What is Queer Ecology?

Welcome to the Queer Ecology corner! Here you’ll find updates, projects and resources on one of my favourite subjects.

Update: this year I started a new article series on some of the topics closest to my heart – queer ecology, class, social movements and nature connection.

Photo of Kes Otter Lieffe, author of utopian trans speculative fiction novels and Queer Ecology writer. Kes stands in a blue dress beneath an apple tree in a grassy field

Human, non-human. Natural, unnatural. Sentient, non-sentient. You, me. Our intellectual world is full of binaries that are disrupted the closer we look at them. Trillions of microbes live in my body at this moment – possibly outnumbering my ‘own’ cells. Who am I?

There are no humans without non-humans. We are each a community and individuality is a myth. A single quaking aspen tree has cloned themself to create a forest covering 43.6 hectares – they might be the heaviest known individual organism. And they are a forest. What are individuals?

94% of giraffe sex is between males. A quarter of tropical reef fish species change sex during their lifetime. There are whole species of lizards with no males at all. What is sex?

Queer activism and environmental movements are deeply connected.

I’m proud to be both an ecologist and queer activist living out on the land. I love writing and giving workshops on this subject, telling the stories of lesbian lizards and gay giraffes, bisexual deer and sex-changing fish, the natural history of queerness that has been hidden and erased. I’m excited to make new connections between grassroots struggles and to be reminded that we are all interwoven and interconnected, each of us a multi-species community.

* I’m currently working on a non-fiction book on queer ecology and an article series.
* This year I had the honour of consulting for the Queering Nature tour at the Berlin natural history museum (what a dream!). You can follow the digital tour (which I narrated in the English version) from home or book in-person guided tours in German and English.

Flyer for the Queering Nature tour at the Berlin museum für Naturkunde. A circle with a peach background and various colourful illustrations of coral, octopus, plants and rainbow hearts

Guided tours

This year I had the honour of consulting for a queer tour at the Berlin Natural History Museum. You can follow the digital tour (which I narrated in the English version) from home or book in-person guided tours in German and English.

Cover of "Home is a verb", a queer and trans speculative fiction novel by author Kes Otter Lieffe. In this story, Kes explores queer ecology, class, disability and survival.

Writing

My novels, and especially home is a verb, all have queer ecology themes in them.

You can also follow my new Queer Ecology article series or join my newsletter at the bottom of the page.

image shows the title page for Kes Otter Lieffe's workshop: Queer ecology: the stories we tell. Includes an image of two dandelions dispersing seeds on a green, pink and teal background

Workshops

I’ve been teaching for over twenty years and I regularly offer workshops and presentations to universities, organisations and grassroots community groups.

Colouring books

Along with illustrator, Anja Van Geert, I created the Queer Animals and Queer Plants zines and a full-sized colouring book published in March 2023. The perfect gift for all your friends who love queer animals and plants!

New to Queer Ecology?

Here’s an audio introduction with some nature audio I recorded near my home.

Like most queer subjects, 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 connect science, philosophy, politics, it can be gloriously geeky and it can also teach us something about who we are and where we belong in our more than human community.

I'm a writer, the author of Margins, a trilogy of queer speculative fiction novels and home is a verb, a queer ecology novel. I've also written several short stories and a colouring book series on queer plants and animals.

I'm an ecologist and I've been involved in grassroots community struggles for over 20 years focusing on the intersections of class, queerness and environmental struggles, always trying to create radical alternatives to the oppressions of capitalism.

I write and organise from a working class, chronically ill, transfeminine perspective.

 

As so many young nature lovers, I grew up with wildlife programmes on TV. And I never once heard about bisexual red deer, sex-changing parrotfish or binary-smashing lichens. Complexity and diversity were reduced to simple stories of male bird meets female bird and does a little funky dance to impress her. They mate, they make little baby birds. And that apparently is the whole point of life.

As I began to research the few texts that exist on queer ecology, I discovered a world far richer than I could have imagined.

I've now been writing and teaching about this subject for years and I realise more each day that none of this is new. While the term queer ecology might be relatively new, among many Indigenous communities and others living closer to the nonhuman world than the industrial society that I grew up in this knowledge of more than human gender, sex and sexuality is ancient.

I'm proud to be a queer ecology educator - I write, give queer ecology workshops, and guided walks. You can contact me here.

On my podcast you'll find episodes about a trans herbal clinic in New York, a queer ecology exhibit in Switzerland and how we made Queer Plants Colouring zine.

Along with illustrator, Anja Van Geert, I created the Queer Animals and Queer Plants zines and a full-sized colouring book published in March 2023. They are the perfect gifts for all your friends who love queer animals and plants!

And here are some amazing Queer Ecology resources:

Atmos Earth – queer ecology section

Ayelet Hashachar – Clinical herbalist with a focus on trans feminine health

Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, Bruce Bagemihl

Decoloniality and anti-oppressive practices for a more ethical ecology. Christopher H. Trisos, Jess Auerbach & Madhusudan Katti, 2021 

Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, Joan Roughgarden

EZLN: A declaration for life. Zapatista communiqué outlining the connections between land struggles and queer liberation

Growing Abolition – A social practice project encouraging us to imagine a landscape without prisons. The Abolitionist’s Apothecary+, an outgrowth of Solitary Gardens, is a traveling, community-driven strategy, and social practice dedicated to abolition, health-care sovereignty and collective healing.

Homosexual behavior in animals (Wikipedia) – How many species of animals are gay? How common is homosexuality in (non-human) nature?

Kolektyw Wilczyce – collective in Poland with a new Queer Ecology zine

Mapping Alternative Futures through Fungi: The Usefulness of Mycorrhizal Networks as a Metaphor for Mutual Aid, Maymana Arefin –

Myco Manchester – Community mushroom farm and workers’ co-operative

Out on the land – The landworkers’ alliance supports trans landworkers

Ten animal species that show how being gay is natural (DW) – 10 of the gayest animals, from giraffes to lions to albatrosses.

The Science Underground, Mycology as a Queer Discipline, Patricia Kaishian

Queer Animals are Everywhere. Science is finally catching on (Washington Post) – This article by animal studies graduate student Eliot Schrefer highlights a recent surge in scholarship on same-sex animal behaviour.

Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire

Queer Theory for Lichens, David Griffiths

Via Campesina, gender diversity in the peasant movement