What world is this? What is this world you’ve never heard of? Have you ever seen these things? Or have these things always been like this and we never wanted to see them? Do you see with your own eyes? Or did someone teach you how to look?

Q of What? is a show in the form of a question, aimed at children and young people from the age of 8, reflecting on diversity, identity and gender expression.

Biology and ecology set the tone for understanding the enormous complexity and diversity of the natural world. Throughout the research for this project, we came across an approach – almost unknown to us – by biologists and ecologists such as Brigitte Baptiste and Joan Roughgarden who introduce a queer look into their research, bringing to the center of their work all the diversity that exists in nature in relation to affects, sexuality, gender and gender expression.

Throughout the history of science, a lot of information that went against the standards of the straight/cisnormative culture (and that also tinged scientific research) was withheld. We all watch a lot of programs about wildlife and, certainly, we will have difficulty remembering any information about homosexuality, gender transition or gender expression between animals or plants.

Through the research carried out, we discovered the immense diversity that characterizes nature in relation to these issues and we felt that it would be an important gateway to the topics we want to address. We realize that the comparison between animals and humans is problematic, but, as Joan Roughgarden points out, “parallels can sometimes be drawn between the way people behave and the way animals behave, as if animals offered similar biological cultures ours”.

We hope that this perspective on nature’s diversity can help us dilute crystallizations about gender and sexuality that we still carry today and that jeopardize the safe and happy growth and development of so many LGBTI children and young people.