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The criminalization of queer life and expression forced the community underground. Relics of the prohibition-era infrastructure were transformed — often by the mafia — into clandestine queer spaces of dance and revelry. The Genovese family, which owned the Stonewall Inn, paid bribes to the New York City Police Department so it would pass over the bar on the monthly raids conducted by the Public Morals Squad. But in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, what started as a typical raid spontaneously transformed into a radical act of defiance. The 200 or so patrons resisted arrest, smashed glass bottles, swung their purses, slashed the tires of the police wagons, and freed as many detained comrades as they could. Though this uprising was unplanned, it was not disconnected, climatologically, from the concurrent civil rights uprisings happening all across the country. That is how subversion and uprisings work: energy flows through the collective, organizing happens underground.
Currently, queer rights are once again being undermined and dismantled across the United States. The trend of incremental progress that characterized the past 50 years now appears to be moving in reverse. In moments of heightened political conflict such as these, it’s crucial to find our teachers. Our elders and past resistance movements provide essential learning. But we should not restrict ourselves to learning exclusively from human beings.
As a mycologist (someone who studies fungi), I have found the lessons I’ve learned from fungi to be radical and life-affirming. Fungi with both male and female sexes in one body taught me about my own queer experience. Some fungi shapeshift, alternating between sexual and asexual forms, producing ephemeral mushrooms, then retreating to their mycelial form underground. From them I learned that there is a freedom in living undefined, existing outside the limits of predictability. Lichens — which are part fungi, part photosynthetic microorganisms — are best understood as living, interdependent communities, inspiring the word “symbiosis.” They teach us that our fixation on individualism is not only inaccurate biologically, it’s a dead end.
In this moment in time, I think it is important to reflect on the meaning of the word “queer.” The word was long used in a derogatory way against people existing and behaving outside of heteronormative culture, but it was reclaimed during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. “Queer” was a way to bring together separate subsets of people — gays, lesbians, trans people, and others — and harness the power of the collective against oppressive violence. Queerness, therefore, is a rallying cry, an animate force, an ethic of collective responsibility. Queerness is not a plea for permission to assimilate into systems of oppression. Queerness is a community revolt. Queerness is the understanding that all living beings are interdependent. Queerness teaches us to be like fungi.
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned from fungi is about strategizing underground. Certain species of fungi form mycorrhizal networks, which are mutualistic partnerships between fungi and plants. The roots and the fungal cells connect underground sharing nutrients and protection against pathogens. Each is uniquely suited to contribute in their own way — the plants supply sugar, the fungi supply nitrogen and phosphorus. They are different kingdoms, but they need each other; together their differences become a strength. Through these microscopic linkages entire forests are sustained. These networks may span across many trees and individual fungi, forming a grid pulsing with animacy. Sunlight becomes sugar which becomes a patch of colorful mushroom bursting from the soil. The exact time and place of a fungal fruiting is not always predictable. Amazingly, for reasons and by mechanisms not fully understood, members of the same mushroom species will spontaneously fruit across an entire continent. Like an uprising, their energy is tapped into the collective.
When contending with misused state power, individualism will not save us. Nor will a reductionist usage of identity politics. What we need is community, however messy it may be. We need diverse coalitions through which we share skills and resources. We need to be queer. We need to learn from fungi.
Queer as Fungi: What Mushrooms Can Teach Us About Resistance and Community
Pride month was established in June to acknowledge a pivotal event in queer American history — the Stonewall Uprising. On June 28, 1969, a popular gay bar in New York City was targeted by a police raid, as it had been countless times before. But on this occasion, the patrons fought back. The story is common knowledge to most queer people in the U.S., but some details bear retelling. At this point in history, it was illegal to be outwardly queer, gay, homosexual, transgender, or to otherwise express yourself in ways that were “misaligned” with your sex. Psychologists and medical doctors could have someone institutionalized on the basis of their “perversions,” a person could be fired for even spurious allegations of gay activity, and police would routinely target and entrap people, especially men, who were known or presumed to be gay. This was not just local policy or small-town bigotry. In fact, it was official U.S. government policy to classify queer people as “subversives” who were a threat and a liability to the American identity and imperial project. If you were queer, they said, you were a sexual deviant, and worse — a communist.The criminalization of queer life and expression forced the community underground. Relics of the prohibition-era infrastructure were transformed — often by the mafia — into clandestine queer spaces of dance and revelry. The Genovese family, which owned the Stonewall Inn, paid bribes to the New York City Police Department so it would pass over the bar on the monthly raids conducted by the Public Morals Squad. But in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, what started as a typical raid spontaneously transformed into a radical act of defiance. The 200 or so patrons resisted arrest, smashed glass bottles, swung their purses, slashed the tires of the police wagons, and freed as many detained comrades as they could. Though this uprising was unplanned, it was not disconnected, climatologically, from the concurrent civil rights uprisings happening all across the country. That is how subversion and uprisings work: energy flows through the collective, organizing happens underground.
Currently, queer rights are once again being undermined and dismantled across the United States. The trend of incremental progress that characterized the past 50 years now appears to be moving in reverse. In moments of heightened political conflict such as these, it’s crucial to find our teachers. Our elders and past resistance movements provide essential learning. But we should not restrict ourselves to learning exclusively from human beings.
As a mycologist (someone who studies fungi), I have found the lessons I’ve learned from fungi to be radical and life-affirming. Fungi with both male and female sexes in one body taught me about my own queer experience. Some fungi shapeshift, alternating between sexual and asexual forms, producing ephemeral mushrooms, then retreating to their mycelial form underground. From them I learned that there is a freedom in living undefined, existing outside the limits of predictability. Lichens — which are part fungi, part photosynthetic microorganisms — are best understood as living, interdependent communities, inspiring the word “symbiosis.” They teach us that our fixation on individualism is not only inaccurate biologically, it’s a dead end.
In this moment in time, I think it is important to reflect on the meaning of the word “queer.” The word was long used in a derogatory way against people existing and behaving outside of heteronormative culture, but it was reclaimed during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. “Queer” was a way to bring together separate subsets of people — gays, lesbians, trans people, and others — and harness the power of the collective against oppressive violence. Queerness, therefore, is a rallying cry, an animate force, an ethic of collective responsibility. Queerness is not a plea for permission to assimilate into systems of oppression. Queerness is a community revolt. Queerness is the understanding that all living beings are interdependent. Queerness teaches us to be like fungi.
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned from fungi is about strategizing underground. Certain species of fungi form mycorrhizal networks, which are mutualistic partnerships between fungi and plants. The roots and the fungal cells connect underground sharing nutrients and protection against pathogens. Each is uniquely suited to contribute in their own way — the plants supply sugar, the fungi supply nitrogen and phosphorus. They are different kingdoms, but they need each other; together their differences become a strength. Through these microscopic linkages entire forests are sustained. These networks may span across many trees and individual fungi, forming a grid pulsing with animacy. Sunlight becomes sugar which becomes a patch of colorful mushroom bursting from the soil. The exact time and place of a fungal fruiting is not always predictable. Amazingly, for reasons and by mechanisms not fully understood, members of the same mushroom species will spontaneously fruit across an entire continent. Like an uprising, their energy is tapped into the collective.
When contending with misused state power, individualism will not save us. Nor will a reductionist usage of identity politics. What we need is community, however messy it may be. We need diverse coalitions through which we share skills and resources. We need to be queer. We need to learn from fungi.
