as regards dioecious species like Ilex, rather than floral anatomy. I don’t have any feelings about changing this language, nor do I find it confusing to call a fruiting specimen “female”, but I am always open to new concepts and am curious what language OP thinks would be preferable.

Margaret, Lady Terpsichore Jul 31, 2023

@rspfau @anomalocaris I do very much appreciate OP’s link and spotlighting of Wollstonecraft’s work. I myself switched from art to plants and find historical plant illustrations to be a source of endless fascination. What a time to be alive that I can flip through the pages of this astonishing volume on the tiny computer in my pocket!

anomalocaris Jul 31, 2023

@LadyTerpsichore I agree that it isn't confusing in that sense - it's more that the terms often get confused with other ideas. To many people, 'female' can refer to an identity but also to genetics, or a physiological process. So I don't like using it to refer to plants. I usually talk about pollen producers and ovum producers, just taking a pretty simple shortcut to avoid explicitly gendered terms.

I know the language is hopelessly tangled up with itself, also using botanical terms to refer to people, using less obvious terminology that is also rooted in 18th century literature - but at least those two words 'female' and 'male' are easy to avoid. And perhaps it's a moot point by now, when the world has moved on to better ideas about our own identities, but to me it feels worthwhile.

Margaret, Lady Terpsichore Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris Well it’s certainly interesting to think about and something I had not heretofore considered. I’m always glad of an opportunity to broaden my perspective!

cohan Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris What would you consider better terminology for, for example, those species that separate pollen and ovaries on separate plants- staminate and pistillate, or pollen bearing and ovule bearing?

anomalocaris Jul 31, 2023

@cohanf I think pollen bearing and ovule bearing are good choices from the terminology that's available now - we'd have to expand our definition of pollen to include mosses and ferns and the like, so we can avoid 'microgametophyte' which I don't think would get much traction. Polliniferous and ovuliferous perhaps. The terms exist, and though it would certainly take getting used to, they're easy to explain and more informative than 'male' and 'female'.

It's interesting to think of the fact that the reproductive process is called 'pollination,' referring to the classically male side of the process only. And then there's dioecious and monoecious, referring to households, and hermaphroditic, referring to male and female gods. Even the words 'ovum' and 'seed' have their connotations to the human situation and the word 'gamete' is just the Greek for 'wife'. Some of it may be unavoidable, I'm not advocating we change the entire vocabulary though, just the worst offenders - for now.

cohan Jul 31, 2023

@anomalocaris another angle might be to go with something like fertilising and seed/spore bearing?