‘The eww holds power’: why disgust shapes how we see nature, queerness and each other

An encounter in a London park showed the writer how children learn ‘what deserves a wrinkled nose’. Photograph: blickwinkel/Alamy View image in fullscreen An encounter in a London park showed the writer how children learn ‘what deserves a wrinkled nose’. Photograph: blickwinkel/Alamy ‘The eww holds power’: why disgust shapes how we see nature, queerness and each other We learn what to fear and reject from those around us. But if disgust can be learned, it can also be unlearned Vote for your favourite invertebrate of the year It was the summer of 2021 and I was standing in Hyde Park, London, trying to persuade passing tourists to come bug hunting with me. I was working on a campaign to increase public appreciation of invertebrates and, while I adore bugs, this job was teaching me how differently other people see them. A woman and her young daughter stopped to chat. Grateful for a few minutes of respite, the woman turned to her phone while the child followed me to a nearby log. We lifted it to reveal one of the largest earthworms I’ve ever seen. I asked the girl if she would like to look at it properly, and her face lit up as she nodded. But just as I placed the worm into her palm and began explaining which end was the head, her mother looked up and screamed. The child picked up instantly on her mother’s cue, shrieked, dropped the worm and recoiled. In that moment, I saw fear and revulsion towards bugs being cemented in that young girl’s mind. We talk about disgust as though it is instinctive: a bodily truth that tells us what is dirty, dangerous or wrong. Part of it is protective. Disgust helps us avoid spoiled food and pathogens. But what provokes disgust is also shaped powerfully by culture, experience and other people. Children learn what deserves a wrinkled nose. And this “eww” holds power. The creatures we describe as disgusting are those we understand least. Once something is deemed as a “pest”, we stop asking what it needs, or whether it has value; we turn it into the frightening “other”. Throughout history, groups of people have been likened to swarms, vermin, parasites and infestations. It turns a being into a contaminant and makes avoidance, exclusion or eradication feel justifiable. I describe myself as a purveyor of disgust: I work with insects and I am queer, two identities that have received more than their fair share of revulsion.