Nature is Queer!
I’ve always been an outside kid. Growing up in Maine, there wasn’t much else to do except go outside, run around, climb a tree, and see what you could find in the streams and tidepools and blueberry barrens. I spent much of my young waking hours outdoors, hiking around in the forests that were my backyard. I was interested in animals and plants and exploring and I wanted to learn as much as I could about the world around me. I loved to feel small compared to the sky, the ocean, the mountains, the trees- all so much larger and older than I would ever be. I loved to feel big compared to the moss, the insects, the small birds, the microscopic plants and animals in a drop of ocean water- all so much more tiny and more infinitely complex than I would ever understand.
As an adult, I still go outside daily, looking for new birds and leaves as the seasons change, measuring the swell of the river, learning the names of the plants that grow naturally in the ecosystem I call home. It has always been important to me to feel a sense of place wherever I am, and there is no better way I’ve found than just going and sitting outside somewhere. I watch for signs of the changing climate as I bike to run my errands or walk to visit my wife at work. I take note of who I regularly pass on the trails as I go. I reflect on the fact that access to the outdoors is itself a privilege in today’s society: many people of color, people with disabilities, Queer folks, and other marginalized groups face real barriers to recreational access to nature, even in their own backyards. Our history is not any better: whole Indigenous societies have had their homes and access to their sacred land stripped away violently.
Bodies and land are often, unfortunately, policed in similar ways. It shouldn’t be this way. We are all part of this web and deserve to be able to access it as we would like to. Nobody can truly own land. Certainly, nobody can own a soul.
The more I learn about ecology (the study of connections between organisms and their environments), the more I learn about Queerness and myself as a human. Being outside, for me, has always meant being exactly whoever I wanted to be. The birds aren’t interested in your gender. The lichen has no concept of romantic attraction. The stones won’t call you anything anyway, so it doesn’t matter what your name or pronouns are. These beings don’t have any idea who and what you are, but to say you are not in a relationship with each of them would be a gross mischaracterization. Crows recognize and remember human faces, and treat you according to how you treat them. Trees and plants gladly absorb the carbon dioxide you exhale and give you back oxygen in return. Some plants, such as sweetgrass, have formed a symbiotic relationship with humans over millennia of respectful and intentional use and still today rely on mindful harvesting to thrive. Even in your local, manicured park with paved trails and frisbee golf, you can see the same family of white-tailed deer in the same thicket of branches if you go around the same time each day.
You can get to know the world around you and find your place in it, if you pay close enough attention.
We often construct our understanding of nature and ecology through a subjective lens, even when Western science claims total objectivity- something that is not actually possible as long as scientists are also human people. Our understanding of animal and plant behaviors sometimes stems from the socialized ideas of how gender and sexuality are supposed to look and act. A good example of this is the recent discovery of the clitoris in snakes- something that suggests that snakes mate with pleasure as part of the equation, if not the entire goal. The only reason we didn’t know this was the case before was simply that scientists didn’t think to look for it. The idea was entirely dismissed and overlooked until December 2022. Our relationship with and understanding of nature will always be filtered through our own lenses, and we may be missing entire pieces of the puzzle and simply not know it. Science, while an important process that helps us understand the world, is also an institution that plays a major role in upholding the systems in our society that oppress. It is not a neutral party. If female snakes mate with pleasure in mind, then they are likely taking an active role in deciding where, when, and how often they mate. And if these female snakes are active and autonomous, then perhaps the so-called “natural order” of gender, sex, and sexuality isn’t as natural as we thought. Queerness challenges what we think we know about our relationships with each other, nature itself challenges what we think we know about the world.
Queerness is all about human relationships: with ourselves, with our families, with our partners, with our lovers, with our friends, with our communities, with the powers that be. When we are in nature, those relationships expand to include living and non-living non-human entities as well. There are many parallels in how we treat our ecosystems and how we treat each other. When we see nature as expendable, a resource to be exploited, or something to be preserved and made “pristine,” it is easy to imagine how we can see our fellow humans in a similar capacity. Nature and Queerness both are not something that we find “somewhere else.” There is nature in cities, in suburbs, near highways and in cracks on the sidewalk as much as in national parks and forest reserves. There are Queer folks anywhere there are humans, even if there are those who would tell you that is not true. We cannot turn away from the reality of our environments. Both ecology and Queerness show us that we have a responsibility to each other, to the world as it was and as it is, and to the future generations who are being born onto a planet that is dying from greed and profit and violence. We are already in relationship with each other, every one of us, and to ignore those connections is to deny the true nature of our lives: that we are ourselves ecosystems and organisms, and we have an important role to play in the future of the world. We can take action for and with each other. We can seek to better understand what we don’t yet: whether it is the mating patterns of salamanders or of our fellow humans. We can fight for our rights, for the rights of our planet, and attempt to build a future where all beings can get what they need and thrive.
There is a world where we live in reciprocity with the land and with each other, and I hope to see it realized in my lifetime.
What would it look like to include nature and ecology in a Queer future?
How can we expand empathy and understanding to all fellow beings we encounter?
What do we see when we change where we pay attention?
“The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others. Being among the sisters provides a visible manifestation of what a community can become when its members understand and share their gifts.
In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies.”
-Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, pg. 134
In solidarity,
Wynter
