“The South Pacific islands are the most isolated in the world... some are more than 6,000km from the nearest continent. The odds of any life reaching these islands and flourishing were once minute...” 

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Hello, my name is Lizard, and I’m here to talk about lizards.

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I mean, it was going to happen eventually, but seeing as this has been a tough week, I thought why delay the inevitable, and let’s all just have a good time appropriating obscure reptilians for analogies of the trans experience.

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Lizards unfortunately still remain on the periphery of the creatures more commonly claimed by the queers. More specifically, they are completely side-lined by the overwhelming adulation of Frogs. Maybe it’s just the internet bubble I’m in, or the questionable friends I keep, but it seems Frogs have grimed and greased their webby little hands all over the prize for Most Gay Animal™. Every time I log into Instagram, there is yet another meme of some frog with eyelashes, resplendent in leather/a maid costume, waving stoically the pink, white and blue. My feed is like Florida in the rainy season: no shortage of damn toads.  An educated guess on the origins of this cult status, would be that the amphibian has an innately queer appeal- flowing in the liminal between habitats and states, mere tadpole ascends in metamorphose-magic into the glorious, glistening sublime, croaking triumphant as serenader of the swamp: a retributive fairy-tale of transformation and redemption. Moreover, to reclaim a creature normatively deemed as hideous, a ‘before’ to the mainstream beauty ideals of prince charming, is a queering in itself. But according to a survey I did on my own channels, the main justification the gays will give is that the frog is “small” and “squidgy”. And they also have a cloaca. I.e, androgynous genitals.

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I don’t really remember how the nickname Lizard came about. It’s not like I have a particular affinity with them. I think it was something to do with that meme that was widespread awhile back- about meeting someone called Liz, only to find out they’re named after a reptile. Ha ha. I got tagged in it several times, eye-rolling at every mate who prided themselves in their originality in finding a suitable gender neutral title.  It was an in-joke: my “queer name’. Something to confuse cisgender ignorants, an homage to the other iconoclastic monikers non-binary people attached to themselves in defiance of classifiable existence. Rock, Moss, Beans. The label went on to generate convenient observations on how I do possess certain lizard-like qualities. My love for lazing in the sun, aggressive seasonal affective disorder, and tendency to be habitually freezing is suspiciously cold-blooded. But from a joke, it evolved, and I quietly began to appreciate it. To be named as Lizard was to be named by a friend. An affirmation of familiarity and recognition: something deeper than what my birth name could communicate. That beyond my gendered exterior, the slithery, multiplicitous nature of my identity was seen and understood.

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And this was all before I started creating massive Lizard head masks and dancing around nightclubs in my underwear.

“300 species of reptile thrive within this hothouse, including the ubiquitous female mourning gecko... it is a highly adaptable creature, they’re one of the toughest, and most salt-water resistant lizards around. But there is more to the gecko’s story than this...”

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The Female Mourning Gecko is a non-binary icon for the animal kingdom. This little lizard, of no more than 10cm long, can be found in some of the most remote locations in the world- namely, the string of isolated islands of the South Pacific. Battling cyclones and inhospitable conditions to populate barren habitats, its salt-repelling skin makes it one of the most resilient reptiles in the world. And it is unequivocally queer.

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The Female Mourning Gecko is the unmatched master of one of nature’s most compellingly queer machinations: Parthenogenesis. To look at the overwhelming stature of her eggs, towering over her delicate frame, it would be easy to discount her as victim. However, she is in fact the sole arbiter of her monstrous reproduction. Years of isolation and evolution within extreme environments has rendered the need for a male obsolete. Instead, she breeds the next generation forgoing fertilisation. Her children are in fact her own clones. She reigns as matriarch over her army of progeny, spreading her genetic material on driftwood to occupy further islands across the sea. 

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This feminist fantasy is further cemented through the geckos’ frequent participation in Sapphic sex, to stimulate egg production. Every island the gecko finds itself on is in fact the Isle of Lesbos. Iconic.

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This little but mighty gecko embodies queer survival through its indestructible determination to endure uninhabitable landscapes, and thrive. Its unconventional bodily attributes are its triumph, allowing it to evolve past outdated norms, and pioneer news ways of being and living. It is a natural testament the power of queer innovation.

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However, I further connect with the female mourning gecko precisely because she is named as such: “female”. Although there is no longer a male as her counterpart, she is still explicitly delineated by that irrelevant status. What is gender if you are a living embodiment of its deconstruction? She is undoubtedly non-binary, yet she still has to be classified within that framework of a bygone era.

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Moreover, her binomial name, Lepidodactylus lugubris,  is rooted in the latin for “mournful”. Early zoologists judged that the loss of her husband would be a burden to bear forever. Humans have long used animal behaviour as justification for our own social conventions, constructing narratives onto the blank slate of animality for the re-naturalisation of heterosexuality (see, I’ve been reading Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, I’m very clever). And the gecko’s story cannot help but be subsumed into this white, patriarchal account of Mother Earth and all her living creatures. Even in her feminist fantasy, where gender is just a past evolutionary misfortune, the binary pervades. She constructs utopia on her isle, but still cannot escape the hegemony of how others see her.

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As a non-binary person, who is almost always gendered as female, or as some sort of “girl-lite” by those who can’t get past my femme presentation, I identify with this struggle.  I’m sick of always being compared to two standards which time and time again have proved to no longer be universal to human existence. Let me shed my skin and dance around naked in all my scaley glory.

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Consequently, this was the inspiration for a cabaret act I have performed a couple of times at various queer events and club nights.

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