Diversifying Displays of Biological Sex and Sexual Behaviour in a Natural History Museum

Abstract

Many natural history museums present species’ life histories in their galleries, which millions of visitors use to make meaning of the ‘natural world’ to which humans belong. Because curation is inherently practiced through a human’s perspective, and often the male gaze, images depicting the ‘natural world’ may be informed more by dominant understandings of sex and gender as social constructs of idealised bodies and behaviours than by scientific understanding. In this paper, we conduct a quantitative survey of displays in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to test for biases that naturalise socially constructed gender ideals. We statistically tested for bias to display dioecious species (species where sex is partitioned into two bodies), to display male specimens, and to physically arrange taxidermy in ways that suggest females are coy and males are passionate. We find significant evidence of the invisibility of non-binary natural histories in noting that fewer than 10% of specimens on display are from monecious or non-binary species. Based on a survey of 392 mammal and bird specimens on display, there is a significant sex bias resulting in collections displaying one female specimen for every two male specimens. Moreover, the survey shows a significant bias in how a museum portrays female and male specimens, with 63% of 56 mixed-sex groups of mammals and birds physically arranged specimens in ways that suggested females are coy and males are passionate. Finally, we identify places where signage, programming, and interventions can be used as a starting point for a museum to tell more stories of non-binary biological sex, unfixed biological sex, same-sex sexual behaviour, and diverse family arrangements.