QUEER ECOLOGY @queering-ecology - Tumblr Blog

Living Bibliography/Works Cited

All my relatives: Exploring Lakota ontology, belief, and ritual. Posthumus DC (2022). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Climate Solutions Need Queerness by Owen George Guest Column: Queer Ecology by TIMOTHY MORTON Indigenous Action (2020) Rethinking the apocalypse: an indigenous anti-futurist manifesto Is nature queer? | out & about. YouTube. Available from: https://youtu.be/FtnkGtQygOg?si=KPBlbzpVGTjRyGgg LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, a publication of the National Park Foundation for the National Park Service--Chapter 9: Sexual and Gender Diversity in Native America and the Pacific Islands by Will Roscoe Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ. Adams DH (2020)Tapestry Institute. Available from: https://tapestryinstitute.org/mitakuye-oyasin/. Referencing Sicungu Lakota Elder, Albert White Hat. Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire Editor(s): Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Bruce Erickson Queering the Wild by Micha Rahder The Student Theorist: An Open Handbook of Collective College Theory Editor: Abby Goode Toward a Queer Ecofeminism Author: Greta Gaard

Queer Ecology Reading List

genderkoolaid

on the top of neolithic queerness; something interesting that has happened with Çatalhöyük is the evolution in our understanding from "omg stone age Fertility Goddess Birth Cult!!" to "actually a lot of the figurines aren't of humans, many of the ones that are anthropomorphic can't be gendered, and many of the "fertility goddesses" are likely more tied to the fatness associated with age rather than with pregnancy necessarily, which may have been seen as more of a liminal space between life and death than a purely life-giving act, and also these people actually seemed VERY into penises as a spiritual symbol, far moreso than the vagina"

& specifically i find it very interesting that realizing that penises were likely spiritually important did not automatically translate to gender inequality. like the assumption we tend to make is that Good Feminist Spirituality (tm) in a society where women are empowered will feature a lot of vulvas and menstruation and birth in the spirituality, whereas Bad Patriarchal Spirituality (tm) is very into the penis as a symbol of dominating conquering power and women can't access it.

but there's actually evidence that the people of Çatalhöyük viewed the penis as spiritually potent, while also not seeing that potency as exclusive to those born with penises:

On the basis of research in twentieth-century Papua New Guinea, Strathern proposes a non-Western concept of the person as “dividual” rather than individual: an entity at once more partial and more expansive than the modernist monad, and constituted through multiple heterogeneous incorporations rather than existing as a unitary essence. This notion can help us make sense of the sex of the Çatalhöyük body, especially if we concentrate on its parts. Consider the penis. Meskell identified a number of the ceramic and stone figurines at Çatalhöyük as “phallic” – but she notes that these small objects are surprisingly ambiguous. Some are simultaneously male and female: when rotated, a penis and testicles become breasts or buttocks. This visual punning suggests an attitude that emphasizes the mutability, not the fixity, of bodily sex. The little penises are usually pierced for wearing; they are detached body parts that can be attached to any kind of body, male or female, adult or child. Detachability of body parts and substances is key to Strathern’s theory, since it indicates a body that is partible rather than unitary. The detachable penis, like the bucrania [bovine skulls], does not inevitably serve as a metonym for a whole gendered person, for masculinity as an abstraction, or for “phallic” power. Instead, elements of maleness and femaleness may be intrinsically partible, inhering in the products of men’s and women’s labor, as well as in manufactured body parts. These detachable gendered objects and substances can be exchanged, ingested, incorporated, expelled, discarded, or temporarily held by “dividual” persons. The idea of the body as partible is immensely helpful in understanding Çatalhöyük attitudes toward skeletons. Just as a female child might make and wear a clay penis, so too living persons at Çatalhöyük handled the bones of the dead.

(from "The Hau of the House" by Mary J. Weismantel in Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society edited by Ian Hodder)

remember gang, when people make extremely generalized statements about how "Our Ancestors" lived "back in Caveman Times" to explain modern Western gender roles through the lens of evolution, it is complete bullshit. and prehistoric & stone age humans deserve FAR more respect for their cultures and civilizations than they get.

captain-price-unofficially

can-i-make-image-descriptions

[Image ID: Bluesky post from Valerie Halla (@/ valerieHalla.dicot.moe) reading: it's all just art. "porn" is just art that makes you horny, in precisely that way that "horror" is art that makes you scared and "metroidvania" is art that makes you write video essays /End ID]

galaxycepheus

[Updated ID: The image has been removed and replaced with a banner that says "this content was removed for violating Tumblr's User Guidelines." End ID.]

#erotophobia

leonor777

Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me. (Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg)

whybray

marine-gifs

A seahorse ejects its young from its brood pouch. He has been carrying the fertilised eggs for 3 weeks. From The Mating Game (2022). Filmed in Portugal.

IT WAS NEVER "AGAINST NATURE":

Many critical aspects of nature have been downplayed, ignored or rendered invisible by mainstream science in order to maintain the status quo. A goal of queer ecology is to critique biased science created within dominant Western paradigms.

Queer ecologists argue that the sexual diversity of animals matters. Modern theory often assumes a radical separation of nature and culture and thus minimizes the significance of animal sexuality and ‘queer animals’. But, as with other ‘keys [to the] Human Kingdom’ such as language and tool use, sex disconnected from reproduction has been similarly accomplished across a range of species (Alaimo, 2010).

This is important because it makes us reconsider our anthropocentric viewpoint of ‘natural’ sexuality as being inherently tied to reproduction (heteronormativity). The sexual diversity of the relatives that share the planet with us is meaningful because, “animals help us tell stories about ourselves, especially when it comes to matters of sexuality” (Terry 151, quoted in Alaimo). Moreover, “an understanding of animal cultures critiques the ideology of nature as resource, blank slate for cultural inscription, or brute, mechanistic force”(Alaimo 60, 2010). The more we understand animal naturecultures, the better able we are to protect them and help them thrive.

On The Origins of Species

The scientific term species was invented in the late eighteenth century (Coined by naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon), “but the term has never been free of controversy” (McWhorter). During the Nineteenth century, it was used in debates over whether “Negros and Indians” were Homo Sapiens or not and was again destabilized when Charles Darwin released his work, On the Origin of Species. “Politically charged from its scientific conception, the concept of species has often brought great harm to both racial and sexual minorities over the past two hundred years” (McWhorter).

According to Foucault, “concepts […] are for cutting. They are never merely benign representations of a natural arrangement” (1969). Essentially, the concept of “Species could be made to function oppressively to separate white from blacks because […] it was already a tool for marking separations in natures heterogenous continuities in the interest of prevailing human practices” (McWhorter).

Animals within the western paradigm are animals because they are considered a different species from humans. According to Darwin, however, the concept of rigid species boundaries is practically meaningless, given the inevitability of evolution (The Origin of Species (1859). Darwin never answered the question on the origin of species, except to say that, “there are no eternally fixed types, nor are there eternally distinct lines of descent. All life on earth, no matter how morphologically or functionally distinct at present, conceivably could be traced back to a single germ line” (McWhorter , 81).

Morton suggests that queer ecology might abandon using 'animal' and adopt a term like 'strange stranger'. Indigenous paradigms, like mitakuye oyasin, would consider ‘animals’ to be ‘relatives’ or ‘relations’.

According to Albert White Hat, Lakota elder, the wisdom in Indigenous paradigms aren’t “merely a collection of historical ideas or words” but “ a system of powerful knowledge applicable to the lives and struggles of people right now” (2020). Vine Deloria refers to mitákuye oyásįn as the ‘Indian principle of interpretation/observation,’ calling it “a practical methodological tool for investigating the natural world and drawing conclusions about it that can serve as guides for understanding nature and living comfortably within it. . . . We observe the natural world by looking for relationships between various things in it. . . . This concept is simply the relativity concept as applied to a universe that people experience as alive and not as dead or inert” (1999, 34) (Posthumus 2022 p219 f). According to the Tapestry Institute, “The Lakota phrase Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ describes Reality by addressing it as ‘All our Relations.’ All humans, all animals, all plants, all the waters, the soil, the stones, the mountains, the grasslands, the winds, the clouds and storms, the sun and moon, stars and planets are our relations and are relations to one another. We are connected to each other in multiple and vital ways. When one is in pain, all are harmed. When there is justice for one, there is more justice for all” (2020).

Mitakuye oyasin is about relationships and the decentering of humanity as ‘master’ of the land. In fact, in almost direct opposition, “the normative cultural values encompassed by mitákuye oyásʾį are the very foundation of kinship, relational ontology, and the overarching interspecies collective, of which humans are only one hoop, one oyáte ‘people, nation, tribe’, in the company of many others. The key constituents of this animist ontology and worldview, of mitákuye oyásʾį, are persons, a category that extends beyond human beings to nonhuman or other- than- human persons. [...] Importantly, the Lakota worldview sees humans as the least knowledgeable and powerful beings, requiring the most aid and pity (see V. Deloria 1999, 50; 2009, 99– 100). MItakuye oyasin as a paradigm has great potential to work in symbiopoesis with queer ecology.

Queer ecology is a critical response to biased Western science, especially about our animal relatives' naturecultures. However, by centering discourse around EuroAmerican culture, even if in critical consideration, we run the risk of reinforcing concepts such as ‘species’ which has been used by the colonial project to reinforce oppressive structures and separate us from nature. Mitakuye oyasin, is one example of an indigenous paradigm that might be an ancient answer to queer ecology’s goal of disrupting current colonial ideology. Moreover, both queer ecology and mitakuye oyasin, when they are used symbiopoetically, can provide us with the necessary imaginatory and observatory skills to contend with our current environmental issues.

#queer ecology #queer theory #ecofeminism #critical ecology #environmental politics #indigenous studies #indigenous theory #native american studies #queer nature #naturecultures #nature

headspace-hotel

thought about that quote "homosexuality exists in 1000+ species, homophobia only exists in one" but how awkward would it be if we discovered another species that was homophobic

"homosexuality exists in 1000+ species, homophobia only exists in two. what? oh, humans, and the yellow-patched cuboid pinecone wren that was recently discovered on an island off the coast of canada. they're fucking bigots"

raptorcivilization

Random fact: They did a study on courtship and mating behavior of American alligators at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm in the early 1980's. This study revealed that, among other things, the majority of alligator sex is gay

raptorcivilization

Male/male 1 is when the larger male gator topped, male/male 2 is when the smaller male topped

werewolf-girlfriend

tiredandjaded

average ao3 "sort by categories" result

the-real-numbers-deactivated202

this little freak keeps sneaking into my garden and rubbing himself all over my flowers??Hello?????

james-silvercat

Real, male bees don’t go after flowers they stay home, that freak is a herself

the-real-numbers-deactivated202

googling ‘bee genders’ as I dictate this post

lierdumoa

The more you google bee reproductive biology the more absurd it is that we’re applying the words male and female to them. Their actual genders are worker, drone and queen. The queen is capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction. Bees born of unfertilized eggs become drones that are capable of fertilizing eggs. Bees born of fertilized eggs become workers, but can also potentially become a queen depending on how they are fed during the larval stage.

Use whatever the fuck pronouns you want to describe bees because they’re all equally incorrect projections of human worldview onto an insect species. Bees don’t experience mammalian sexual dimorphism in a biological sense nor do they experience human gender dimorphism in a sociopolitical sense.

lastoneout

diversity win, the freak sneaking into your garden and rubbing themselves all over your flowers does not fit into a human biological or sociopolitical framework of sex and gender!

dominiqueramseyart

My first illustrated book Solitary Animals: Introverts of the wild is out!! Written by Joshua David Stein, it talks about animals that live in groups and those who keep to themselves. Encouraging parents and children that being alone is nothing strange, you can be just as happy doing so!

Copies are available to purchase on Amazon, Target (online only), and Barnes n Nobles.

extetic-envy

bi slut pigeon

antigoneprogone

A gay pigeon story: my grandfather kept pigeons, and though he maybe didn't know the proper vernacular, he was always an ally to the gay rights movement. When his nephew's boyfriend died of AIDS in the '80s, my grandfather was the only one at the family reunion to actually console him and talk with him about it. Not even his own father gave him the dignity of acknowledging his grief.

The reason I want to make it so clear that he was a friend to the community is because it makes this story funny instead of mean. He kept meticulous records of his pigeons, noting where each one was and who they were with and whose chicks were whose. It was not always the case that the chicks in a certain nestbox were the offspring of the parents in there. Sometimes, a mother hen would push a chick out because it was overburdened, or maybe a cock would push a chick out because wanted it dead (pigeons, like humans, can be monstrous assholes for seemingly no reason).

It is for this reason that it is very advantageous to have something rare like a gay couple in the loft. Pigeons are unique in that they make "milk" for their chicks, and cocks can do this as well as hens. So, because a gay couple can feed their young but never actually bear young, they are often the recipient of orphaned chicks.

All of that is to say this - when my grandfather passed away, my mom took over the pigeon business, as she had been helping him for years. And looking through his records, it was all very standard, very plain, well-documented minutiae about the birds and their pedigrees, save for one spot that looked something like this:

BOX 15

RED CHECK HEN

YELLOW COCK

BOX 16

BLUE SLATE HEN

DUNN BAR COCK

BOX 17

RED GIMPEL COCK

BLUE CHECK COCK

(QUEERS - WOW!)

makingqueerhistory

Checkout out this list on Bookshop

In response to recent backlashes against sexual expression, I compiled a little list of books that touch on queerness and sex.

(This is an affiliate link)

hometoursandotherstuff

gonyadaldysgenesis

it makes me sad to see people who try to classify each aspect of genitalia into "intersex" and "not intersex." to have people ask questions about whats "normal" and whats not.

not only is the line blurry between perisex and intersex, but all genitalia is "normal." all genitalia is "natural." you dont have to pathologize your own or other peoples genitalia.

it only makes me upset to see people asking if parts of intersex genitalia are "normal", or if things are "in the wrong place", or assume resources about natural genitalia variations exclude intersex people.

we are normal. we are correct. parts of your body do not need to be common to be normal or natural.

zegalba

Bilateral Gynandromorph

Organisms that have a mix of male and female characteristics on each side of their body. They occur in certain insects, birds, and crustaceans due to a genetic anomaly during early development. In perfect bilateral gynandromorphism, the creature's body is divided in a line down the center. One side is male and the other side is female. However, such conditions are exceedingly rare.

tsalala

When it was discovered that Zalim (ironically meaning, cruel) was in the company of two very young cubs, those at Ranthambore feared the worst: that, as an adult male, he would kill them. Instead, he surprised naturalists with his “motherly” behavior when he took in his twin daughters following the death of their mother.

At this time, science stated that tigers were only as social as mothers and cubs could go and that tiger fathers rarely interacted with their offspring. Zalim changed that when he was witnessed, month after month, caring for his daughters and teaching them how to hunt. Their relationship eventually ceased when the two girls were shifted to Sariska Tiger Reserve and Zalim went on to father another litter with the then-dominant tigress Sundari, the so-called Lady of the Lakes. When she too mysteriously disappeared, Zalim unsurprisingly took care of their cubs as well.

Ranthambore National Park, India Photograph taken via camera trap

vehiculartheyslaughter

let’s subvert gender norms with papa!

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