Queer ecology is being constantly defined and redefined. It can be something academic and abstract or it can be rooted in community and grassroots struggles for land and liberty. It can teach us something about who we are and where we belong in our more than human community.

In my research for an upcoming book on the subject, I narrow it down to some main themes that most interest me as a mutual aid organiser and ecologist:

🧫 Ecology and biology as western disciplines must be 'queered': examined and transformed.
We need to examine and trouble cultural stories, including those of science. We need to destabilise simplistic binaries, not only of sex, gender and sexuality but human/nature, natural/unnatural and more. Stories such as human exceptionalism, survival of the fittest, binary sex and what is and isn't 'natural' are culturally specific and based in oppressive power structures. Life is much more complex, rich and beautiful than all our colonialist categories.

🚜 Much of queer and trans life - including what gets remembered as queer history - is urban but for all its complexity, rural queerness exists and is an important part of both rural life and queer life.
Queer precarity means that queer folk have less access to land and its resources and we tend to centre our lives around cities for community and survival. In many places, back to the land movements are dominated by the queerphobic politics of the far right including ecofascism. And yet rural queerness exists meaning that issues that affect rural people directly - such as environmental destruction and protection, food sovereignty, land access and landlessness - are also queer issues.

🌊 The systems destroying our ecosystems are often the same as those that exploit and oppress LGBTQIA+ people 
As our ecosystems collapse, marginalised people are more at risk than ever, more precarious than ever, more scapegoated than ever. The prison industrial complex is one of many threats where environmental destruction and the oppression of queer people intersect.

🌱 While oppressions of various kinds share common roots, so too do our struggles for liberation. 
Queer liberation and the defence of the environment are more tied to each other than we might realise. In the Global North especially, these struggles have been systematically disconnected leading to queer movements that are unconcerned with the environment and environmental movements that exclude queer people. However, in many parts of the world, grassroots mobilisations are directly making these connections.

🍄‍🟫 Queer and trans communities are precarious and under constant threat. Respectfully learning from ecological processes, systems and non-human others can help us to make our systems more resilient, autonomous and long-lasting 

🌿 Ecology is the study of home
For those of us who have grown up in industrialised societies, what might it mean to find home again in our ecosystems? Many of us have been forcibly separated from more-than-human nature and this is as true for those of queer and trans experiences as anyone else. Rediscovering or deepening connections is not only essential to sustain our movements but for many of us, it is an act of resistance itself. We only protect what we love.

I’m an author of four queer speculative fiction novels and several short stories. I also write about class and queer ecology. I offer workshops, book readings, interviews and editing.

I’m an ecologist and organiser and have been involved in grassroots community struggles for over twenty years. My work focuses on mutual aid and the intersections of class, queerness, disability justice and environmental defence.

Our queer communities can be a source of connection and can help us feel less alone. But what if those communities also extend way beyond human society?

As so many young nature-lovers, I grew up with David Attenborough’s wildlife programmes and I never once heard about these things. As I began to research into the few texts that exist on the subject, I discovered a world far richer than I could have imagined.

I have been writing and talking about this subject for years in my novels and workshops and realise more each day that none of this is new. Much of this knowledge has been suppressed for centuries by Western, industrial, colonial science and a great deal of it has been appropriated from other cultures - a practice which continues today. For many of us who grew up in this culture of alienation from non-human life, our un/learning has just begun.

And environmental defence? And nature connection? Read more about that journey here.

I'm proud to be a queer ecology educator - I write, give queer ecology workshops, and guided walks. Contact me here for more information.

I have a queer ecology substack and I'm in the process of publishing a full-length book on these subjects.

You can also scroll down for more queer ecology resources!