Nature in its rawest form doesn’t put barriers in ways of expression, sexuality is one of these expressions which can be explored, imagined, translated, and experienced in different magnitudes. Everyone has the right to be who they are and follow their deepest intent.
Back to the Roots: A Wild Declaration of Freedom and Sexuality | Priyanka Singh
Imagine a rose seed, we water the seed, we provide needed sunlight and let her emerge in the perfect environment. When it starts to blossom we expect her to bloom with sunflowers instead of roses. Is it even possible for a rose to suddenly start blooming as a sunflower? To state the obvious, absolutely not. We are trying to elaborate the human authentic nature and sexuality on the same spectrum, when we define sexuality and try to confine it with a particular gender role by saying one way is correct while disregarding the other, we are making the same mistake.
Nature in its rawest form doesn’t put barriers in ways of expression; sexuality is one of these expressions which can be explored, imagined, translated, and experienced in different magnitudes. Everyone has the right to be who they are and follow their deepest intent.
Beings of all kinds ranging from single cell bacteria such as Prokaryotes, capable of reproducing by themselves are asexual. Animals like bonobo, giraffe, Japanese macaque, birds like Chilean flamingo, wester gull, black swan and some penguins show a different spectrum of sexuality. Flowers such as Lily (Lilium longiflorum), Rose (Rosa indica), Sunflower (Helianthus annuus), Tulip (Tulipa gesneriana), Daffodil (Narcissus jonquilla) are examples of some of the bisexual flowers which are still pollinated with the help of different pollinators. Nature doesn’t discriminate and all the beings just perform their cycles without this discrimination.
When there is no bias from the creator then how did we humans started considering one of the most authentic expressions of human nature to be unnatural. I’m Priyanka Singh Founder and EIC of Planted Journal and I’m here to take you on a journey of freedom through the wilderness. I have had the opportunity of being surrounded by the most beautiful individuals who don’t fit into the stereotypical gender spectrum and every time I look at most of them, I admire them for their authenticity, courage and will to express themselves. The limitation of gender type has divided the community and oppressed many. We are here to understand how these barriers were formed so we can finally break them.
As mentioned previously homosexuality can be traced in nature. During the process of our evolution, it’s not necessary that only the opposite gender felt the sexual attraction. It is an important factor for procreation however same-sex relationships can be considered a grooming activity. The non-human primates including apes indulge in same-sex alliances and these behaviour are certainly ancestral to hominids. Same-sex alliances provide appeasement, pacification, reinforcement of social dominance structures, juvenile play, social tolerance, stress reduction and barter contraceptive benefits to primates.
The human society accepted such behaviour and traces this could be found in the history of many civilisations. Mesopotamian ancient religious text contains divine prayers for homosexual relationships. These sort of alliances were formed for pedagogy purposes and for birth control. Celts also indulged in the free expression of homogeneity. All across the world from China, Japan, Alaska, Africa, Europe, North America and South America these behaviours are recorded as a choice for Early humans.
The indigenous community however have always been far more advanced than the western society even in the matters of free expression. Two spirit people were embraced to perform some specific ceremonies, according to them they were blessed and guided by the spirits in finally becoming their true selves, “Some terms speak directly to the idea of duality, as variations on “man-woman” (or “not-man-not-woman”), like the Crow bote and the Shoshoni tainna wa’ippe; others rely on elision and evocation, from the Navajo nádleehé (“one who is transformed”) to the Osage mixu’ga (“instructed by the moon”) to the Cherokee asegi udanto (“other heart”). (The new York times). To me the reason why they welcome such authenticity because they understand the calling of the spirits. Being in nature certainly does evolves one’s perception by acknowledging everything as it is and finding beauty in it.
Gender stereotypes are a result of so-called modernisation where dividing the society and organising them into particular family units became beneficial for some. Language has its own part to play in this whole chaos. The Indigenous language contains Animacy and is not limited to he/she/him/her (which is common in most of the languages) further dividing the gender. Various suffrage movements focusing on the ‘rights of man’ created a parallel universe where the definition of ‘man’ took a whole new meaning which is still a cause of struggle for basic rights in the society for minorities. Further down the line colonisation suppressed any behaviour that was expressive beyond the general acceptance and hence some communities in various parts of the world may have also lost their practices.
We are tracing back these roots to the beginning and it’s only a start. The idea is to be wild once again and I would like to say no matter how much we institutionalised ourselves nature eventually takes over and wilderness prevails.
All these different forms of sexuality are part of our core that resonates with nature. No laws would stop the birds from migrating, fishes from swimming and humans from being wild. No one could and no one can be more powerful than the desires that are given to us from the spirits, from our creator.
Dima Samarin @Lzhedmitry, Photographed by Lorenzo Cermona @Crem.Arts, Art Direction and Words by Priyanka Singh @Priyanka.Parihar16
