welcome! there’s a huge diversity of people and spaces in the queer world, and all sorts of languages/dialects too. This is my first “real” Pride since last year was canceled and before that I was still mostly in the closet, so I’m new too!
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Welcome, everyone. iNaturalist is a great place to celebrate the diversity and ‘strangeness’ of life!
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I’m trans! I’m nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. Many members of the iNat community are really welcoming and supportive, and I honestly don’t know where I would be in life without that kind of support. Some people don’t want to talk about queerness, saying that it’s not appropriate for scientific spaces, which is exactly the kind of approach that allows alienation and discrimination to happen, which, among other things, leads to an extreme bias in scientific data. For many of us, queerness is simply just a part of who we are, and that’s not something that can just be ignored. Being able to feel comfortable and open (as open as you feel comfortable with yourself) with the people we interact with is necessary for us to be able to work together and be as effective as possible at gathering data and expanding our knowledge of the natural world.
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I’m confident I am cis af, but just would like to shout support for the LGBTQ community. I don’t care what your sexual orientation is since that does not determine the content of your character.
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My first job after college was finding and tracking the nests of Florida Scrub Jays. There was a long term monogamous pair of female scrub jays. Every year they would build a beautiful nest together, lay eggs that never hatched, and sit on those eggs for several weeks. Those two come to mind anytime anyone is ignorant enough to say that homosexuality isn’t natural.
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thank you for your support, both of you. I do want to clarify, “cis” and “trans” are specifically about gender expression vs sex assigned at birth. I’m cis (f) too :)
just like in organic chemistry, “cis” is the same, “trans” is opposite. So, my gender is the same as the sex I was assigned at birth.
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Love to the community.
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Hi y’all,
I’m staff here on iNaturalist, I work on our iOS app and our computer vision stuff. I’m CIS & straight but I consider myself an ally and I’m really happy that there’s space here for queer members to share their experiences.
iNat would be a shadow of what it is without the contributions of the LGBTQIA+ folk in the iNat community and on our staff. I’m grateful they’re a part of our community and team, and I’m happy that iNat can accept and celebrate them for their authentic selves.
-Alex
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My main problems as an iNat queer person are: 1) gay men disparaging me for wearing cargo shorts, which honestly I need for the extra camera batteries and the collecting vials! and 2) non-iNat people of all genders and orientations saying things like “eww, bugs” and having no interest whatsoever in biodiversity. It’s harder where I live to come out as a nerd (“well, I’m … gulp… I’m into taxonomy”) than to come out as LGBTQIA+
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oh no!
Fortunately for me, in lesbian circles, the more pockets you have, the hotter you are. The overlap between lesbian casual wear and biology field gear is considerable. I hear bi/pan people like pockets too
cargo shorts? yes
sun hats? yes
checkered and/or durable shirts? yes
boots? yes
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Not LGBTQIA+ myself, but over the past year I’ve come to realize just how prominent the LGBTQIA+ community on iNaturalist is, and that makes me incredibly happy, given that it takes a great diversity of people to catalogue the diversity of life! I wish you all the best and hope that the LGBTQIA+ community on iNaturalist will continue to grow and reach new heights!
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I had to double check, but the shorts I’m wearing today are, yes, cargo shorts. 
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i joined just a few days ago, and im so happy to have such a welcoming community :) im bi and on the non-binary spectrum! ive always gone a bit outside the boundaries of gender norms, and as someone assigned female at birth, my love for getting dirty and searching for bugs and other critters is definitely one of the many things that has set me apart and genuinely impacts how i see my gender today! its a weird relationship, and im sure lots of other people in the LGBT+ community have complicated relationships with nature, too. its a great thing to discuss in places like this, and im happy to be able to be out and proud in places that aren’t always as accepting or understanding
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!!!alksjsdhg 
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Thank you so much! iNat feels like home to me, so its nice to know it supports these values :)
I can’t enjoy pride events in my country, so any virtual pride events and interactions are like a breath of fresh air. The first time I saw a pride flag in the bio of an iNat user I almost cried. The warmth I felt was incomparable to anything. I hope some see this post and feel like they are not alone, too 
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The ‘thousands of genders’ in fungi thing doesn’t mean quite what one would assume. Some fungi have genes that function to avoid inbreeding. If another member of the same species has the same version of a certain gene that you do, they are likely a close relative. Mycologists refer to this as being of the same gender. So as many versions of that gene (or genes) as a species has, that is how many genders they say it has. It is a pretty distant analog to what we think of as gender.
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inat bird logo?
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My first reaction was actually also “Ok, how does this relate to the page now”… But thanks for reminding me again, that certain topics just need to be dragged out in the open more often until they become just as plain normal as they should be. I get it now, why initiatives like this should allso be picked up by pages like this.
I am btw. straight in a relationship with a younger man. My brother is happily married to a man since more than 10 years and my sister is in same-sex-relationship since almost a decade as well. I love my family and that everybody should just love who they love is the most unexciting concept for me, so I sometimes need to get reminded that not everybody else has this kind of luck.
I hope some day initiatives like this (e.g. also BLM) become unnecessary, because it will be just the most normal thing in the world that we are all humans and all search for the little bit of love in the world :-)
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Religion, economic, politics, gender (as a human society construct), sports… might arguably be somewhat related to biology; they are just a slice in the ethology of a mammal species called Homo sapiens.
Sexual orientation though not only concerns humans, but also a lot of other animal species. There are registered a lot of same-sex sexual behaviours in a big array of species and groups of animals. There is also a huge amount of papers giving examples and talking about this topic.
Some examples of species with well documented same-sex sexual behaviour are bats, primates, penguins, lambs, etc.
Homophobia, on the other hand, is only documented in one species: Homo sapiens. And that is something that I think we should change as a society, and that is why I think that platforms like iNat where biologists, other scientists and nature enthusiasts in general get together, are one of the most important organizations to boost the visibility of LGBTQIA+.
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I am a mom to two LGBTQ+ children—a cis, gay college student and a non-binary kid about to start high school—but have been an ally since well before having children. I am not a trained naturalist but an enthusiastic rank amateur using iNaturalist to help kids and families, in my city—Cambridge Mass. 
—as part of efforts to get interested in their urban habitat, learn about local species, and perhaps spark science interest more broadly. (Also find me as user @cambridgewildlife when functioning as the organization I started). I’m glad this thread is here. Safe spaces are always important; LGBTQ+ role models for kids and youth in all fields including the -ologies represented here, and in the outdoors generally, have inherent value. Same for BIPOC/ALAANA folks—kids need to be able to see people like them thriving as professionals in all fields and in all settings including outdoors.
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