Defining words like man, woman, male and female in so-called ‘biological’ terms is a complicated business. Despite what you might be told, we humans – like many birds, beasts and fish – have a delightfully broad range of biological variance and locking us down to one end of the spectrum is fraught with danger. And so this week, to remind me of how wonderfully rich our gender diversity is on this planet, I turned to Josh L. Davis’ A little gay natural history book for some inspiration. Here I read about Bluegill sunfishes which are divided into female and male, but which have a range of male behaviours at different stages in their lives. Adolescent males are smaller and more agile and can get into a nest of freshly laid eggs to fertilise them without the larger males knowing. Over the years, this behaviour has been described by natural historians in loaded language with words like ‘sneaky’ and ‘deceitful’ and that they are engaging in ‘alternative’ mating strategies. But this is simply nature. It’s what bluegill sunfish do and have done for millennia. There’s no reason to start using words that are so incredibly rooted in narrow-minded concepts of gender when describing these fish. And there’s no reason to be so narrow-minded when it comes to describing women and trans women either. Like I say, a wide spectrum of behaviours is completely natural.

With thanks to Florida Museum of Natural History of the image: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fish/florida-fishes-gallery/bluegill/