The Sex Lives Of Common Vegetables

“The way most people in Euro-American culture think of sex and gender is one perspective, the view from one vista. It is not the only one,” writes anthropologist Leah Zani. In this thoughtful essay for Noēma, Zani discusses the unruly nature of plants and the sexual diversity of vegetables and fruits. “This is a very different reality from the strict monogamy, male heredity and heterosexual gender binary in the tale of Adam and Eve,” they write. The sex of cucumbers change with the weather; apples constantly experiment with their identities. In the piece, Zani also reflects on their fascination with gardening as a child—and how their attempts to examine the vegetables were also attempts to understand their father: “I was trying to understand her gender by studying the corn and the potatoes and the beans. I didn’t find her, but I did find something else.”

Apples are unruly, sexually. A seed from a Red Delicious apple will not grow into a Red Delicious tree. They are just not that concerned about heredity. Their evolutionary strategy is to continually experiment with their identity. The apple may not fall far from the tree, but that tree is a magician, an artist, an innovator.

In our culture, the genders are understood as binary opposites: If men are strong, then women are weak; if women are emotional, men are rational. Men are bees, women flowers. But the real bees and flowers do not play by the same rules. Nature is far more fluid.